TRYING IT ON THE DOG

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XLIII, Issue 11, 15 September 1909, Page 48

TRYING IT ON THE DOG

By

ELMER BLANEY HARRIS

Illustrations by May Wilson Preston

THERE’S many a slip between the ink-pot and the box-office. Even the greybeards among the dramatists now and then bag a gooseegg at some Broadway theatre, and the work of a year—perhaps a lifetime—goes into stock. It is not to be wondered at, therefore, that I, coming green from the campus, stuffed like a Christmas gobbler with Aristotle, Kant, Boileau, should at my first shot miss the bull’seye. In a way I resemibled “Briek.” “Brick” took eight years to graduate. At commencement, when his name was called, he rose, accepted his parchment, shook it in the face of the faculty, and. cried, “Educated, by gum!” I was educated.

T shall never forget that first hot summer in New York. I had the buttons put on the inside of my trousers and bought a belt. My window looked down upon the “Ii” and acres of sizzling roofs. Here, in a roar and tumult which set tlie window-panes chattering, I perpetrated my first play. By what inspiration of modesty I made it one act instead of five I do not remember, but into that one aet I crowded all I knew. So far as concerns theory, it was a masterpiece: it began, it nose to a climax, it ended. Also, it had a plot. The only swear-word in it was “’Sdeath!” With what I must have considered Swiftian humour, I named it “Excelsior”: I was on the twelfth floor, with prospects of going higher. Now, it happened that I knew an actress who was out of a job. There is nothing uusual in an actress’s being out of a job. The unusual part of it was that I should know an actress at all, for my father was a Methodist born in the pew. This actress and I dined at a restaurant in Sixth-avenue, where one ate yards of spaghetti and drank something red with an edge on it. Her name was Lola. She was amazingly pretty, I thought, carried her head high, and wore her clothes well—and plenty of them. While she was waiting for a suitable part and a friendly manager, we road French together, and she taught me to recite that little morceau from Hugo’s “Contemplations” which begins: “I never iravo Rose n thought. Rose came to the wood with me. We talked about something, But I have forgotten what!” And ends something after this fashion: •'I didn’t see she was beautiful XJntil we emerged from the great, deaf wood. 'So be it; let’s not think of it any morel’ said she. But, since, I think of It—toujouiei”

When I had learned it backwards and pleaded for another poem, she asked: “Reggie, how old are you” “Twenty-two.” A pause—a long pause. Feeling obliged to make conversation, I began: “Lola, did you ever hear of the ‘Dingansich’ ?” Lola hadn’t heard. So I launched into a dissertation on Kant, ending with a definition of Being, thence jumping to an aesthetic analysis of the curve on a Greek vase. I must have been a wonder. Little by little, Lola’s manner changed, changed in a remarkable way. She began to counsel economy in my expenditures, scolded me for tipping too generously and for taking a hansom when a car would have done as well. She

evinced an almost maternal interest in my clothes: helped me to select the exact shade of Oxford gray for afternoon, corrected the block of my top hat, had me exchange some new-bought gloves for a size smaller, also a tie which refused to make up well, being cut on the bias. She went as far as my underwear, writing a note apprising me of a sale of linens at Wanamaker’s, for summer comfort: she couldn’t bear to see my face grow shiny in a public place, Nothing escaped’ her. If my hair needed trimming, she knew it before I did. “But,” she admonished, “not much off the sides!” (My ears stick out some.) She made me discard an opal, and asked if my shoes pinched. The answer?— Mothering a broiler! Not until she’s mothered me for some time did I tell her about my play. She pounced upon the idea with an excess of enthusiasm that elated me beyond words. Had we been anywhere but in a cab, I should certainly have hugged her. Nothing would do but 1 must read it to her that evening. She waited in the foyer of my hotel while I got the manuscript, and we whipped up to her flat on Ninety-first-street. The flat I remember distinctly: a dear little silken nest, perfumed, soft-lighted. Lola drew the curtains, arranged the drop-lamp, gave me a footstool, a cushion at my back, and I read my production with all the expression I had left after a twoyear course in forensics. Lola’s applause was not as spontaneous as it might have been, and I reached for the ice-water. She clasped her hands back of her head and frowned at the ceiling. I lit a cigarette and waited. Finally she came over, perched up beside me, and ran through the manuscript (thoughtfully, biting her finger. “Dear boy,” she said, as she reached the last page, “it’s great. But it’s not life."

“Art, Lola, is not life as it is, but as it should be.” Believe it or not, that’s what I said. “In vaudeville —and that’s the only place you can use a one-act play—they want humour. Now if you could just make them laugh ” “It’s not a humorous subject,” I objected. “Reggie, dear, life is not all sad. It has some humour, even at its worst. Humour makes it possible, sweetens it: it’s the salt that keeps the sea fresh. Don’t you see?” I grew dogged. “There are no laughs in ‘Ghosts.’ ” “I know. I’ve played Mrs Alving. But Americans don’t want depressing, morbid revelations; they want joy and song.” “This is not a comic opera.” “Now, dear—l mean Reggie—don’t lose your temper. I know what I’m talking about; you simply must amuse your public. Here, I’ve got a joke-book I’ve kept for years ” ‘1 don’t want a lot of jokes pasted on my play like labels on a suit case. This is a ‘criticism of life.’ ” “But before you criticise a thing, you must know it —and know it hard.” Lola grew gentle as I grew brutal. “Do you mean that I don’t know life?” I demanded, a little indignant. “I’ve suffered!” What answer she made, if any, I do not remember. But she looked at me with a certain wistfulness, and when I innocently touched her hand as I held the play open for her perusal, she coloured, laughed uncomfortably, and, drawing away, returned to her chair. The movement, the little laugh come back to me now, with the breath of her hair, like mignonette, and a responsive thrill follows that stirs depths which then were—■ Well, the point is, she took the play and promised to see it staged. Lola found no difficulty in interesting an agent who owned his own theatre. “Miss Lola Henrici forsakes the Legit, for Continuous in one-act drama by Mr Reggie Forbes!” was one of the scareheads from the Telegraph which I pinned on my wall under her picture, between prints of Moliere and Goethe. The play was first to be “tried on the dog”—on an audience outside of Broadway. Then, if it got over, the star would be booked for periods ranging from three weeks to three years, and at as much salary as she could command. Two thousand dollars, I learned, was sometimes paid for a single act. My attraction, of course, would not receive that amount. But suppose they paid seven hundred. My ten per cent would give me seventy a week, two hundred and eighty a month, over three thousand a year. The sketch had taken a week) to write. Relieved from temporary embarrassment by the seventy, I could easily before the year was over produce twelve acceptable short plays. Thirty-six thousand a year! I should soon be earning more than the president. And it is strange how elastic it made my step, how lowly my twelfth floor rear. Current events, such as failures in Wall Street or the departure of the fleet for foreign waters, shrank to proportions insignificant. The rehearsals were like sitting by the bedside of a sick child: I hoped it would get better. Lola had secured the use of one of the large theatres, and here we four —the valet, the hero, the star, and the author—met at eleven one summer day when the horses wore bon-

nets and the mirrors had got into theta tights of mosquito netting—and th* metamorphosis of written words into living, moving humans began. Oh, the thrill of it!—the marvel! What had I done? Caught an idea, on the fly— an idea, that impalpable oversoul of molecular brain-changes—and so propelled it through the medium of alphabetical symbols as to awaken a like vibration in the cranium of my audience. O Introspection! O Psychology! O Mystery of Mysteries! O Fiddlesticks! Yet such were those darling sophomoric days, when ambition was new and cheek youth-painted, and this glorious pageant of the senses was all Why, and neveß What nor How! Tlie speeches didn’t flow. I can still see Lola in the golden glare of the foots’, with the grass mats and canvass trees of the regular show heaped against the wall, contracting my “ do nots” to “don’ts,” dropping my “thats” and “whiehes,” and breaking the blades of my beautiful, rhythmic periods, forged and tempered by the sweat of my brow, to make the characters talk in quick, short sentences, but without regard to repetition or balance. Mildly I demurred, but Lola, in her sweetest voice', met me with the fiat that movement was all-essential. Obediently I bowed at the shrine of experience. But when the hero: split an infinitive, I rose on my hind legs. I refused to see my baby carried head downward in this shiftless fashion. The rehearsal paused while I, as politely as possible, lectured the wrong-doer on the infrangibility of the infinitive. At this point the doorkeeper, a solemn, wintry figure, withdrew into the shadow. “ And I should prefer ‘ I believe seriously to make this effort ’ to ‘ I believe to make this effort seriously,’ because ‘ effort ’ is the important word, and should, therefore, be placed where it has the most emphasis, which is at the end of the phrase. And why do you keep crossing all the time?” “ I ean’t stand in one position during the entire scene!” retorted the man, with some impatience. “ Mr. Forbes is quite right,” agreed Lola. “ You must have a reason foB crossing; you will come over here to get the match-box. You occupy yourself with the match-box until I say: ‘ Harold!] Harold !’ Then you say: ‘Elizabeth, the rejuvenation of a naive delight in beauty for beauty’s sake—’ so and so, so and so, so and so, and cross back on my answer. And when the valet enters and says: ‘ Oh, sir, the press has denounced you!’ you cross naturally to get the revolver. Now try it again, please, from my entrance.” I shall not give you the entire play. I should have done so then. I should have set you down on the street corner, in a drawing-room filled with people, in an elevator, on a tack—anywhere—and read you the whole sixty pages with all the deadly purpose of the squab playwright. Now, however, for fear we might sometime meet, and having myself some respect for the dead, I shall spare you further excerpts from “ Excelsior.” Finally the day of the try-out arrived —the great day. Everything was in readiness. The “ props.” were assembled, the “ plots ” compiled. I had bought a new suit and written a speech. Lola had advanced the hero half his salary, and he had appeared in a elean shirt. Two newspaper men I had dined at some length, and I had received an inch of fine print in each of their papers. I had heard of

dying by indies, but it works both ways. Then, at the eleventh hour, the valet resigned! It took Lola fully ten minutes to say what she thought of him. It was the best “ copy” for a mad scene I bad ever heard. Then: “ Reggie, you’ll have to play that part yourself.” “I!” “ Yes, you. You know the lines, and I can’t possibly find another man and get him up in them before train-time. The little hypocrite! The turncoat! Oh!—!” On the way to the Grand Central: “ Reggie, you must stop smoking cigarettes. You’ve smoked one after another ever since I gave you that part.” “ Lola, I’ll queer the show.” “ Didn’t you say you’d played in college ?” “ Yes, but ” “Just put enough noise and speed into it, and you’ll do nicely.” I was almost sick with fear. The more I smoked, the worse I got. When I bought the tickets, I left a dollar on the window. Lola handed it to me with a perplexed frown. “ Boy, you are not going to your own funeral. Take a brace. You’re shaking like a double order of wine jelly. And don’t you leave your money lying about when you’re not making any.” “ Thanks awfully.” “ I think you’d probably feel better if you ate something. You’ve got me down here half an hour before train-time.” “ Really, I couldn’t eat a thing.” “ Perhaps I could.” I apologised, and hurried her across Forty-seeond Street, she chuckling at my stage fright, and declaring if I pulled so I’d have to buy her a new arm. “Where are you taking me!” she exclaimed, as w'e pushed into a bar, and a group of men, with one foot on the rail, turned, glasses lifted, and started' at this rumpled vision of loveliness which I was kidnapping. We backed out. “ Lola, what does he say when you sit on the hassock?” “Who are you talking about?” “ The valet.” Lola laughed outright- “ Well, you ought to know; you wrote the play.” “ Yes, but I can’t remember a word. Everything is gone from me.” A bite, and we boarded the train. 1 did feel better, but in the sulphurous breath of the tunnel I had an attack of hay-fever. I wheezed and sneezed: was literally led to the slaughter by the “doze-” It would have taken the tongue of Job wagged at both ends by the wit and bitterness of Heine to describe that journey. My eyes were full of tacks, my lips parched, my face, as I caught sight of it in the glass, was haunted and haggard. The only friend I had in the carwas the water-tank at the far end, and after shaking hands with it five times I

grew shy of the passengers. Lola was no friend of mine: “ Oh, Lord, Reggie, be still! Do you think you’re the only one who’s nervous?” Now, if only she hadn’t said that! To add to the general gloom, it began to rain, and pollywogs of silver effaced the moving-pictures framed in the window. I tried to study my part; 1 couldn’t. I got up. I sat down. I stared around to see if anyone was looking, and heard someone behind say: “ I wonder if they’ve just been married, or are just going to be ? ” It was a little go-in-when-it-rains town, one of many that cling to the petticoats of a big city, hoping the next charter

will take them in and supply gas-lamps. There were neither names nor numbers on the streets. We asked everyone we met, from the baggage-master to the barber, where the theatre was, before finding that hump-backed edifice. It stood next to a grocery where bushel baskets of potatoes, pyramids of beets and cabbages lured marketing housewives. On the steps was a parcel of ragamuffins shooting craps. Above them stood an easel of photographs: this week’s attractions! Lola, in the centre, chin on hand, around her, like the doves of Venus, The Sisters Pinko, the Coloured Comedy Entertainers, Pillule, the Mind-Reading Dog. And across the top: “ To-day! Bring the children to-day. Prize matinee! To-day!” Now, I know Garrick and Mrs. Siddons as well as if we had been to school together, and from our acquaintance I had familiarised myself with the glamour of the greenroom. But as I carried Lola’s suit case to the cellar, my dreams got a tap on the solar plexus. We had to wade. The star gathered up her silks and heeled it along a pine scantling to dressing-room No. 1. “Reggie, come in when you get dressed and I’ll make you up,” she said. My dressing-room was a be.ach —spell with a “p” if you don’t mind mixing your metaphors—where the theatrical tide had left stranded all the flotsam and jetsam of the profession—wafers of soap, grease rags, vaudeville ads, and a near-bald comb, its eye-teeth missing. And a gas-jet tlth.t had swallowed something whole hid its light under a bustle. There being neither nails nor hickory limb, I hung my coat on the door knob and repaired to Lola’s room. How pretty she had made her table. And how pretty she herself looked, in her lace bodice and curls, as she leaned toward the mirror, and dipped her lashes into the blaek. She threw off her dressing-sack and hooked her skirt. “Reggie, you’ll have to button me.” “Button you !” “Hurry; it’s getting near. Goodness, how cold your hands are! Stop trembling—you give me the Willies! Try a hairpin. Oh, let the collar go! Here —-!” With sleeves rolled back, she massaged my face with cold cream, mopped it, chalked it with pink, and blotted it with poudre de riz. Next, she combed out some crepe hair, soldered it on parallel with my ears, and barbered it beautifully. “Oh, you cunning thing!” she exclaimed, in admiration of her handiwork. “You’d make a lovely coachman. If any of the Astorbilts are in front, I’ll lose you sure. Now, button my boots.” “Lola, my mouth feels as though it had been dried out with a crash towel. What’s that a sign of?”

“Ouch!” she cried, as I pinched her with a button-hook. “You’re taking it off in chunks!” From an adjoining room, female voices: — “Say, I kin strike C without an effort. Send for A and I’ll show you my C”—no sooner said, than done. "Get the hook! Light on something! D’yuh call that C?” “Say, I wonder who got the idea we could be a quartet?” “Maybe, are you every going to change that skirt?” “No; it was wished on.” “Minnie, the guy in the monkey cage out front wanted to know how you pronounced your middle name.” “Tell him 1 don’t pronounce itj I inhale it!” -

“The Sisters Pinko,” explained Lola. “Do we have to play on the same bill with them ?” “Yes, honey. And it may do them good; if they’d only learn that rejuvenation beauty speech of yours, it might help some. Now, for heaven’s sake, Reggie, talk up loud.” “Shall I have to make a speech, Lola ?” “I don’t think so.” And she said it with a straight face. The stage was cramped and populous. Here and there a shaft of light lit huddled heads, as the mechanics and stage-hands passed judgment on a sketch which was just then being done. At one of the entrances stood the author, not eo intent on sprinkling an um-

brella with a watering-can that he failed to Jaugh at his own jokes. “Pipe the feller that wrote itl” whispered a scene-shifter in a greenstriped sweater. Just then, one of the actors, perspiring through his paint, sauntered to the door, and, dropping his party smile and voice, hissed at the author: — “Where the h ’s the will?” The Coloured Comedy Entertainers did theirs next. They were two, in a check so generous that it required both suits to contain the pattern. The distinguishing feature of their performance was the mouth of one, as mobile as a re.d-rubber band. I remember a line — “Speakin’ ob rain, Mista’ Johnsing, bow’d jew like t’ go fo’ a boat-ride dis aftahnoon?” “I ain’t much on de water.” “Nd’ on de soap i-ther, hum?” It went with a scream. As I got better acquainted with our competitors, my nerves steadied, my predicament, grew less dire, and I was able to observe and profit by my surroundings. Pillule, the Mind-reading Dog, added, subtracted, multiplied; told one young lady in the audience how many babies she wanted by sagely hesitating at twelve, and finally choosing the cipher. Another scream. While they were setting the stage for “Excelsior,” the girl impersonator diu hers before the drop, while a greyhaired woman waited near a dressingtable in the wings. Off came the girl, panting from a dance. Off came her waist, skirt, and one pair of stockings, while the men standing round, hands in pockets, surveyed her with the detached interest of bettors inspecting a filly in the paddock. The girl herself, one ear on the music, so far as they were concerned, was alone with the greyhaired woman. “I’m going to cut that line; they never get it!” she panted. “I would, dearie.” “My kilt!” With sure, quick fingers she changed to the Scotch costume, the woman tying her shoes while she dived into the jacket. A smudge of powder, a sip of

water, and she was back, almost befox the applause ceased:— ‘T loved a lassie, A bonnie blue-eyed lassie; She was pure as the lilies in the dell— * “Can’t sing!” commented the man on the heater His companion, chewing gum, shook bis head —spat. “How do you like vaudeville, Reggie?” I looked at Lola, her skirts clutched to protect them from the floor, and felt a shamefaced regret at having let her in for such an experience. I apologised. “All in a life-time!” she replied

cheerfully. “This is only a bad imitar tion of the real thing, but you can regard it as a college supplement. Are you gathering wisdom?” “Lola, do you think they’ll do anything to ‘Excelsior’?” The only consolation she offered was:; “Wateh and pray!” Out of deference to Lola, the management had saved our attraction till the last, save, of course, the motion-pictures. It gave us more time than we expected, and I began to feel quite cocky before the curtain rose; but when it did lift finally, letting in a flood of light over the tawry “set,” at war in every detail with the aesthetic tastes of my hero, and exhibiting ensconced in the stage box a group of New York managers, there expressly to see Lola’s act, my temporary composure departed. And the rest, even at this distance, swims in thin, hot haze. My last distinct impression was of the leading man, clearing his throat, and feeling his tie before entering, after which I had a touch of blind staggers. I accidentally set off the door-bell, which refused to be choked, and had to be carried out into the alley and smothered, like a dangerous lamp. I fell into the room and dropped a breakfast tray—thank heaven, the audience thought it intentional. I opened my mouth, but no sound issued forth, and the hero said the line for me. Lola prompted me, but it was no go: I couldn't even repeat what I heard. When I came off, the man on the heater said:— “Say, kid. who wrote this skit?” Even that failed to rouse me: I was in a trance, a nightmare. I had to sit down somewhere to keep my legs from giving way as after a long illness, and chose Lola’s hat. I missed my next cue, and she had to come after me: — “Reggie, the newspaper, for mercy’s sake!” I tried to say, “The Press has denounced you!” but Lola tevk the words out of my mouth, and then, in an aside: “Don’t come in again; 1’1! get the revolver.” If I hadn’t written the play myself I should have thought that a threat. Thus excused from my last entrance, 1 began to recover. Ths first thing I noticed w»s that the stage hands were acting like men at a circus: they were coming from the other side, from the loft, froai

the property-room, to see what I looked like. They stared at me in silence and Walked away. “Kin yuh beat it!” one of them said. I peered cautiously at the audience: the New York managers had left; the Vox was empty—one of the chairs was tipped over, though I don’t offer that as evidence. Poor Lola! When the curtain fell, there was an Oppressive silence in the house. Somebody’s baby began to cry. There was an ominous rustle of programmes. The agent who had secured the try-out came on the stage.

“Miss Henrici,” he said, taking Lola’s feand, which trembled a little, “you were charmin’; they never seen better actin’ in this house. But where, in heaven’s name, did you get the vehicle? ‘The rehabilitation of beauty fer beauty’s Bake !’ Say, why didn’t you let him kill himself as he wanted to? Your jokes Went great (Lola’s jokes!), but the rest Of the dope !” Tie concluded witK'an expressive rotary gesture near one temple. “It was only an experiment,” explained Lola, sweetly. i The agent gave a glance towards me Md dropped his voice: “And where, oh, (Where did you pick up the valet?” We dressed. As we entered the street, Mve saw the hero’s coat-tails vanishing between two swinging doors.

I opened the umbrella, and we walked slowly back to the depot. “Now, Reggie, listen. You’ve had a play produced; you’ve seen how the wheels go. There’s only one thing more you need to learn.” “What’s that, Lola?” “Life.” There may have been try-outs since, many failures, some successes. Through them all Lola has stood by. Invariably, when I read the plays to her, if she clasped her hands back of her head and frowned at the ceiling, they were sure to fail; if, instead, the laughter rippled

from her lips, or the tears gathered beneath her lashes, their success was signed and sealed. Lola knew. I am now of a mind that the whole secret lay in that one word—Life. She is sitting opposite as I write, more mature, more gentle, more lovely than ever, despite these busy years. She puts down her books, looks over, hands folded beneath her chin, and asks me how it goes. And I remember again the little verse of Hugo's:— “Je ne vis qu'elle etait belie Qn’en sortant des grandes bois sourds. ‘Soft; n’y pensons plus!’ dit-elle. Depuis, j’y pense toujours.” Why? Because we’re married now.