Shivers for Christmas

by Richard Dalby

  A new Tragedy is to be produced—a pre-eminently bad one, by-the-by, even in those days of pre-eminently bad Tragedy-writing. The scene is laid in Scotland; and Mr Kemble is determined to play his part in a Highland dress. The idea of acting a drama in the appropriate costume of the period which that drama illustrates, is considered so dangerous an innovation, that no one else dare follow his example; and he, of all the characters, is actually about to wear the only Highland dress in a Highland play. This does not at all daunt him. He has acted Othello, a night or two before, in the uniform of a British General Officer, and is so conscious of the enormous absurdity of the thing, that he is determined to persevere, and start the reform in stage costume, which he was afterwards destined so thoroughly to carry out.

  The night comes; the play begins. Just as the stage waits for Mr Kemble, Mr Kemble discovers that his goatskin purse—one of the most striking peculiarities of the Highland dress—is not on him. There is no time to seek it—all is lost for the cause of costume!—he must go on the stage exposed to public view as only half a Highlander! No! Not yet! While everybody else hurries frantically hither and thither in vain, one man quickly straps something about Mr Kemble’s waist, just in the nick of time. It is the lost purse! and Roscius after all steps on the stage, a Highlander complete from top to toe!

  On his first exit, Mr Kemble inquires for the man who found the purse. It is that very poor player whom he has already remarked. The great actor had actually been carrying the purse about in his own hands before the performance; and, in a moment of abstraction, had put it down on a chair, in a dark place behind the prompter’s box. The humble admirer, noticing everything he did, noticed this; and so found the missing goatskin in time, when nobody else could.

  ‘Sir, I am infinitely obliged to you,’ says Mr Kemble, courteously, to the confused, blushing man before him—‘You have saved me from appearing incomplete, and therefore ridiculous, before a Drury Lane audience. I have marked you, sir, before; reading, while waiting for your call, our divine Shakespeare—the poetic bond that unites all men, however professional distances may separate them. Accept, sir, this offered pinch—this pinch of snuff.’

  When the penniless player went home that night, what wonderful news he had for his wife! And how proud and happy poor Columbine was, when she heard that Reuben Wray had been offered a pinch of snuff out of Mr Kemble’s own box!

  But the kind-hearted tragedian did not stop merely at a fine speech and a social condescension. Reuben read Shakespeare, when none of his comrades would have cared to look into the book at all; and that of itself was enough to make him interesting to Mr Kemble. Besides, he was a young man; and might have capacities which only wanted encouragement.

  ‘I beg you to recite to me, sir,’ said the great John Philip, one night, desirous of seeing what his humble admirer really could do. The result of the recitation was unequivocal: poor Wray could do nothing that hundreds of his brethren could not have equalled. In him, the yearning to become a great actor was only the ambition without the power.

  Still, Reuben gained something by the goatskin purse. A timely word from his new protector raised him two or three degrees higher in the company, and increased his salary in proportion. He got parts now with some lines to speak in them; and—condescension on condescension!—Mr Kemble actually declaimed them for his instruction at rehearsal, and solemnly showed him (oftener, I am afraid, in jest than earnest) how a patriotic Roman soldier, or a bereaved father’s faithful footman, should tread the stage.

  These instructions were always received by the grateful Wray in the most perfect good faith; and it was precisely in virtue of his lessons thus derived—numbering about half-a-dozen, and lasting about two minutes each—that he afterwards advertised himself, as teacher of elocution and pupil of John Kemble. Many a great man has blazed away famously before the public eye, as pupil of some other great man, from no larger a supply of original educational fuel than belonged to Mr Reuben Wray.

  Having fairly traced our friend to his connection with Mr Kemble, I may dismiss the rest of his advertisement more briefly. All, I suppose, that you now want further explained, is:—How he came to teach elocution, and how he got on by teaching it.

  Well: Reuben stuck fast to Drury Lane theatre through rivalries, and quarrels, and disasters, and fluctuations in public taste, which overthrew more important interests than his own. The theatre was rebuilt, and burnt, and rebuilt again; and still Old Wray (as he now began to be called) was part and parcel of the establishment, however others might desert it. During this long lapse of monotonous years, affliction and death preyed cruelly on the poor actor’s home. First, his kind, patient Columbine died; then, after a long interval, Columbine’s only child married early;—and woe is me!—married a sad rascal, who first ill-treated and then deserted her. She soon followed her mother to the grave, leaving one girl—the little Annie of this story—to Reuben’s care. One of the first things her grandfather taught the child was to call herself Annie Wray. He never could endure hearing her dissolute father’s name pronounced by anybody; and was resolved that she should always bear his own.

  Ah! what woeful times were those for the poor player! How many a night he sat in the darkest corner behind the scenes, with his tattered Shakespeare—the only thing about him he had never pawned—in his hand, and the tears rolling down his hollow, painted cheeks, as he thought on the dear lost Columbine, and Columbine’s child! How often those tears still stood thick in his eyes when he marched across the stage at the head of a mock army, or hobbled up to deliver the one eternal letter to the one eternal dandy hero of high Comedy!—Comedy, indeed! If the people before the lamps, who were roaring with laughter at the fun of the mercurial fine gentleman of the play, had only seen what was tugging at the heart of the miserable old stage footman who brought him his chocolate and newspapers, all the wit in the world would not have saved the comedy from being wept over as the most affecting tragedy that was ever written.

  But the time was to come—long after this, however—when Reuben’s connection with the theatre was to cease. As if fate had ironically bound up together the stage destinies of the great actor and the small, the year of Mr Kemble’s retirement from the boards, was the year of Mr Wray’s dismissal from them.

  He had been, for some time past, getting too old to be useful—then, the theatrical world in which he had been bred was altering, and he could not alter with it. A little man with fiery black eyes, whose name was Edmund Kean, had come up from the country and blazed like a comet through the thick old conventional mists of the English stage. From that time, the new school began to rise, and the old school to sink; and Reuben went down, with other insignificant atoms, in the vortex. At the end of the season, he was informed that his services were no longer required.

  It was then, when he found himself once more forlorn in the world—almost as forlorn as when he had first come to London with poor Columbine—that the notion of trying elocution struck him. He had a little sum of money to begin with, subscribed for him by his richer brethren when he left the theatre. Why might he not get on as a teacher of elocution in the country, just as some of his superior fellow-players got on in the same vocation in London? Necessity whispered, Doubt not, but try. He had a grandchild to support—so he did try.

  His method of teaching was exceedingly simple. He had one remedy for the deficiencies of every class whom he addressed—the Kemble remedy: he had watched Mr Kemble year by year, till he knew every inch of him; and, so to speak, had learnt him by heart. Did a pupil want to walk the stage properly?—teach him Mr Kemble’s walk. Did a rising politician want to become impressive as an orator?—teach him Mr Kemble’s gesticulations in Brutus. So again, with regard to strictly vocal necessities. Did gentleman number one, wish to learn the art of reading aloud?—let him learn the Kemble cadences. Did gentleman number two, feel weak in his pronunciation?—let him sound vowels, consonants, and crack-jaw syllables, just as Mr Kemble sounded them on the stage. And, out of what
book were they to be taught?—from what manual were the clergymen and orators, the aspirants for dramatic fame, the young ladies whose delivery was ungraceful, and the young gentlemen whose diction was improper, to be all alike improved! From Shakespeare—every one of them from Shakespeare! He had no idea of anything else: literature meant Shakespeare to him. It was his great glory and triumph, that he had Shakespeare by heart. All that he knew, every tender and lovable recollection, every small honour he had gained in his own poor blank sphere, was somehow sure to be associated with William Shakespeare!

  And why not? What is Shakespeare but a great sun that shines upon humanity—the large heads and the little, alike? Have not the rays of that mighty light penetrated into many poor and lowly places for good? What marvel then that they should fall, pleasant and invigorating, even upon Reuben Wray?

  So—right or wrong—with Shakespeare for his textbook, and Mr Kemble for his model, our friend in his old age bravely invaded provincial England as a teacher of elocution, with all its supplementary accomplishments. And, wonderful to relate, though occasionally enduring dreadful privations, he just managed to make elocution—or what passed instead of it with his patrons—keep his grandchild and himself!

  I cannot say that any orators or clergymen anxiously demanded secret improvement from him (see advertisement) at three-and-sixpence an hour; or that young ladies sought the graces of delivery, and young gentlemen the proprieties of diction (see advertisement again) from his experienced tongue. But he got on in other ways, nevertheless. Sometimes he was hired to drill the boys on a speech day at a country school. Sometimes he was engaged to prevent provincial amateur actors from murdering the dialogue outright, and incessantly jostling each other on the stage. In this last capacity, he occasionally got good employment, especially with regular amateur societies, who found his terms cheap enough, and his knowledge of theatrical discipline inestimably useful.

  But chances like these were as nothing to the chances he got when he was occasionally employed to superintend all the toilsome part of the business in arranging private theatricals at country houses. Here, he met with greater generosity than he had ever dared to expect: here, the letter from Mr Kemble, vouching for his honesty and general stage-knowledge—the great actor’s legacy of kindness to him, which he carried about everywhere—was sure to produce prodigious effect. He and little Annie, and a third member of the family whom I shall hereafter introduce, lived for months together on the proceeds of such a windfall as a private theatrical party—for the young people, in the midst of their amusement, found leisure to pity the poor old ex-player, and to admire his pretty granddaughter; and liberally paid him for his services full five times as much as he would ever have ventured to ask.

  Thus, wandering about from town to town, sometimes miserably unsuccessful, sometimes re-animated by a little prosperity, he had come from Stratford-upon-Avon, while the present century was some twenty-five years younger than it is now, to try his luck at elocution with the people of Tidbury-on-the-Marsh—to teach the graces of delivery at seventy years of age, with half his teeth gone! Will he succeed? I, for one, hope so. There is something in the spectacle of this poor old man, sorely battered by the world, yet still struggling for life and for the grandchild whom he loves better than life—struggling hard, himself a remnant of a bygone age, to keep up with a new age which has already got past him, and will hardly hear his feeble voice of other times, except to laugh at it—there is surely something in this which forbids all thought of ridicule, and bids fair with everybody for compassion and goodwill.

  But we have had talk enough, by this time, about Mr Reuben Wray. Let us now go at once and make acquaintance with him—not forgetting his mysterious cash box—at No. 12.

  III

  The breakfast things are laid in the little drawing-room at Reuben’s lodgings. This drawing-room, observe, has not been hired by our friend; he never possessed such a domestic luxury in his life. The apartment, not being taken, has only been lent to him by his landlady, who is hugely impressed by the tragic suavity of her new tenant’s manner and ‘delivery’. The breakfast things, I say again, are laid. Three cups, a loaf, half-a-pound of salt butter, some moist sugar in a saucer, and a black earthenware tea-pot, with a broken spout; such are the sumptuous preparations which tempt Mr Wray and his family to come down at nine o’clock in the morning, and yet nobody appears!

  Hark! there is a sound of creaking boots, descending, apparently, from some loft at the top of the house, so distant is the noise they make at first. This sound, coming heavily nearer and nearer, only stops at the drawing-room door, and heralds the entry of—

  Mr Wray, of course? No!—no such luck: my belief is, that we shall never succeed in getting to Mr Wray personally. The individual in question is not even any relation of his; but he is a member of the family, for all that; and as the first to come downstairs, he certainly merits the reward of immediate notice.

  He is nearly six feet high, proportionately strong and stout, and looks about thirty years of age. His gait is as awkward as it well can be; his features are large and ill-proportioned, his face is pitted with the small-pox, and what hair he has on his head—not much—seems to be growing in all sorts of contrary directions at once. I know nothing about him, personally, that I can praise, but his expression; and that is so thoroughly good-humoured, so candid, so innocent even, that it really makes amends for everything else. Honesty and kindliness look out so brightly from his eyes, as to dazzle your observation of his clumsy nose, and lumpy mouth and chin, until you hardly know whether they are ugly or not. Some men, in a certain sense, are ugly with the lineaments of the Apollo Belvedere; and others handsome, with features that might sit for a caricature. Our new acquaintance was of the latter order.

  Allow me to introduce him to you:—THE GENTLE READER—JULIUS CAESAR. Stop! start not at those classic syllables; I will explain all.

  The history of Mr Martin Blunt, alias ‘Julius Caesar’, is a good deal like the history of Mr Reuben Wray. Like him, Blunt began life with strolling players—not, however, as an actor, but as stage-carpenter, candle-snuffer, door-keeper, and general errand-boy. On one occasion, when the company were ambitiously bent on the horrible profanation of performing Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, the actor who was to personate the emperor fell ill. Nobody was left to supply his place—every other available member of the company was engaged in the play; so, in despair, they resorted to Martin Blunt. He was big enough for a Roman hero; and that was all they looked to.

  They first cut out as much of his part as they could, and then half crammed the rest into his reluctant brains; they clapped a white sheet about the poor lad’s body for a toga, stuck a truncheon into his hand, and a short beard on his chin; and remorselessly pushed him on the stage. His performance was received with shouts of laughter; but he went through it; was duly assassinated; and fell with a thump that shook the surrounding scenery to its centre, and got him a complete round of applause all to himself.

  He never forgot this. It was his first and last appearance; and, in the innocence of his heart, he boasted of it on every occasion, as the great distinction of his life. When he found his way to London; and as a really skilful carpenter, procured employment at Drury Lane, his fellow-workmen managed to get the story of his first performance out of him directly, and made a standing joke of it. He was elected a general butt, and nicknamed ‘Julius Caesar’, by universal acclamation. Everybody conferred on him that classic title; and I only follow the general fashion in these pages. If you don’t like the name, call him any other you please: he is too good-humoured to be offended with you, do what you will.

  He was thus introduced to old Wray:—

  At the time when Reuben was closing his career at Drury Lane, our stout young carpenter had just begun to work there. One night, about a week before the performance of a new Pantomime, some of the heavy machinery tottered just as Wray was passing by it; and would have fallen on him, but for ‘Julius Caesar’ (I really can’
t call him Blunt!), who, at the risk of his own limbs, caught the tumbling mass; and by a tremendous exertion of main strength arrested it in its fall, till the old man had hobbled out of harm’s way. This led to gratitude, friendship, intimacy. Wray and his preserver, in spite of the difference in their characters and ages, seemed to suit each other, somehow. In fine, when Reuben started to teach elocution in the country, the carpenter followed him, as protector, assistant, servant, or whatever you please.

  ‘Julius Caesar’ had one special motive for attaching himself to old Wray’s fortunes, which will speedily appear, when little Annie enters the drawing-room. Awkward as he might be, he was certainly no encumbrance. He made himself useful and profitable in fifty different ways. He took round handbills soliciting patronage; constructed the scenery when Mr Wray got private theatrical engagements; worked as journeyman-carpenter when other resources failed; and was, in fact, ready for anything, from dunning for a bad debt, to cleaning a pair of boots. His master might at times be as fretful as he pleased, and treat him like an infant during occasional fits of crossness—he never replied, and never looked sulky. The only things he could not be got to do, were to abstain from inadvertently knocking everything down that came in his reach, and to improve the action of his arms and legs on the principle of the late Mr Kemble.

  Let us return to the drawing-room, and the breakfast-things. ‘Julius Caesar’, of the creaking boots, came into the room with a small work-box (which he had been secretly engaged in making for some time past) in one hand, and a new muslin cravat in the other. It was Annie’s birthday. The box was a present; the cravat, what the French would call, a homage to the occasion.