The Trial of Elizabeth Cree

by Peter Ackroyd

  “It’s my treatment. My doctor told me to take a walk every day on an empty stomach.”

  It was not a bad bit of business, and the audience appreciated the joke. But it did suggest the extent to which Londoners of the period were eager to see the more forward or lecherous females punished for their behavior. It would not be going too far to suggest, in fact, that there was some link between the murder of the prostitutes in Limehouse and the ritual humiliation of women in pantomime. John Cree certainly laughed very loudly when Sister Anne found herself being boiled alive with a dozen potatoes. “Bluey!” she called. “Bluey! I’m just slipping out to buy some carrots!” Very carefully she extricated herself from the tin bath, carrying a potato in each hand which she began to eat. This was Dan Leno as Elizabeth Cree still remembered him—with that melancholy face (“all the tragedy that is written on the face of a baby monkey,” as Max Beerbohm described it), with that poignant glance, with that nervous rush of words lapsing into hoarseness, the shrug of the shoulders, and then with the sudden comic remark like a shaft of lightning in a storm, he had retained all the pathos and the ardor of his youth.

  Sister Anne had finally realized that “Bluey” was not “quite her cup of tea,” and was sitting in the comfort of her own parlor with an old friend and confidante. The role of Joanna Screwloose was played by a large and imposing comic actor, Herbert Campbell, whose matronly presence was the perfect foil to Leno’s diminutive but vivid character.

  “There is one thing, Joanna, which does rather hurt me.”

  “What is that, Anne ducks?”

  “I was good for another ten years, if Bluey had changed his ways.”

  “But a woman in your position …”

  “What position is that?”

  “Let’s not go into it now, dear.”

  And so it went on. Elizabeth Cree realized that on several occasions the two comedians were “gagging” one another and delivering lines extempore, but that only increased her pleasure in their performance and revived memories of her own old life upon the stage.

  THIRTY-ONE

  All this time I had never really thought about my mother—she must already have rotted away, thank God—but there were occasions when I saw her still. Not in the flesh, of course, but in the spirit of the funny females whom Dan impersonated. There was one in particular who used to make me scream—Miss Devoutly, a lily-white virgin who was such a religious enthusiast that she made a habit of swooning in the arms of her vicar. I helped him in that, and gave him some of the references—“Judges, chapter fifteen, verse twelve!” she would cry out before having one of her “turns.” It was just like the old days in Lambeth Marsh. In the same way Dan would assist me with the Older Brother, and once even taught me a special kind of walk; it was that of a drunken waiter pretending to be sober and, as Dan said, it was a “tip” that “served” me well. But I also liked to pick up hints on my own account, and there were times when I would dress up in my masculine duds and hang around the docks or the markets to pick up some more of the “slanguage.” The costers liked to speak it backwards among themselves, as I discovered one night in Shadwell when I was asked to have “a top of reeb” instead of a pot of beer—Dan laughed when I told him, although I suspect he knew all the lingo already. Codger slang was much more delicate, and I found that to order a glass of rum I had to say, “a Jack-surpass of finger and thumb,” and to smoke a pipe of tobacco was to “blow your yard of tripe of nosey-me-knocker.” Sometimes I believe that the race of Londoners is quite apart from the rest of the world!

  One afternoon, the Older Brother went back to my old haunts in Lambeth. I passed the lodgings in Peter Street, and instinctively turned into the doorway just as if I still lived there with the dead woman; it gave me the strangest pleasure to know that, if she had been alive still, she would not have recognized me at all. I was a stranger in life and in death. Her grave was in the paupers’ cemetery by St. George’s Circus; I knelt before it and took up the attitude known on the stage as “horror upon horror’s head.” “I have changed everything,” I whispered to her. “If you can see me from the cinder heap, you will know. Do you remember the old song, Mother?” I expect that she would have liked to have heard one of her hymns, and drag me down into her own evil world, so instead I came out swaggering with the drinking song from the Coal Hole in the Strand:

  Then the hangman will come too,

  Will come too,

  Then the hangman will come too

  With all his bloody crew,

  And he’ll tell me what to do

  Damn his eyes.

  And now I goes upstairs,

  Goes upstairs,

  And now I goes upstairs,

  Here’s an end to all my cares,

  So I spit on all your prayers

  Damn your eyes.

  We were never permitted to sing it on the stage, but Uncle repeated it to me until I had learned it by heart—what a piece of tomfoolery it was, and the best antidote ever concocted to the religious frenzy.

  That night I was at my best and, after the performance, Charles Weston of the Drury Lane asked me if I would care to play one of the principal boys in that season’s Babes in the Wood.

  “Would I?”

  “Wood you?”

  “Yes, indeed.”

  I suppose that might have marked the beginning of a little sourness between Dan and me. He was not particularly overjoyed when one of the regular artistes left the halls for the seasonal pantomime, but he never said anything directly; he was always the perfect gentleman off the stage, and yet he was no longer quite so ready with his fun. There had been times when, to amuse the others after a rehearsal, Dan and I would do our own version of the poses plastiques, or plastic poses as we called them. We would drape our arms around the props in a series of unnatural attitudes depicting “The Sultan’s Favorite Returning from the Bath” or “Napoleon’s Rash Vow.” But his heart did not seem to be in it now, and we screamed no more. Still, I was a great success as the principal boy; I think I was the first to wear spangled tights upon the stage and, not for the first time, set up a trend. Walter Arbuthnot was the Baroness, while that laugh-a-minute duo, Lorna and Toots Pound, were the children. I can still remember the tears welling up in my eyes as we clasped each other’s hands at the last performance and sang the familiar refrain:

  In the panto of old Drury Lane,

  We have all come together again,

  And we hope to appear

  For many a year

  In the panto of old Drury Lane.

  But it was not to be, alas, and my last year in the halls was to be filled with woes and troubles.

  They really began when I was back with Dan at the Standard in Clerkenwell; we knew that a large part of the audience was of the Hebrew persuasion, so we had put in a few Yiddish comiqueries that set them roaring. I had just finished my rendition of “Flossie the Frivolous” and hurried off to the sound of great applause; some coins were thrown upon the stage, but I was so tired and breathless that I simply could not bring myself to sing again. “I’m good for nothing,” I told Aveline Mortimer, a rather bitter simultaneous dancer who specialized in “Merry Moments.” “Whatever shall I do?”

  “Just go on, dear, and wish them Meesa Meschina. It’s their holiday.”

  So I went back on the stage, threw my arms wide, smiled and spoke out very clearly. “Ladies and gentlemen, and especially those gentlemen not utterly unconnected with a certain historical chosen race—” That set them laughing, and so I paused for a moment to get my breath. “May I wish you, from the bottom of my heart, Meesa Meschina!” There was a sudden silence, and then such a pandemonium of whistling and hissing that I felt compelled to leave the stage.

  Uncle hurried up to me as I stood, bewildered, in the wings. “Whatever did you say that for, ducks?” He signaled to Jo to pull down the curtain. “Don’t you know what that means in their lingo? Meesa Meschina means SUDDEN DEATH!”

  I was horrified and when I saw my erstwhi
le friend, Aveline Mortimer, slipping away I could have indulged in a piece of sudden death on my own account. She had always been envious of my success, but it was the most spiteful act she could possibly have performed. Fortunately Dan was equal to any kind of theatrical emergency and, since he was still in the costume of the Beautiful Landlady—with corkscrew ringlets and all—he went straight on and began to perform “Man, by One Who Hates ’Em.” That quietened them a little, and when he followed it up with “I’m Back on Licensed Premises” they were perfectly settled.

  I was still a little shaken, as you can imagine. I never normally touched a drop but, after the show was over, Uncle took me “next door” and bought me a large glass of shrub. “It was that cow Aveline,” I told him. “She will never dance on the same bill with me again.”

  “Don’t take on so, ducks. It’s all forgotten, as the executioner said to the hanged man.” He patted my hand, and then held it for a minute more than was proper.

  “Get me another glass, Uncle. I’m in that kind of mood.”

  At this moment Dan sauntered in, wearing the latest fashion of broad check suit. “I bet you could kill her,” he said.

  “I could.”

  “That’s good. Keep in that state. I think I’ve got a little part for you.”

  I should explain that sometimes we did “incidentals” between the turns; it might be a burlesque medley of Shakespeare (Dan did a screamingly funny Desdemona), or a “shocker” like Sweeney Todd played for the laughs. I’ll never forget the time when the famous “ ‘Over’ Rowley” played one of Sweeney’s victims who escaped by doing a series of gag somersaults; the audience would cry out, “Over, Rowley!” and then he would turn another one of them until he finally vanished from the stage. Anyway, Dan had a plan for another “incidental.” He knew that Gertie Latimer was about to put on Maria Marten, or The Murder in the Red Barn as her new horror at the Bell in Limehouse, and he had decided to guy it with a little something of his own. He was going to play Maria, the unfortunate victim or murderee, while he intended me to play the sweetheart who strangles her and then hides her body in the notorious barn. Hugo Stead, well known as “The Dramatic Maniac,” was going to play Maria’s mother who has visions of her daughter’s death: the point was that Hugo had developed a wonderful little routine known as “The Perfect Cure” whereby he simply jumped up and down, his arms pinned to his sides and his legs locked together, while he sang. So, whenever Mrs. Marten had one of her visions, she would jump up and down in her excitement. “Over” Rowley was going to be introduced somehow, just for the fun of having two of them capering about the stage. This was Dan’s plan, in any event, and we sat in the public house discussing the tricks and the business. I had never played a murderer before, let alone a droll murderer, and I was a trifle nervous about the way it would go.

  The curious point is that my future husband, Mr. John Cree, was actually sitting very close to us in conversation with two patter comedians known as “The Evening Shadows.” We had exchanged one or two words since that dreadful night when Little Victor Farrell “met his doom,” as they say on the bills, so I felt quite at my ease when Uncle beckoned him over to our table. “John,” he shouted. “Come over here. Dan has decided to go legitimate.” It was always our aim to have something “placed” in the newspapers and, if possible, to have our names mentioned. So I smiled very sweetly when he brought up a chair.

  “Mr. Cree,” I said, “thank you for joining us. Dan is planning something very serious.”

  “What is that to be?”

  “A shocker. I am to become a very masculine murderer.”

  “I don’t believe such a part will suit you at all.”

  “Oh, you know, Mr. Cree, stage folk are capable of anything.”

  But then Dan spoiled the fun by explaining that it was a spoof interlude. Nevertheless John Cree did write, in the following week’s issue of the Era, that “The great comic funster, Lambeth Marsh Lizzie, better known to her countless admirers as the Older Brother, will be entertaining the public in an entirely new and sensational part which we believe to have some connection with a celebrated crime.” I think even then that John was partial to me, but I can honestly say that I never led him on; he was a gentleman, too, and would not take advantage of our snug little chats about the business after he had put me in his column. He told me that he had always lived in the shadow of his father, who was some kind of businessman in Lancaster, and I sympathized very strongly. “But at least,” I added, “you know your parents. I wish I could say as much for myself.” He took my hand for a moment, but I disengaged myself very gently. Then he told me that he was a Roman Catholic, and I shook my head in disbelief. “That is quite a coincidence, Mr. Cree. I have always yearned for religion, too.” He confided in me that he had always wanted to be a literary man, and that the Era was just the first step. I told him that it was exactly the same for me, and that I had joined the halls only that I might one day become a serious actress: so we became quite pally, and after a while he showed me a play that he had been writing. It was called Misery Junction, in honor of that famous spot on the York Hotel corner of the Waterloo Road; this was the place where the artistes out of a shop congregated and waited for the agents. I suppose that was why he was so interested in me and all my little affairs; I was flattered by his attentions, I admit it, but I never expected anything further.

  Rehearsals for our spoof interlude were hellish, because all the fun was held in reserve: “Over” Rowley did not roll over, except in a very half-hearted manner indeed, and “The Dramatic Maniac” kept his jumps less than manic. I had my lines by heart, of course, but I was always being caught out by Dan’s high spirits and general excitement. “What a lot of cows,” he said when he first saw the farmhouse set. “We might as well be in the green room.”

  “Are you ready at last, Dan?” Uncle was the stage manager and liked to keep good order, although he was the first to laugh at Dan’s remarks.

  “No. I’m not ready. I’ve no particular reason for being anywhere. In fact I’m going somewhere else.”

  “Come on, Dan. Play the game. We haven’t got time for the chaff.”

  So then, with the galley pulls in our hands, we spent two afternoons learning the script as well as all the trimmings we devised as we went along. Uncle had written a nice set of verses for the murderer, when he is standing alone in front of the red barn, and I sang them out with gusto:

  I will be a mad butcher, they will call me insane,

  But I was driven to this by my false Mary Jane

  Marten—

  Dan was meant to come on at this point and say “Parten?” instead of “Pardon?” but he just stared down at the galleys.

  “Go on,” I said, quite put out by the silence. “It’s your turn now.”

  “I’m waiting for my cue.”

  “Dan, I gave you your cue.”

  “Whatever do you mean? My cue is—‘Lizzie says Marten, and then laughs wildly.’ ”

  “I did laugh.” I turned to Uncle for support. “Didn’t I?”

  “Yes, Dan. She laughed.”

  “Was that a laugh? I thought she had the croup.” Then he turned the galley sheets over, and somehow managed to get entangled with them. “There’s something very wrong here. I seem to be leaving the stage with a goose. Where did the goose come from?”

  Uncle was always very patient, and went over to help him. “What page are you on?”

  “Nine.”

  “You’ve turned over three pages at once. There you are. Go on.” So then Dan recited Maria Marten’s last words. “I rue the day when he wooed me. Yes I do. I woo the day that he rued me. I was sitting on the step thinking of life—or was I sitting on life and thinking of the step?—with my usual flair in the following manner. Oh what is woman? Who is she? Is she imperative?” At some point in this monologue—which I am quite sure Dan could have continued forever—I was supposed to creep up behind him and, much to the delight of the gallery, strangle him with my bare
hands. Then I had to drag him into the barn, bury his body beneath some straw, and turn to the audience with “It was all very restrained, wasn’t it?”

  “You know,” Dan said, after he had finished the rehearsal, “I do think that scene is becoming very funny. I can see a lot of bounce in it.” And so it proved—except that, on one night, there was a little bit too much of the bounce. Dan was just finishing Maria’s soliloquy, having added some remarks about the new laws on marrying a deceased wife’s sister (he could find humor in anything), when I crept up behind him and began to put my hands around his throat. “Be philosophical about it,” he was saying to no one in particular. “Don’t give it another thought.” A child screamed somewhere in the gallery as I closed on him: the noise must have disturbed me, because I had my hands around his throat for far too long. He was too much of a professional to stop the scene but, when I dragged him to the barn, he really had gone limp on me. I could see that his face had turned gray beneath the makeup, and he hardly seemed to be breathing. Of course I still retained my presence of mind, even with a thousand faces watching me, and I called out, “Come here, Mr. Marten. Something is very wrong with your girl.” Uncle was playing Dan’s father, and was already in his mourning dress for the final burial scene. So he ran out, carrying his black hat in his hand, and together we took Dan off the stage: the crowd thought it was all part of the fun, and began to laugh. The fiddler had the presence of mind to jump up and begin a musical interlude, while Uncle and I tried to revive Dan with smelling salts and brandy. Then “Over” Rowley and “The Dramatic Maniac” improvised with a series of jumps and somersaults. Dan came round at last, and gave me a look that I will never forget. “The last thing I felt,” he said, “were those big hands of yours. Whatever did you think you were doing?”

  “I suppose I don’t know my own strength, Dan.”