by Unknown
Up to the very last Retrousy was in an agony lest the captain should disappoint him. ‘Don’t tell anybody he is coming,’ he advised us, ‘for of course there is no saying what may happen.’ Nevertheless the captain came, and we sent the dogcart to the station to meet him and Retrousy. On all previous holidays one of us had gone to the station with the cart; but Retrousy wrote asking us not to do so this time. ‘Rawlins hates any fuss,’ he warned us.
Somewhat to our relief we found the captain more companionable than it would have been reasonable to expect. ‘This is Rawlins,’ was Retrousy’s simple introduction; but it could not have been done with more pride had he waved a gold rod and our guest been Mr. W. G. Grace himself. One thing that I liked in Rawlins from the first was his consideration for others. When Retrousy’s mother and sister embraced our boy on the doorstep, Rawlins pretended not to see. Retrousy frowned, nevertheless, at our false step, and with a red face looked at the captain to see whether he forgave. The captain indicated in the most charming way that he understood and made allowances for the eccentricities of female relatives. With much good taste our boy uttered no open complaint at the time about our breach of manners, and I concluded that he would let it ‘slide.’ It has so far been a characteristic of him that he can let anything that is disagreeable escape his memory. This time, however, as I subsequently learned, he had only controlled his pain to dump it on his sister. Finding Grizel alone he remarked darkly that this was a nice sort of thing she had done, making a fool of him before the august. Asked coldly what he meant (for Grizel can be freezing on occasion not only to her own brother but to other people’s brothers), the injured one inquired hotly if she was going to pretend that she had not kissed him in Rawlins’s presence. Grizel replied that if Rawlins gave him a bad mark for that (which he didn’t) he was a nasty boy; at which Retrousy echoed ‘boy’ with a grim laugh, and said he only hoped she would some day see the captain when the ground suited his bowling. Grizel replied contemptuously that the time would come when both Retrousy and his disagreeable little friend (by the way, it is Rawlins who is dark and thickish) would be glad to be kissed; upon which her brother flung out of the room, protesting that she had no right to bring such charges.
Though Grizel was thus a little prejudiced against the captain, he had not been many hours in the house before we began to feel the honour that his visit conferred upon us. He was modest almost to the verge of shyness, though it was the modesty that is worn by a person who knows he can afford to be thus attired. While Retrousy was present Rawlins had no need to boast, as his worshipper did the boasting for him. When, however, the captain exerted himself to talk, Retrousy was content to retire at once into any obscurity and gaze at him. He would look at all of us from his seat in the background and calculate how Rawlins was striking us.
Retrousy’s face, as he gazed upon the wonders of the captain, outreached the rapture of a lover.
He fetched and carried for him, anticipated his wants as if Rawlins had been an invalid, and bore his rebukes meekly. When Rawlins thought that Retrousy was talking too much he had merely to sign to him to shut up, when Retrousy instantly closed.
We noticed one great change in Retrousy. Formerly when he came home for the holidays he had strongly objected to what he called drawingroom calls, but all that was changed. Now he went from house to house showing the captain off. ‘This is Rawlins,’ remained his favourite form of introduction. He is a boy who can never feel comfortable in a drawingroom, and so the visits were generally of short duration. They had to go because they were due at another house in a quarter of an hour; or he had promised to let Jemmy Clinker see Rawlins (Jemmy is our local cobbler and also sends down curly ones). When a lady engaged the captain in conversation Retrousy did not scruple to lead him away in five minutes; and if they were asked to come again, he said they couldn’t promise. There was a memorable entertainment the captain could give with a poker which Retrousy wanted him to present everywhere. It consisted in lying flat on the floor and then raising yourself in an extraordinary way by means of the poker. I believe it is a very difficult feat; and the only time I ever saw our guest prevailed upon to perform it he looked too apoplectic for such a swell. Usually he would not do it, apparently because he was not certain whether it was a dignified proceeding. He found difficulty, nevertheless, in resisting the temptation, and it was the great glory of Retrousy to see him yield to it. From certain noises heard in Retrousy’s bedroom it is believed that he is practising the feat himself.
Retrousy, you must be told, is an affectionate boy, and almost demonstrative with Grizel if no one is looking. She is also so devoted to him that she has promised never again to call him ‘Pup,’ which nickname of childhood would he thinks for ever shame him in Upper Fourth. He was consequently very anxious to know what the captain thought of us all, and brought us our testimonials as proudly as if they were medals awarded for saving life at sea. It is gratifying to me to know that I am the kind of governor Rawlins would have liked himself had he required one. Retrousy’s mother, however, is the captain’s favourite. She pretended to take the young man’s preference as a joke when her son informed her of it; but I am sure she felt elated. If Rawlins had objected to us, it would have put Retrousy in a very awkward position. Grizel began by asking our visitor if he came down for late dinner; but has since dropped her hauteur with him, and to Retrousy’s bewilderment the captain has been seen tying her shoelaces, and servilely collecting any articles she dropped on the floor, which reminds me, by the way, that she never used to drop things before J. Rawlins arrived.
On the night before his departure J. Rawlins addressed me privately thus with dreadful humility and cunning: ‘I was thinking, sir — well I don’t know but I just thought — it doesn’t matter — it came into my head you see — I haven’t any sisters — how would you do it? — I don’t mean you — but if you knew a girl — well, a girl you knew — not that it matters — and you wanted to tell her — the girl I mean — that in your opinion — if it was you — I don’t mean a relative’ — I mean I don’t mean my relative — but if you wanted to say it frightfully — and you knew her young brother — I mean if you wanted to tell her you thought her an awfully pretty girl — and you were staying in the house, you see — and of course it being the last night — how would you do it?’
I won’t tell what my reply was — not being the girl, you see — I mean only being her father, you know; and on the whole we were perhaps glad when Rawlins left, for it was somewhat trying to live up to him. Retrousy’s mother, too, has discovered that her boy has become round-shouldered, and it is believed that this is the result of a habit acquired when in Rawlins’s company of leaning forward to catch what other people are saying about him. As for Grizel, when Rawlins’s name is mentioned, she says, ‘Absurd little Pup,’ but she smiles and says it leniently. I have written that word with a capital P because the rumour is that as he was leaving he asked her to call him by his Christian name (Jack) and she said she could not, but if he liked she would call him Pup, to which (it is painful to relate) he replied ‘Thanks awfully.’ In commendation of Grizel it should be mentioned that she has not told Retrousy about this, but we feel that she is holding it over his head.”
Is this all ludicrously out of date? Harry and Miss Dolly, to whom I have foolishly shown the article, say that Anon was possibly a darling but certainly a chunk. They good-naturedly refuse to believe that the boys and girls of the past were ever so ludicrously different from themselves, and have reconstructed the scene for me as it really was.
Harry cannot believe that at any period in the world’s history a father could have written with such abysmal ignorance of his young.
Miss Dolly is not so sure of this, for she has a comic duck of a papa herself. She thinks the father might have written it in good faith, and that Anon’s dunderheadedness lay in not seeing what inevitably followed; namely, Retrousy and J. Rawlins and Grizel got hold of the MS. and Grizel read it aloud to the other two amidst much
merry laughter at the dear old man’s conception of them.
One thing Harry could not understand was why Retrousy thought it necessary to ask his mother to invite J. Rawlins to the house.
This did not puzzle Miss Dolly in the least. She has read old fogey books of the period, and it was always done in them. It was just an example of the hypocrisy and want of frankness of the Victorians. Anon had been quite right in having that letter written; where he showed a thick wit was in not seeing that it was merely a blind. The visit had of course all been arranged before the parents ever heard of J. Rawlins. Neither Retrousy nor J. Rawlins arranged it. It was all taken in hand by Grizel, who sent word to her young brother asking him to be a sport and bring an older sport with him for the holidays, as home life was become unendurable owing to their parents having gone dotty on the question of the upbringing of the young. J. Rawlins on being shown this communication decided that Grizel must be a promising kid, and the date of visit was then fixed, the remark of J. Rawlins being told to Grizel, who blushed with gratification.
Harry thought it must have been a dull house of an evening, for old Retrousy seemed to be the kind of cove who sent the young ones off to bed before he retired himself.
Of course he was and did, Miss Dolly explained, but after he was asleep (and Anon also) the three slipped down again in disarray (or perhaps only two of them), and had a you-know-what time. Miss Dolly could not guess what they poured out, for — (these represent lovely swears) it was before the days of cocktails, but she was magnanimously sure that Grizel was a scream, and in better days would have been a famous mixer.
Harry wondered what J. Rawlins was up to when he told the old boy of his feelings for Grizel.
Miss Dolly supplied the information. It was really Grizel who made up that halting speech for him, so that J. Rawlins and she (she was behind the door) could afterwards roar with laughter at Pops for swallowing it whole.
There was much more of it till they went off to the tennis court. I can’t tell you how thankful I am that they are unaware of my connection with the dense Anon. (Now, now, Mr. Editor, enough of this, you know very well that you are all on the side of the woman of to-day. Yes, indeed I am, though not of every sample of her.)
CHAPTER X
“THE TRUTH ABOUT W. S.” — HOW SHAKESPEARE GOT ME ON TO THE PRESS
“I HAVE just returned from the Elysian Fields, where I went to inquire of Shakespeare whether he really was the author of his plays. He was not there, nor could I hear that he had ever been elected, but I got in touch with a few of his contemporaries. According to some of them there never was any such person. The majority, however, including Kit Marlowe and the actors Cowley and Burbage, remember one Will Shakespeare, who used to sell unauthorized bills of the play outside the Globe Theatre. Though illiterate, Shakespeare seems to have been a smart young blade, and to have made a more or less respectable livelihood in the purlieus of the theatre. He was a native of Stratford-atte-Bow.
What are called the Shakespearian plays were not, it appears, written by any one man; but the Baconians are right to this extent, that Bacon had a share in them. He was at the head of a firm for their manufacture, and, though he wrote nothing himself (even the ‘Novum Organum’ was written by Tom Nash in association with his friend Gabriel Harvey), he superintended the productions; and it was in a room rented by him in the Saba, a tavern in Gracious Street, that the collaborators met. If the dramatists themselves are to be trusted, and their dress when I saw them hardly justifies this, their arrangement with Bacon was that they should have no risk; they were paid (or as Peele put it ‘B. promised to pay us’) at the rate of sixpence a folio, and there, so far as they were concerned, the bargain ended.
According to some answers to a circular I distributed among them, the real authorship of the plays was withheld because Bacon wanted by and by (if all went well with them on the first nights) to claim them as his own. This, however, is evidently a mistake. A document kindly shown to me by Walter Raleigh, who was one of the firm, proves what most of them stress in their answers, that it was by their own express wish that the real writers remained anonymous. The little paper referred to (which is now in my possession) is the agreement between Raleigh and Bacon; and in it the Chancellor undertakes to keep Raleigh’s connection with the firm hidden so long as Raleigh does him the same service. ‘That we should have taken these precautions,’
Raleigh explained, ‘is not surprising. I know not in what estimation, if any, the plays are held to-day; but of course at sixpence a folio we could only dash them off in our spare time, and as most of us had some reputation to lose, we naturally shunned going down to posterity as the authors of “Macheath,”
“Queen Leer,” and the various other plays in which I had a hand.’
In the same connection Greene stated: ‘I must say that I was annoyed as well as surprised to receive your circular. To your question, Am! Shakespeare? I answer emphatically, No. Apparently it has leaked out (Did you have it from Cutting Ball or Mistress Islam?) that I had some share in the collaboration; and, as usual, the critics are more anxious to damn a man by dwelling on his pot-boilers than by calling attention to his more serious efforts. I do not deny that I touched up some things for the firm — (I particularly remember one about a melancholy prince who sold his father to a merchant in Venice for a pound); but every one connected with literature surely knows that it is a poorly paid profession, and that we cannot always write as we should wish. It was Kempe who introduced me to Bacon in Seacoal Lane, and at that, time I was so stoney that I could not afford to reject his offer of sixpence a folio. After the lapse of so many years it does seem hard that this hack-work should be thrown in my teeth.’
Ned Alleyn explained that his share in the plays was confined to practical suggestions as to ‘situations’ and the like. ‘The fact is,’ he told me, ‘that we should have produced better pieces had we thought the public would stand them. As an actor-manager the success or failure of any one of the plays affected me much more than my collaborators, and this, more than the sixpence a folio, was what induced me to lend a hand. The S. plays were not meant for cold analysis in the study. They were written for the stage, and should be judged solely on their acting merits. I was always strongly averse to their being printed in book form, and so, I remember, was Bacon.’
One of the questions in the circular was, If Shakespeare did not write the plays, how does it happen that his name is attached to them? It seems to have come about rather oddly though Spenser’s explanation carries conviction. According to him, when the first play of the series was completed a difficulty arose, the firm wanting to produce it without any author’s name. Alleyn, however, set his face against this. The public, he maintained, disliked anonymous writing. As none of the various authors would put his name to the piece, fancy names were suggested. ‘Shakspear’ gave most satisfaction, not that it was considered a specially good name, but because of the way at which it was arrived. The collaborators were Spenser, Harvey, Alleyn, Kempe, Sly, Peele, Elliman, Atlow, and Raleigh, and the word ‘Shakspear’ is obtained by arranging the initial letters of these names in the above order. It may be mentioned, as clearing up a disputed point, that the reason why this playwright’s name is spelt in so many ways is that occasionally a new man joined the firm or an old member left it. Thus when Greene took Kempe’s place the word was spelt Shagspear.
Up to this time only one or two of the dramatists knew of the existence of the young man who sold the playbills outside the theatre. All, however, knew him by sight, and Alleyn in particular disliked him. Nevertheless, when the next difficulty arose, namely, who should be the ‘middleman’ between the firm and the theatre, it was Alleyn who recommended Shakespeare. ‘In this,’ Gabriel Harvey said to me, ‘Alleyn showed some shrewdness. Shakespeare had taken a good deal of money out of Alleyn’s pocket by selling bills outside, and Ned was quick to see that this would end if S. became a paid servant of the theatre. The youth was originally engaged simply as a messe
nger; but when we learned his name, it struck us that we could blind the public still more by pretending that he was the actual author. At first the young man demurred; but Bacon made him a little present (a pair of breeches, not much worn), and he ultimately consented.’ Peele, as already hinted, speaks somewhat bitterly of Bacon’s ‘promising’ to pay at the rate of sixpence a folio. In another part of his communication he says outright that he could never get more than fourpence. As Bacon has taken no notice of the circular, it would probably be unfair to accept all that Peele says of him. In justice to Bacon, also, it should be mentioned that Peele was too fond of practical jokes. Sly assures me that Peele wrote the greater part of ‘Henry VIII.,’ and that in the original manuscript (it had to be revised) puns were introduced about Wolsey’s being the son of a pork-butcher. Bacon suspected that these were jocular references to his own name, and he did not like them. ‘Bacon,’ said Sly, ‘was the touchiest man I ever knew; and it was specially distasteful to him (as indeed to myself) to have to acknowledge S.’s bow in the street. I have nothing to say against S., but he was one of the commoner fellows who played Shuffle Board at the Mermaid.’
My last question was to this effect; If Shakespeare did not write the plays, how could he have made sufficient money to retire and live comfortably in Warwickshire? There are various explanations, but the most interesting is Kempe’s, who says that it was really Lady Bacon who wrote all the plays, but fearing that her social position might suffer if this was divulged she paid W. S. substantial sums for fathering them.”
