Mother never stopped doing things for people. She never sat down, but now she was older and slightly stooped—no one except Polly had really accepted her or made her feel comfortable, and life was taking its toll as she trudged through the snowbound city streets to her work while the other family members continued on, stubbornly salvaging their pride—defiant, in a fool’s paradise.
My grandparents had held hands since they were twenty; now, in their late seventies, they were still so madly in love that though time was passing them by they hardly noticed it. But Grandad was deteriorating rapidly—his memory had failed him; he was hallucinating dreadfully, dangerously courting senility. Staring out the window he would shout, “Who are these people on the lawn?”—no one there, of course; or convinced he was on the yacht sailing down to Tadoussac, his custom for many a summer, he would gaze out the same living room window and demand irritably, “Haven’t we passed Les Eboulement yet?” Though little ol’ me wasn’t supposed to know it, my grandfather had been ruined. His supposedly loyal partner of over forty years, a Frenchman, had gradually managed to embezzle most of the funds, leaving the old man high and dry. One tense and ominous day, my grandmother summoned the little embezzler to the country house, where she met him privately outside in the garden.
A proud and warlike Campbell descended directly from Sir Colin “the Wonderful” in the fourteenth century and the ancient lairds of Ardkinglas, she wasted no time; her revenge was sweet. I hid under a nearby pine tree and listened, my heart pounding, as, leaning on her cane, she let him have the tongue-lashing of his life! Though he deserved it, my heart went out to him; I couldn’t help it—he was shaking just as I was from the deep hurt her words inflicted as they cut the air like a scythe. She could be pretty awesome, my granny, when angry—even the flowers seemed to bow their heads in shame.
When she had finished, he still stood there, hat in hand, head bowed, motionless, in what seemed the most prolonged silence I have ever known. Then, he slowly turned and walked away. Someone told me that about a month or so later he took his own life. I think I knew why. I had witnessed, at its fiercest and fullest force, the terrible rage of righteous indignation—and I would never forget it.
Grandad was now confined to his room. He could no longer talk—he just made little wheezing sounds. He would lie in bed, eyes vacant, staring at the ceiling, recognizing no one, not even Granny, who never left his side. His face was so thin and ashen; his frame sagged appallingly—he looked like someone else altogether, a complete stranger. I missed the dapper, kind, gentle man I once knew. I missed the sound of his rich, contagious laughter as we read reams of Stephen Leacock aloud to each other, falling about, not able to go on. What I saw now was a husk—a shell—and there was a new smell about the room too, an acrid smell, dank and clawing. I never went back inside.
The day after they buried him, his sister, a perky little old lady of about seventy-eight with a bustling good humour, came, not just to live with us but to fill our lives with laughter again.
Dear old Aunt Harriet, up in heaven she be
Can’t afford a chariot, …
Everyone called Aunt Harriet “Aunt Baby” because (a) she was a wee baby of a thing, (b) she was the baby of her family and (c) a lot of the time she behaved like a baby.
She introduced us to a strange pastime called jip-norring, a very nineteenth-century English exercise indeed; it could have come straight out of Alice in Wonderland.
She would carry a sort of pogo stick, dig it in the earth and then catapult herself all over the grounds. Hard to describe—it was a mixture of skipping and pole vaulting, and she insisted it got her places far sooner than other more normal modes of travel. When she wasn’t thus engaged, she would bird-watch, read everything, including the Book of Common Prayer, tell quaint little stories and listen to classical music on the radio or gramophone. In fact, while Grampa was alive, we had regularly gathered round to hear the Saturday afternoon Metropolitan broadcasts only to be swept clean away by the celestial voices of those two Wagnerians, Flagstad and Melchior. One matinée, we sat in horror as the famous Giovanni Martinelli ruptured his voice reaching for a high note in “Veste la giubba” from Pagliacci. Suddenly over the airways came this screeching sound as if a goose had been strangled. The Met audience gasped audibly and the mellifluous Milton Cross announced to a puzzled nation that the tenor had burst the blood vessels in his throat. They pulled the curtain down—Frederick Jaeger was summoned and escorted by motorcycles from Long Island (we could hear the sirens over the air), finished the performance and overnight, became a star. But the great Martinelli never sang again.
In spite of being weaned on bagpipes and the sound of the reel, Granny did appreciate “serious” music when she wanted to, but there was little patience left in her for anything anymore. Aunt Baby, on the other hand, was devoted to music, passionately devoted. As youngsters, she and her sisters had studied composition and the piano in Berlin and Paris under some grand old masters. For many years, she had served on the committee that sponsored Montreal’s Ladies’ Morning Musical Club—a prestigious recital series that attracted a great number of internationally known artists, in spite of their being expected to perform at eleven in the morning. “It was somewhat different,” Aunt Baby recalled, “the day Chaliapin was engaged.” It appears the demand for tickets was so overwhelming, there was no space in their regular concert hall, so they were forced to rent the Forum, similar in size to Madison Square Garden. The vast audience, many of whom had camped out the night before, was there at eleven sharp, eager to hear the great Russian—a once-in-a-lifetime experience. It was two full hours before he appeared. When he finally arrived, my grandaunt and several of the committee firmly chastised him: “You have kept the audience waiting, Maestro. You were to sing at eleven o’clock; it is now one!” “Seeng?” boomed the world-famous bass. “At Eelavan? Modom, I don’ speet before twalve!”
She was always encouraging me in my love for music and the piano. She would jip-norr into the living room whispering loudly that Heifetz or Rubinstein was playing or that Gigli or Schipa was singing on the radio and Mother and I would run up the stairs two at a time where the three of us would press our ears close to the speakers, the sound turned way down, terrified of being rebuked. We could hear the thump of Granny’s cane on the tiled floors below as she restlessly prowled about the house like some obsessed warden! Poor Gran! She’d lost her man and she’d lost her temper at one and the same time, and it seemed only a matter of days before she would rush from our midst with the speed of a comet to be by his side once more.
WE WERE NOW down to one gardener, quelle tristesse, who also doubled as chauffeur, butler and just about everything else. He’d been with us forever. His name was Louis Brunet. He was a French Canadian of the old school who, as a boy, had been in service to my great-grandfather. He was remarkably handsome but had spent most of his life outdoors in the rough, raw winters, so his face was ruddy, gnarled and weather-beaten, and his teeth were quite black from chewing tobacco. Louis was in his late seventies; I was nine or ten. I whiled the days away as he worked in the garden, madly chatting to each other, comparing Charpentier to Joe Louis or Max Schmeling. I will never forget the explosion his laugh ignited.
Although he was poor as a church mouse, he was gentler and had more impeccable manners than any of our so-called grand friends, and he carried his pride to the point of exasperation. He had no car or bicycle of his own, and although he was offered the family car, he would not hear of it, preferring to walk back and forth to work at dawn and dusk the whole two miles to his house in the village. One day the news came that his wife of fifty years had suffered a fatal attack and was dying fast. We insisted on his taking the car. Too proud, the old man, as always, refused and ran the whole way home. We followed him in the car and drove alongside—he looked neither right nor left but straight ahead, his cap held tightly in his hand as he ran on, his face streaming with tears. He was rewarded, though, for she had held on—she had
waited for him, waited to slip away in his arms. I loved that man. He was a friend to whom I could tell everything.
At any rate, it was all just about over—the beginning of the end for anglicized Quebec. The infamous Durham Report of 1839 demanding English monopoly in everything had crushed French Canadian hopes and sowed early seeds of discontent. Although the older lot had tried to keep intact the “Two Solitudes,” they couldn’t manage it and they’d been misunderstood. The younger generation of French Canadians had lost patience with their Anglo contemporaries, who did nothing but patronize them, take them for granted, many not even bothering to speak their language. It was as if a disturbance under the Plains of Abraham had caused its surface to separate and the shades of Wolfe and Montcalm, old and battle weary, now stood as before, glaring at each other across the chasm. A new era was sweeping its way over the province, sweeping away the old, and the old couldn’t keep up with it. Like the dinosaurs, they had no inkling they were to become extinct, soon to be washed away with the snow.
Sometimes there is a ghostly rumble among the drums that swings me back to those memories. No matter how dim and far away in my mind they lie, the romance of that lost time remains as clear as if it were yesterday. It all seems so foreign now, but it was quite wonderfully theatrical in its way; and there was something else about it, something I can never explain that touched me to the core. To the end of my days, I shall be grateful for that curious link with the past, to that other universe of grace and values—and to my quaint old family, for if there is the merest smidgeon of decency in me at all, it came from them, and without doubt, though they never would have guessed it, they gave me my imagination.
CHAPTER FOUR
… will you see the players well bestowed? Do you hear, let them be well used, for they are the abstract and brief chronicles of the time.
—HAMLET
The first play I ever saw was at school. It was James Barrie’s Mary Rose. When the offstage shot rang out at the end, I was absolutely certain that someone had really died. All the rest of the children filed out of the hall, not in the least taken in, but I sat where I was, motionless—my eyes locked on to the asbestos curtain. You see, I knew, as sure as eggs is eggs, that behind it, there had been a death!
One day we were hustled into the school’s assembly hall to watch some old-fashioned thespian gentleman whom I seem to remember was Bransby Williams—very British, with long hair, who rolled his Rs and wore a monocle. He was well known for his “Characters from Dickens” and managed quite brilliantly at least a dozen of them simply by altering his voice and changing hats in the twinkling of an eye. In a flash, he was Fezziwig, Macawber, the Artful Dodger, both Scrooge and Marley, and, of course, Sidney Carton intoning heroically, “’tis a far, far better thing I do than I have ever done …” and so on. The entertainment continued as he offered some rather singsong Shakespeare and ended with a splendidly declaimed, “Once more unto the breach …” from Henry V. I was naturally captivated but, strangely, so were all the children present, even the most blasé among them. The old boy was, to say the least, a bit of a ham, but by God those stirring words found their mark that happy morning.
Not realizing it, I was being hooked! In those days I fancied myself as a mimic of unusual brilliance and with the help of one other wayward classmate, young Kasatchenko (a natural comic everyone called the “Mad Russian”), would entertain the class during breaks with unflattering imitations of our various masters. Our French master in particular. Tall and angular, he would enter the room with a kind of goose-step and in a very deep voice would call us to order by barking, “All right la classe!” All good stuff to mimic. One day, Kasatchenko goose-stepped in shouting, “All right la classe!” I followed suit behind calling out, “All right la classe.” Then someone behind me also echoed, “All right la classe.” Guess who! Invariably, we were caught thus and publicly given the strap!
However, mightily inspired by the old ham actor’s rendition of Henry V, I committed “Once more unto the breach” to memory and at the next day’s first recess, hurled at my captive fellow students a barrage of pentameter I was determined they’d never forget. It must have had some impact for they rallied at the end, the good little scouts, with some pretty convincing war cries of their own. I’m not sure, but it must have been then that I first felt the future nudge me in the ribs.
This sudden flirtation with the arts was surprisingly not to be discouraged, least of all by my mother. “Mater” had been a lucky girl. She had seen Nijinsky, Pavlova, Isadora Duncan and Diaghilev’s splendid company of dancers. As a youngster she had watched the great Sir Henry Irving and Ellen Terry, Sir Johnston Forbes-Robertson’s gentlemanly, beautifully spoken Hamlet, the triumphant Sarah Bernhardt, the revolutionary Eleanora Duse and Daphne du Maurier’s father, Sir Gerald, the man who had introduced a fresh, conversational style into the British theatre. Mother’s first cousin Gwen Price had married the playwright Guy du Maurier, Gerald’s brother, so however distant, there was some theatrical connection there, to be sure.
Mum managed to meet many such luminaries at after-theatre parties in the houses of friends, particularly at the grand house of her friend Martha Allan—the impressive Raven’scrag I often mention. She marveled at John Martin-Harvey’s blinded Oedipus being led across a huge ramp extended from the stage to the back of the theatre—one of Max Reinhardt’s bold and daring innovations! She waxed adoringly over the great Scot Harry Lauder and his song “A Wee Doch an’ Doris” and Maude Adams in Barrie’s The Little Minister and Peter Pan.
She wanted me to be just as fortunate, so with a determination that would have reduced Boadicea to a mere wallflower, she took me to everything that she could and could not afford! By the time I was thirteen, I had seen the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo; I had watched Massine, Ulanova, Dolin, José Limón and Kurt Joos. I had seen and heard Galli-Curci, Martinelli, Tibbett, Pearce, Richard Tauber, the glorious Jussi Björling and “Ol’ Man River” himself, Paul Robeson. The great crusader had just returned from Russia embraced by socialism and fresh new propaganda for liberating his race. He had more education and intellect in his pinky than all the painted papillons and dilettantes that patronized the Ritz-Carlton put together; yet simply for being black he was denied entry there.
From the early eighteen hundreds, at least twenty-five theatres were open for business in Montreal, some of the best known being the Hayes Theatre, l’Académie de Musique, Théâtre de Montréal, Le Théâtre des Variétés and Le Monument-National. But a lot did not survive. Long gone was the Mechanics’ Hall (1854) where our own Emma Lajeunesse warbled her way to world fame as the great Albani. Long gone too was the Theatre Royal, also known as the Molson Theatre, named after the beer family. Edmund Kean had played there, as had John Wilkes Booth, Charles Dickens and William Charles Macready.
Sarah Bernhardt arrived in our fair city, couverte de gloire, but did not endear herself to the church with her racy production of Adrienne Lecouvreur. Apparently, this didn’t faze her, for up till 1917, she returned to Montreal at least nine times. Taking up her cue, another great Parisienne, Réjane, followed in her wake. Yes, we’d had a rich theatrical past and it was still with us by the time I came on the scene, but mostly visible in only one precious old structure. From the balcony of His Majesty’s Theatre on Guy Street, I had gazed admiringly down upon Edwige Feuillière, Jean-Louis Barrault, Yvonne Printemps, Sacha Guitry, Donald Wolfit, the young Gérard Philipe and that bewitching Viennese imp Elisabeth Bergner.
I can still see her poised at the top of a steep flight of stairs catching sight of her long-lost stage lover waiting below and literally floating down to him in one joyous flight of ecstasy. The play The Two Mrs. Car-rolls couldn’t have been more trifling, but that tiny moment and the magic she brought to it earned her an ovation and stopped the play. She was so delighted, she improvised in her seductive Austrian lilt, “O, I like zat very much—I sink I do zat again,” bounded up the stairs, turned and once more floated downwards with a
mischievous toss of her head. Another ovation! A shooting star no less!
Donald Wolfit, a beefy warhorse, well known for touring Shakespeare to the English provinces, was one of the last leading players to cling to a nineteenth-century style of acting. His career was irreverently described as not a “tour de force” but “forced to tour.” His reputation for chewing scenery had preceded him, and his outrageous curtain calls alone were worth the price of admission—the sad picture of a tragic figure breathlessly hanging on to the tabs for support, the epitome of exhaustion following triumph. Quel ham bone! In his large repertoire, which included a superb Volpone and a delicious Bottom, he had disastrously miscast himself as Hamlet, which he played at such speed, it gave the impression he had a far more pressing engagement elsewhere. Brooks Atkinson of The New York Times had written of this performance, “O to be in England now that Wolfit’s here!”
Donald Wolfit—one good old-fashioned, beefy war horse
He did, however, move me to unashamed tears when, as King Lear, he ended the famous curse and with one crack of his gigantic bullwhip enveloped the Fool and sent him spinning like a top into a corner of the stage. Hurling the whip aside, he lifted the terrified Fool into his arms with such tenderness, I held my breath; his voice broke—“O fool, I shall go mad!”—and covering him like a baby in his cloak carried him out into the waiting storm. Wolfit had used London critic James Agate’s extravagant quote in large print beneath his name on the marquee—“the finest actor since Sir Henry Irving”—a fair conceit indeed. But that night, no one had questioned the accolade; he had earned it and more, for I remember to this day what it felt like to be, for the first time, in the presence of greatness, no matter how coarse.
In Spite of Myself: A Memoir Page 4