Opening the envelope as if it were a nest full of rats, I picked at its contents and read: “Dear Sirs. Unable to discharge my duties this evening. Be advised that I will appear without fail tomorrow night and that I will so contort myself as to fit my entire body, head, legs, and torso, into a dimpled pint beer glass. Yours faithfully, Enoch Wolsey.” The unmitigated, unrepentant scoundrel! The bold-faced, bobtailed liar!
I did not even bother to show the note to Mr. Wilton, who was by that time coming down the stairs from his office on the outside chance that Mr. Wolsey had indeed made an appearance. “No sight of him?” Mr. Wilton asked me soberly.
“None, sir,” I said, slipping the envelope into my trouser pocket. “Shall I make the announcement?”
“Yes, thank you, Phillips.”
The curtain came down on David Hunt and rose again on a two-quart sealer at centre on an otherwise barren stage. I steeled myself and strode on to the stage in Enoch Wolsey’s stead. Only then did I realize that the theatre was jammed to the rafters, filled with patrons who had come in good faith to witness the amazing spectacle. Before I could speak, I heard someone at the back of the stalls complain, “Not this bloke again.”
Inhaling deeply in order to avoid fainting, I began. “Ladies and gentlemen, it is with great remorse that I stand before you this evening to reveal a hoax. Not only has Mr. Enoch Wolsey perpetrated a hoax upon the administration of this theatre, he has also, sadly, succeeded in perpetrating a hoax upon our valued patrons.”
There were shouts of “Here, you’ve got our money then, haven’t you?” and “Who’s hoaxing who, then?” Some of the patrons at the back of the gallery were on their feet.
I continued to speak; I was speaking for my life and for the life of the theatre. “Please be assured that the full price of your admission will be refunded at the ticket window on your way out of the theatre.”
“Blackguard!” came the response from one side of the auditorium. “Liar!” came the echo from up in the galleries. These verbal assaults were followed by the hurling of various projectiles in my direction.
A ripe apple narrowly missed my head, splattering on the stage floor behind me. Soon a veritable fusillade of consumables materialized from both galleries, causing me to take cover against the proscenium arch.
“Call the police!” Mr. Wilton shouted down the stairs to Mr. Hardacre.
“Maurice?” Mr. Hardacre shouted back. “Maurice who?”
Missiles of a more sinister and potentially harmful nature began to arrive on the stage. From my vantage point behind the arch, I saw at least six beer glasses smash on the stage floor. Somebody threw a knife, which stuck in the boards at a high angle. It must have been thrown from the upper gallery. Inexplicably, a cold leg of mutton also clattered across the stage floor, coming to its final resting point against the rear wall.
Having witnessed the unfolding spectacle from the wings, Neville Watts decided to take matters into his own hands. He walked confidently to centre stage, and the hurtling of projectiles seemed to cease momentarily. He commenced his finger-wagging oration. “Is this what the national drama has come to?” he declared. “Audiences as randy and disrespectful as bear-baiters of the Elizabethan era –”
He was unable to finish because someone in the stalls screeched “Ponce! Aristocrat!” and a general pelting of tomatoes and half-eaten oranges ensued. Mr. Watts endeavored to make his way again to the safety of the wings, but the blizzard of incoming fruit and vegetables was so ferocious that he seemed to be imitating one of Captain Franklin’s men walking against a subarctic blizzard down the entire coast of Labrador. So heavy was the fusillade that I marveled how he could remain in an upright position. Risking his own wellbeing, Mr. Hicks waded out on to the stage, flung his wounded comrade over his shoulder and carried Neville Watts off the stage and all the way down to the dressing room, where both men revived their spirits with a ration of Jamaican rum.
Two Peelers arrived in short order – they are never far from this theatre on performance evenings – and marched through the auditorium to the lip of the stage. The audience grew curiously silent as one of the policemen, a large man, raised his hand. Perhaps the majority of those in attendance had had dealings with the Peelers in the recent past and did not relish the prospect of further acquaintanceship. The large policeman spoke. “Time to break it up, good ladies and gentlemen” he said, in a voice low and confident. “Time to break it up and all go home.” His partner merely regarded the spectators through small piggish eyes. That two police officers, two men who possessed no more strength or intellect than many of the spectators they were facing down, could so easily quash a disturbance of seven hundred!
The rioters began to disperse, murmuring angrily to each other. One man, a middle-aged fellow wearing the grimy hat of a dock worker, stood at the edge of the upper gallery and crowed: “This ain’t over yet! You’ve swindled us, and we by Gawd will have our revenge.”
“Yes, yes,” said the large police officer in a low voice. “Time to go home now, sir, and be careful that you don’t fall down upon the uneven cobble stones on your way there.”
I do not know what trouble Mrs. Landover encountered at the ticket window at the front of the theatre as she was refunding money to the unwashed lot of them, but I do know that they were queued around the block until eleven-thirty in the evening.
The actors had, of course, retired to their dressing rooms by this time. I was standing in the backstage area conferring with Mr. Wilton when Fanny Hardwick ran up the stairs. “The ladies’ dressing room has been robbed,” she said, her voice aquiver.
Mr. Wilton and I immediately followed Fanny back downstairs to the dressing room. The other actresses were frantic, rifling through their dress pockets and make-up boxes in the hopes of relocating their valuables. “Didn’t you leave your valuables in Mr. Phillips’s valuables box before the performance tonight?” Mr. Wilton inquired.
“Some of the ladies prefer to hide their valuables in the dressing room,” Fanny said. “There’s never been a robbery before.”
Mr. Wilton sighed. “Well, Mr. Phillips, call back the police officers.”
After the officers had made their fairly cursory investigation, it was determined that a rioter must somehow or other have gained access to the backstage area and liberated the ladies’ porte-monnaies. Old Hardacre the doorman claimed to have neither seen nor heard any unauthorized personnel backstage, but Hardacre is both deaf and a notorious sleeper-on-the-job. Still, it is very odd that none of the other theatre personnel saw an intruder, not me, not the actors and actresses, not the stage hands, who have a propensity for showing up anywhere in the theatre at any time.
Fanny Hardwick lost two pounds ten in bank notes. Mrs. Toffat could not recollect what amount of money had been in her porte-monnaie, but she reckoned that it was not much. Mrs. Wilton was relieved of an opal necklace, which she said had only nostalgic value.
London is not as it was, even fourteen years ago when I first arrived to whip Mr. Wilton’s theatre into some measure of financial stability. It seems to me a heartless act to break into a ladies’ dressing room in a minor theatre and to rob them of their week’s pay, especially as these women work so hard and are remunerated so poorly. One would not have witnessed such a cowardly act fourteen years ago. It is a hard thing to witness it now.
I was relieved when the ladies’ escorts arrived to see them safely home. The streets are not safe tonight. I was even relieved when Fanny Hardwick’s aristocratic young gentleman, decked out in his fine black frock coat and beaver hat, was waiting at the stage door.
* Chapter Eleven *
Monday, 9 December 1850
Having received the fourth act of Ned Farquhar Pratt’s pantomime only this morning, the leading actors in the spectacle began to rehearse today. The actors were off-book for the first three acts, and the rehearsal proceeded apace for a full two hours, with Pratty offering advice and me positioning the actors and setting up the blocking. Mr. Watts w
ill play Wanky Twanky Fum in this production, and after the transformation scene will become Fearsome O’Connor, leader of the Physical Force people and orator to the masses. Mr. Hicks has had to settle for the Genie, who will later become Wilcox of the Moral Force Chartists.
The actors soon bogged down over the question of how the Needles and Pins should themselves be represented, and an offhand remark by George Simpson about how there were no real precedents in the playing of Rust led the actors to divest themselves of their manuscripts and to begin the discussion in earnest. Soon they had draped their legs over the front of the stage and were speaking of their concerns. “It is mightily difficult,” began Neville Watts, who had been looking for a way to broach the subject of the play’s lack of completion, “to ascertain anything about the play until the entire script is in the actors’ hands. When might we expect that to happen, Mr. Farquhar Pratt?”
The stock playwright was busy making notations in his notepad. He sat in the third row of the auditorium, his slender arms poking out of the threadbare greatcoat that was draped over his shoulders in an effort to alleviate the December chill which has infiltrated the building. He looked up, catching the ardent gaze of the actors. “The remainder of the acts will be ready next week,” he said, waving his quill about and then returning to his manuscript.
The actors looked at one another in silent consternation. “How many acts are you intending to write?” Mr. Watts asked, looking as bewildered as a man who has newly washed up on the shores of Illyria.
“As many as it takes,” Pratty replied, writing furiously in the margins of his manuscript all the while. “As many as it takes to get it right.”
The glimmerings of horror on the actors’ faces betrayed the fact that they had come to think of Pratty as a madman. Neville Watts palled visibly. Fanny Hardwick gazed steadily at the floor as though she were searching for something so infinitesimal as a pin. Our elderly stock playwright was oblivious to this; his grainy face was buried in the parchment, and he continued scrawling as though he were solitary at his home and not in the theatre at all. Knowing that the actors’ objections had to be answered, I stood up from my seat beside Mr. Farquhar Pratt. “There is no need to panic, ladies and gentlemen,” I began, really without any idea of how I was going to finish. “Mr. Farquhar Pratt has promised to deliver the remainder of the play next week, allowing us plenty of time to rehearse.” These were radical words, coming from the lips of a stage manager whose mantra has been “hurry, when, and now,” and I could see that the actors had never expected me to say such a thing.
Neville Watts shook his head in disbelief. “But such a radical play,” he blurted, finally. “Such an absurd premise. What if it does not fly with an audience expecting the traditional harlequinade?”
“We have made some progress today,” I heard myself say. “And I for one have faith in Mr. Farquhar Pratt’s conception. We are all in his hands, as we have been these past nine years, and we must all have faith.” I am not certain why I was talking like this. A month ago, I myself had little faith in Pratty, but there was something in his demeanor, in his contemplative breathing, as he sat beside me in the stalls that led me to believe this pantomime was more important to him than all the rest of his lengthy if undistinguished oeuvre. It would be his swan song, his masterpiece, the supreme achievement of a long and often fruitless career in the theatre.
“Very well, then,” Neville Watts said, rising slowly to his feet and brushing away the dust from the back of his trousers. “When will we reconvene?”
“We will reconvene tomorrow at the same hour for further rehearsals,” I said. The actors exited the stage looking troubled, yes, but also somewhat more confident after my oration.
I heard George Simpson’s urgent appeal to another of the actors, as he descended the stairs to the dressing rooms: “But I still have no idea how to play Corrosion!”
* * *
Another theft in the theatre, this time of the men’s valuables which had been left in the dressing room while the gentlemen rehearsed! (We are not in the habit of using the valuables box during rehearsals.) Neville Watts was the first to discover the robbery, having noticed that his chain, gold watch, and snuff box were missing shortly after the rehearsal for the pantomime. Suspicion fell upon Mr. Hicks, who had been in the dressing room through much of the rehearsal. He is also known to be in a state of perpetual want, owing to his affection for the bottle. Mr. Hicks must have sensed the silent accusations of the other actors because he harumphed and began clattering about the place with bravado. “Gentlemen,” he declaimed, “in Her Majesty’s Navy, we used to flog a man who was known to commit an act of thievery, and I would certainly recommend that course of action now.” I do not believe Mr. Hicks is guilty of the infraction. There was a sincerity in his glazed alcoholic eyes which was uncharacteristic of his fairly leaden acting style and which could not have been misread. Drunken men do not make good liars.
Old Mr. Hardacre was called upon to give his testimony. The retired actor is now deaf as a hitching post in the Seven Dials, and when we told him that there had been an act of thievery in the Dressing Room, he exclaimed with a flourish, “Lechery? I defy lechery! The little wren goes to it. The gilded fly doth lecher in my sight.”
“Not lechery,” I shouted into his ear horn. “Thievery! The Dressing Room’s been robbed! Again!”
The confusion having been cleared up, we were able to ascertain that Mr. Hardacre had seen no strangers entering by way of the Stage Door this afternoon. Fanny Hardwick later told me that Mr. Hardacre had been fast asleep in his chair when she arrived in the theatre, so it is entirely possible that some footpad might have slipped into the backstage area while he slept.
Mr. Wilton was called in, and his recommendation was that all company personnel maintain a high level of vigilance over the course of the next few weeks. “Christmas is coming on,” he said, “and we all know that the season makes desperate people more desperate.”
When the actors, satisfied that a plan of action was in place, had gone back upstairs for another rehearsal, Mr. Wilton advised me that I was to make irregular patrols of the dressing rooms, during rehearsals and performance evenings, for the next two weeks.
“I think we should perhaps keep an eye on Mr. Tyrone,” I whispered.
“Why, Phillips?” Old Stoneface responded with incredulity. “What makes you say that?”
“His behavior, sir,” I replied. “It’s furtive.”
“I really had thought better of you,” Mr. Wilton continued, “than to make suppositions about a man because he was not born on this island.”
“It’s nothing to do with where he was born, sir,” I protested. “It’s more to do with the fact that he’s dissatisfied with his lot here in the theatre, now that he’s been relieved of his acting duties.”
* * *
We received a missive from the Police Commission late this afternoon, advising us that the circumstances of last week’s near riot were not to be recreated. “It is highly desirable,” the Commission stated, “that the New Albion Theatre present entertainments which contribute to the satisfaction and well-being of the citizens of Whitechapel. We must ask that you refrain from advertising attractions which are undeliverable.” The letter also contained a threat: “Further disturbances at this site will result in the closure of the theatre until such time as management can prove that patrons of the theatre are willing to be civil and obedient.” The Commission promised that three Peelers would be posted at the theatre until Christmas, one plain clothes man outside the theatre immediately before and after performances and two uniformed officers, who would take their positions at the back of the stalls throughout performance evenings.
At any rate, it was a small audience this evening, with a trifling three hundred and twenty-nine souls paying admission for the performances. All of those three hundred and twenty-nine souls wept heartily at the end of Lady Hatton, laughed heartily throughout the military burletta My Own Blue Bell, and exited t
he theatre peacefully at precisely ten-thirty-nine. I do not know if the spectators’ pacifism is owing to the presence of uniformed officers in the building or if the more radical element of our audience had merely stayed away.
Mr. Wilton called me into his office at the end of the evening. He was looking pensive, or perhaps fatigued, his frock coat wrinkled at the elbows as he slouched in his chair. What is more, his behavior was positively moribund and his voice even more gravelly than usual. “In fifteen years of running this theatre,” he told me, “I can honestly say that this is the lowest point to which we have fallen. Rioters in the theatre. No-show performers.” I was about to interject when Mr. Wilton held up his hand. “I am not blaming you, Phillips. You warned me against trusting that son of a bitch Wolsey. I have only myself to blame for not heeding your advice.”
“No one could have known what Enoch Wolsey was up to,” I ventured, “not myself or you or anyone.”
Mr. Wilton would not be consoled. His eyes were downcast; it appeared as though his tireless exertions in affairs of business over the past fifteen years had caught up with him. “I am a poor judge of character,” he muttered. “And to think that I used to be so blasted good at it.”
“You are a fine judge of character,” I replied, trying to lend an air of levity to the situation. “Otherwise you would not have hired me.”
“Yes,” he said, feeling the deep grain of his desktop with the palm of his hand, “we have been together through the thick of it, haven’t we, Phillips?” His face turned into the death mask of a grimace or a smile.
“Yes, sir, we have.” My blood surged in me, and I felt like a soldier on the Plains of Abraham.
“So what do we do now?” Mr. Wilton’s fatigued voice was without inflection.
“Well,” I said, “you could go back to fighting the Ashanti, and I could always go back to the furniture business. No bloody actors or audience members to deal with, sir.” Having said it, and looking upon my commander’s leathery visage, I was astonished at my own boldness.
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