I laughed, and then it occurred to me that this was the first time I had ever seen him truly off the stage. He was like a different man.
‘You have a gentle face when you laugh,’ he said. ‘You should do it more often. It gives the old boat-race a holiday.’
By now my coffee had arrived and a plateful of blood puddings.
‘How are you settling in, so, my good Bram?’
‘It is not without its challenges. But we’re getting there, at least I think so.’
‘Rehearsals coming along?’
‘I believe so, yes.’
We spoke briefly of an innovation he is making to Hamlet, a play which contains only two parts for women. He wishes us to be bold, to greatly swell the court of Elsinore, ‘fill it with lasses as well as lads, as many as we can. Nothing drearier than a lot of blokes striding about the stage slapping their thighs. One might as well be at a football match.’
I said I would arrange it as soon as was practicable.
‘I was thinking,’ he continued, ‘your burden is heavy. You must let me know how you may be assisted, if a secretary or so on would help. Your enthusiasm is valuable, I would not want to lose it. In the meantime, we should have a natter about the root of all evil.’
I looked at him.
‘I mean gelt,’ he said. ‘I want to raise you, say, to four guineas a week. I can’t do it just yet but I shall be able to, soon.’
‘Thank you, my wage is more than adequate, it is generous.’
‘You must permit me to insist. The labourer is worthy of his hire.’
‘Let us see how matters stand in a while.’
‘Good-oh. Any difficulties I should know about? Actors murdering each other? Give ’em a kick up the cooler if so.’
I said I did have one thing I might say to him about the players, a question he might wish to look at from their point of view.
‘I doubt I should want to do that. It’s never happened before.’
He is one of those men who rather enjoy being inscrutable.
We spoke for a while about his habitual practice, which to me is odd, of not attending rehearsals but of having the players manage without him, indeed of being so often absent from the theatre. His feeling is that over-familiarity should be avoided, that ‘the spark’ he wishes his productions to evince comes from ‘freshness and danger’. What did I think? I ventured that, whilst I understood and respected his policy as the product of long experience, I did feel that the younger players in particular would benefit from his presence among them and perhaps were in need of an anchor, a guide light, a sort of father. He nodded.
‘I dislike this bloody English mania for preparation,’ he said. ‘The best things are never prepared, they unroll, they merely happen. But you’d know that, of course, being my fellow Celt.’
‘Your fellow?’
‘You are looking at no Saxon. I have Cornish blood from my mother. We have our own ancient Celtic language and lore, our customs.’
‘I had not been aware of that.’
We seemed by now to have steered ourselves into some sort of blind alley. There was silence but for the tinkling of teaspoons on china, before he began again, ‘Mrs Stoker is well, I hope? It will be an adjustment for her, London life and so on. You mustn’t give us all your time, you know.’
‘I shan’t.’
‘A spouse can lose courage when left too often alone. I have seen it happen many times in the profession. You don’t want that.’
‘No.’
‘Can’t tell you what it means to me, old love, having you join the adventure. One feels the danger of trying is lessened when one does so with good friends.’
‘I am honoured,’ I said, somewhat flummoxed, ‘that you should see me as a friend.’
And then he said a curious thing.
‘Friendship, for me, is a matter of recognition. A kind of homecoming if you will. One can’t explain it. Yet every human alive has had this experience once or twice. When we met, I recognised you. That is all I can say. Do you feel what I mean?’
‘Of course.’
‘At night, I go into myself. This is rather a confession. I drink a bit of laudanum now and again for an old complaint, tore my back as a lad. Find it brings me to a realm where there are souls, not bodies. I have met people there. I have even met myself. It will make you uneasy when I say that I have met you, also. We were in fact married in some previous world, you and I, our other selves. Or perhaps in the next one. Who knows?’
I laughed. ‘Which of us was the bride and which the groom, one wonders?’
He smiled back. ‘How dull you are, sometimes, you earthbound clodding ninny. Well, here we are mooning and prattling like a couple of spoony schoolgirls. Back in harness, say I. Chop chop.’
On the street outside, he whistled up a cab, which was to take him to an appointment at the bank. For some reason, there came into my mind the vision of the poor people I had seen earlier in Leicester Square.
I said to him: ‘May I ask you something?’
‘Anything.’
‘The first morning my wife and I arrived at the theatre, the Exeter Street door was opened to us by a girl of perhaps twelve or thirteen. She looked hungry and mistreated. Who is she?’
‘There is no girl, old hog.’
‘But we saw her plain as day.’
He shook his head. ‘Children are forbidden to work in a theatre, it is a strict condition of the lease.’
‘How strange. I could have sworn.’
‘I don’t know who or what you saw. But there wasn’t a girl.’
Up came the cab and away he went with a wave.
I decided to alter my route and redirected through Soho. Went to find a certain ‘song cellar’, The Drakes, in a lane off Dean Street, which I have heard some of the boys at the theatre mention to each other, a private club where men meet late at night for companionship and singing. But perhaps had got the address wrong for could not locate it.
A pity. I should like to be under the ground, singing with a lot of fellows, while London sleeps.
Perhaps I shall look again.
12th January, 1879
This morning, my Harker came in, despite it being a Sunday. I am ever more impressed by him and wish I could have an army of Harkers. But having one of him is nice enough to be going along with.
He and I ran a little experiment out of the book and attempted the production of chemical smoke but without success apart from the blackening of our neckties. We shall adjust the proportions and try again presently. In the meantime, he is proving a great help, a good-humoured, pretty, calm boy. We spent an hour in the Under-stage together, covered in dust and oil, fixing the gears on the hydraulic trapdoor and repairing its badly rusted crank. Gratified to say we succeeded eventually. I found using the hammer enjoyable and vivifying. There is nothing quite so bracing as good honest sweat between men.
There is about Harker, which I like, a most admirable curiosity, a keen willingness to learn.
I suspect he also has things to teach.
13th January, 1879
My own Harker has drawn me up a most attractive and detailed plan of the theatre, with every seat marked, Stalls, Dress Circle and Upper. By these means, we may know on any given date how full or not the house shall be. All we need do is to place a waistcoat button marked ‘x’ on every sold seat. Another capital innovation of his has been to set an ordinary schoolhouse blackboard up in the flies so that the riggers may have a written record of every cue. He is a font of bright notions.
On an impulse, I asked if he himself had ever been to the singing club at The Drakes. Eyes not meeting mine, he said that he had not but knew fellows that had. I said I had gone looking for it the other day but had seen no sign or board. ‘There ain’t none, sir,’ he told me, still averting his gaze. ‘Those as wants The Drakes seems to find it.’
‘The clientele in the main would be bachelors, Harker, would you say?’
‘I’d say gentlemen what prefer
s the company of gentlemen, sir. In a manner of speaking.’
‘Like every other club in London, then,’ I said, attempting a joke.
‘In some ways, sir,’ he replied.
‘What sort of singing do they do there?’ I tactfully enquired.
‘Molly Cockleshells does a turn on Tuesdays, round three in the morning. Comic songs, I’m told.’
‘Has she a pleasant voice?’
‘She’s an ’e, sir.’
‘Ah.’
‘There ain’t all that much singing goes on, in truth, sir,’ he continued. ‘It’s only when the police comes to raid, the fellows starts singing, that’s the cover.’
‘I see.’
‘Yes,’ he replied. ‘The Drakes ain’t a place no gentleman wants to get nicked, sir. There’s other establishments where a better sort of gentleman goes what’s safer.’
‘From the police, do you mean?’
‘And from blackmailers.’
‘The more careful sort of gentleman. Where would he go?’
‘I’ve heard tell of an establishment, sir, near Portland Place. But it’s invites only and a thousand guineas a year. Dunno how a body would join.’
‘I am speaking from curiosity only, you understand.’
‘Course, sir. I’ve already forgot we’ve spoke.’
On the debit side of Lyceum life, it would appear that my suggestion to the Chief that he attend the rehearsals for Hamlet (which he began to do this afternoon) has not met with universal enthusiasm.
I was standing in the wings with young Harker, the both of us uncoiling a new set of hempen ropes together and sharing a joke, when this unedifying exchange ensued on the stage, between the holder of the title role and the spirit of his deceased father.
The Chief: You are playing the king of Denmark risen from his tomb, not a drunken chimney-sweep interfering with himself behind a hedge. Again, you dotard! And frighten us this time. God’s nightdress, you are about as otherworldly as a knocking-shop spittoon.
Mr Dunstable (as the Ghost): ‘My hour is almost come, when I to sulphurous and tormenting flames must render up myself.’
The Chief (impatient): ‘Alas, poor ghost!’
Mr Dunstable: ‘Pity me not, but lend thy serious hearing to what I shall unfold.’
Silence for a long moment. It became uncomfortably evident that the Ghost had forgotten his lines.
The Chief: UNFOLD, for the love of Christ, what are you waiting for, a bloody telegram?
Mr Dunstable: Sir, I am sorry, if I could have a short break.
The Chief in high rage kicked over an expensive chair.
He: Five minutes, you donkey. Go and have a feed of oats! Come back here not knowing every single syllable of your words and I will slice out your heart and stuff it up your transom. You bracket-faced, sexless old ponce, GET OUT!
At this point, I told Harker to busy himself elsewhere and went tactfully onto the stage. There were resentful glances at the Chief from some of the younger company in particular. It does not do for the general to lose his composure before the troops. If he does, they begin to wonder what a general is for.
He was by now downstage left, cursing to himself in an unrepeatably obscene manner and quaffing from a bottle of whiskey which his dresser had brought. His dog padded on, trailing a lead of chain, and nuzzled at his thigh in a manner that seemed piteous, like a man dressed as a dog. Seeing me, the Chief nodded in a way I have come to recognise. It is neither an invitation nor a rejection. What to do?
A curious little fact had come to my notice during the day. It had amused me, and now I hoped it might divert him, too, and suck the poison out of the moment. That done, I would find some place to spit it.
I asked if he and I might have a brief word about some small matters.
‘Such as?’
‘Your wife has written,’ I told him, ‘to say that she and certain members of her family would like to have tickets for the first night.’
‘Give them.’
‘I notice that Mrs Irving, like my own espoused saint, is named Florence.’
‘What of it?’
‘I – Nothing, of course. Merely the coincidence.’
His face was thunderous dark. ‘We are estranged. If that is any of your business. Was there something else on what I suppose must be referred to as your mind?’
I was thrown by this abrupt dismissiveness and had to look about. ‘I believe we need more carpenters,’ was the best I could do.
‘Then find them.’
‘We appear to be a little short of ready funds just at present. A cheque was declined this morning. Perhaps you might arrange for a further subvention from the bank?’
He repeated my last sentence in a derisory cawing sneer of an Irish accent, which I did not like, and then he continued: ‘It does not occur to you that I might have more urgent difficulties on my hands than getting out my begging bowl for you again?’
‘For me?’
‘For all of you! All of you! Must you bother me incessantly with these petty vulgarities? Cannot you see that I am busy, must you all drain me dry? You are paid to be a manager. Then do a little managing. Stop wringing me out like a bloody dishcloth, can’t you.’
The hound on its chain lunged at me, its filthy jaws dripping. Some of the players were frightened, and I was, too. The Chief snapped a finger and the dog wilted back.
‘I have done my best,’ I said, upset, ‘in difficult circumstances. I will continue to do so, of course, as long as you wish. If my services are not what you require —’
He resumed, riding over me. ‘You call this arse-about your best, sir. I should like to see your worst. We open in a week and the scenery isn’t even painted. I suppose that is because I have not done it myself.’
Stung, I turned and called out ‘Mr Harker, if you please, are you ready?’
‘Thank you, Mr Stoker, sir,’ came the cry from up in the flies, and in a heavy thunderous rustle, the great backdrop was unfurled.
Dust from the floor rose slowly around it and the canvas rippled a moment before tautening. Never has a more gorgeous Elsinore been seen than young friend Harker’s, the jet-black battlements and lofty crenellations and ranks of culverins’ mouths, the high lamplit windows, the black and silver gargoyles, the sky a silvered grey against which the limelight will glow in a sumptuous, unforgettable lustre. Fifty-seven feet high and eighty-two across, it seemed to zing and pulse with a vivacity so electrical that one could almost hear it. The players, the carpenters, the workmen in the auditorium fell silent in awed admiration, and then, from every corner of the house, applause began to ring, from the women cleaning the stalls, the lamplighters up in the chandelier, the plasterers, the gas-boys, the furnace-men in the Under-stage, the violinists tapping their bows on their instruments. ‘Bravo, that man! A cheer for the painter! Hurrah for the Lyceum Theatre!’
All but one.
I could see that he was impressed as any sane witness would be, but, like a miffed schoolchild, he could not bear to be seen admitting it. He did not join in the appreciation but stalked into the wings pursued by the dog and made directly for the narrow staircase that leads to his private sitting room. Hurrying after him, I said that a word of encouragement to the men and Harker would go across well.
‘I pay their wages,’ he replied coldly from the stairhead. ‘I am not their mother, thank Christ. They may suck elsewhere for their milk.’
With that, he entered his quarters and slammed the door behind him, so hard that the call-noticeboard on my side of the wall fell down.
There was no further rehearsal today.
Curiously, the cats seem to have emigrated en masse, as though some overlord commanded them to leave.
17th January, 1879
4.33 a.m.
Took a sleeping-draught, two drachms of powdered morphine and camphor, but it gave me a frightful dream. The Chief was breathing out fog, in filthy, yellow wisps, which wreathed about him like cigar smoke but seemed alive. It thicke
ned and dispersed, oozing horribly through the windows. Those who breathed it fell down dead or clawed at each other. Awoke, drenched in sweat. Alone in the house.
Florence returned to Dublin last night for her nephew’s christening at St Ann’s Dawson Street, the church where we were married, as she reminded me coldly.
We had quarrelled before she left and there was not time to make it up.
She has got a bee in her bonnet again about something that does not matter, the question of the pirating of my writings, this time in Hungary. Always I point out that they would earn only pennies and are not worth bothering about but my saying so seems to frustrate her. In any case, as I tell her ad nauseam, it is exceedingly difficult to copyright a book.
She countered that she had studied up on the matter at the British Library and had even consulted a notary. The solution was for me to make a stage-play rendition of every story and have it performed just once, and in this way the work would acquire the legal copyright protection that stage plays enjoy. I said it was a ridiculous notion and that she should not have engaged any lawyer without my permission. She continued, ‘An inventor patents ideas, as surely you know. Is not a book an invention, like the spinning jenny or a weighing scales?’ I said ‘Not as useful, I’m afraid.’ Angrily, she left the room, saying ‘Grow up, can’t you’, and only returned when she was packed. Asked if I minded her going to Dublin. I said that I did not (although I did). It was as though we were seeking permission of one another for something else or asking some other question in disguise. Then felt as if I had said the wrong thing. Then missed her.
Walked until late, over to the East End, Shadwell stair. Stood and looked at the river a long time.
Had thought all of that was over, would end with married life.
Perhaps never thought that. Dissembling.
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