CHAPTER XII THEATRICAL AND FOREIGN LONDON -"All the world's a stage, And all the men and women merely players. . . ."-Shakespeare. "O gleaming lamps of London, that gem the City's crown, As I was travelling, one day in winter, by the familiar and homely 'bus whose "hue is green and gold"; not however, the "St. John's Wood" 'bus, but that humbler and more business-like one which runs between Victoria and King's Cross, I observed, as we ascended Long Acre, a young woman get in at Bow Street, followed by a "lady friend" at Drury Lane. They were hot, untidy, and, as to their attire, muddy, be-bugled, and be-plushed; also, one of them carried a large and equally be-bugled baby. After their first salutations, they panted for a few minutes, out of breath; then : "I've got it, duckie," cried the Bow Street charmer, a young woman with a big black fringe, and the owner of the overdressed and pasty-faced baby. "What have you got, dearie?" inquired her friend, who wore a dirty blouse that had once been yellow, under a heavy plush fur-trimmed cape (the month was November). The 'bus sat expectant. ."'E's made me a thief!" (The 'bus, to a man, or rather, woman, started.) "I told 'im as I'd give 'im no peace till 'e T 274 THE "PROFESSION" CHAP. did; I was bound to go back an' back, till 'e give me somethin'. An' now, sweetie, I'm one er the forty thieves, at a quid a week, and find nothin'. Ain't that somethin'? A light broke in upon the wondering 'bus, and all the auditors peacefully resumed their papers or their reflections. Of course, it was the Drury Lane pantomime! It was stupid of us not to have guessed it before, for the "dearie,” “duckie " and "sweetie" ought to have suggested it at once! Also, the dresses of the two interlocutors, which, now that I looked at them again, seemed to have on the beholder that peculiar effect of combined smartness and disorder that, for some reason or the other, distinguishes the "pro;" the "pro,"—that is,—of the lower ranks of the theatrical profession. The profession (as it is expressively and somewhat exclusively called by its devotees) embraces, of course, as many "sorts and conditions of men" as the equally large profession of newspaper writers. While it still remains a cruel fact that any one picked up "drunk and incapable" in a London street is usually described in next day's Police News as either a journalist or an actress, there can yet be no doubt that the Bohemianism of the past, so far as the higher class of the theatrical world is concerned, is going out of fashion. With few exceptions, it is only among the lower ranks of "pros,” or in music-halls, that it largely exists. These exceptions are, usually, to be found among those who have suddenly risen from obscurity on the theatrical firmament, to shine as bright "stars" for some brief period. Nowhere is success so sudden, so overwhelming, so blinding as it is in this vast city of London; and nowhere, alas! is that success so soon over, forgotten, eclipsed. The deity of one season is forsaken in the next; the Ruler-of-the-Universe must perforce return to his hovel, and, to say truth, he generally takes the change badly. London has a short memory. But the medal has its pleasanter reverse side. For, per contra, the young woman who has for years, maybe, blushed unseen in Camberwell, wasted her sweetness XII FORTUNE'S WHEEL 275 on seaside "fit-ups," and lorded it in third-rate provincial companies, may, suddenly, by some unexpected turn of Fortune's wheel, find herself elevated to the highest salaries in the profession. From a penurious lodging in the slums,-a daily "third return" from Gower Street, she may rise, almost in the twinkling of an eye, to £40 a week, a flat in Mayfair, and a daintily-clipped poodle! It is, of course, the fame of such sudden successes that suffices to "turn the heads" of ignorant neophytes, who are but too apt to forget the common maxim, that "the many fail, the one succeeds." Thus it is that the stage has been for years flooded with girls of all classes, all eager for distinction, and all, alas desiring "the palm without the dust!" Rising actresses have, as a rule, but one ambition-to act in London, to charm London audiences. Better, some think, a threeline part at the Lyceum than a “juvenile lead” at Leamington; better twenty weeks of the Criterion than a cycle of the Counties; better a curtain-raiser in the Haymarket than Shakespeare's Rosalind at Darlington or Preston. Hence the cruel and heart-rending "struggle-for-life" among young actresses in this big city of London; hence the weeks of slow starvation in Bloomsbury lodgings or Soho garrets, waiting for work that never comes. It is, indeed, for them, the “dust without the palm." Disappointed hopes, shattered ambitions, tragic suicides,-what stories could some of those Bloomsbury garrets tell! "O cruel lamps of London, if tears your light could drown, Your victims' eyes would weep them, O lights of London Town." Theatrical managers are callous; they can, indeed, hardly be otherwise, for the stage, like journalism, is scarcely "a charitable institution"; and the supply of stage applicants is far greater than the demand. When a new play is to be produced at a theatre, see how its waiting-rooms and grimy staircases are daily crowded with young men and women, all eager, all well 276 CLOTHES DEALERS CHAP. dressed, and all anxiously trying to conceal their often desperate need of money. For they must always be well-dressed; no self-respecting manager will ever think twice of a shabby or dowdy young woman; and dress is difficult to procure on a starvation diet. In certain quarters of the Strand and of Soho, "ladies" are to be found who act as superior "old clothes" dealers, buying, at cheap rates, the fine dresses of society butterflies from the maids of these latter, and retailing them again at enhanced prices to the poor neophytes in the theatrical profession. The custom, no doubt, is advantageous to all parties concerned; to the fine lady, who must not be seen more than three or four times in the same gown; to the maid, to whom the said gowns are "perquisites"; and, lastly, to the poor girl who must, coûte que coûte, procure her brocades, her gold lace and tinsel for her provincial tours. (London managers usually provide the ladies' dresses themselves; the men of the company, on the other hand, must provide their own.) Though actors and actresses live, nowadays, in all parts of London, yet, perhaps, they most incline to Bloomsbury and Soho, which classic region they have, indeed, haunted for centuries. In old Tudor and Shakesperean times Shoreditch and Bankside were the favoured spots, just as, later on, Covent Garden with its "Piazza," its Opera-houses, and its general air of Bohemianism, became the chosen locality. The histrionic art is no longer solely associated with Covent Garden and Bohemianism; indeed, the stars of the profession now belong, rather, to the smartest "set" in society; they often inhabit Mayfair,--and all doors, even those of royalty, are open to them. But, just as the "rank and file" of the profession still haunt the classic neighbourhood of the "Garden," so the large bulk of actors and actresses are still to be found in the adjacent and convenient districts of Soho and Bloomsbury. In Bloomsbury, especially, are yearly rising innumerable red-brick flats, abodes largely tenanted by the theatrical profession. Their XII PANTOMIME CHILDREN 277 surroundings tell of them; " by their fruits ye shall know them." Hair-dressing shops, florists' shops, cheap jewellery shops, all these betray the tastes of the profession, and all these abound in the neighbourhood. The pantomimes, owing to the enormous number of people they employ, as well as to the great fillip they give to certain trades and occupations, play no inconsiderable part in the vast web of London life. That the Pantomime, as a yearly pageant, has so much increased in glory of recent times, is due mainly to the efforts of the late Sir Augustus Harris, who may, indeed, be said to have reached the high-water-mark of splendour in the Christmas show. Many hundreds of girls and women, often married and supporting families, are employed in the vast choruses of the Drury-Lane Theatre, -"the Lane" as it is called in local parlance; many hundreds of men, scene-shifters, carpenters, mechanics, and the like, are required for the production of its stupendous effects. Pantomime-land is, indeed, to those who know it, a country and a life in itself. From autumn to spring its rigors last; from October to March its workers labour. A few weeks before Christmas, the annual fever is at its height. Not only grown people, but children too, are pressed into the service; hence, no doubt, the pretty 'steps" daily practised, throughout the year, by Cockney girl children before street-organs. Yet, the class whence these children are drawn is generally a more or less superior one; superior, at any rate, to that which one would naturally imagine. Once, in walking down Museum Street, I chanced to get just behind three nice little girls and their mother. It was a foggy, murky evening, and they were evidently taking the direct route for Drury Lane. They were pretty children, red-cloaked, rosycheeked, and neatly shod, and they tripped along demurely, holding each other's hands; their mother, neat also, if a little threadbare, walking behind them, keeping a careful and approving eye on her little flock. 66 "Yes, they're all engaged for the winter at the 'Lane,'” she |