New Albion (21 page)

Having long suspected that Fanny was disguising her parent
age by the assumption of a stage name, I smiled and shook the young man’s hand. “Very pleased to meet you, Mr. Castlegate.” I was hardly able to contain my joy.

“And you, sir,” was his reply. He gazed at me deeply and con
fidently, as if I ought somehow to have recognized who he was. In fact, the name Castlegate was not entirely lost on me; it is synonymous with railroad building in the North. I do read the newspapers.

Monday, 16 December 1850

Suzy Simpson returned to the fold this morning, looking much the worse for her brazen elopement with Mr. Bancroft. She remained at the stage door with Mr. Hardacre until Mrs. Wilton could be persuaded to come down and meet her there. A few minutes later, Mrs. Wilton escorted Suzy into the Green Room. Upon seeing her, Mr. Simpson stood up and left the room, his half-empty cup of tea still steaming on the table.

The fallen lady was not able to retain her composure. Her sunken eyes were continually overflowing with tears, and her delicate fingers quivered as she told us of her misery. It seems that Mr. Bancroft had deserted her in Liverpool, not possessing enough money to pay for two passages to America. What little money she’d had she’d given to Mr. Bancroft, and so she was left in a squalid hotel room with no means of remunerating the management for her stay. She’d agreed to “work off” her bill as a chambermaid, cleaning rooms and making beds, but when
the landlord’s advances became intolerable she’d absconded alto
gether with only the clothes on her back, which were themselves in a state of disrepair. As she spoke to us, I noticed that her shawl was threadbare and torn. Her dress had not been washed in many days.

Actors and actresses are a sentimental lot, and despite past promises not to endure her presence if she ever darkened the door of the theatre again, the company was ready to forgive all. Mrs. Wilton brought the destitute lady a cup of tea and some oatmeal biscuits which she devoured as ravenously as Sir John Franklin’s sailors might, if they are ever rescued from their Arctic sojourn. When Old Stoneface entered the Green Room, Mrs. Wilton turned to him and said, “The poor thing has fallen from grace, and we must show compassion as we would if she was our own daughter.”

Mr. Wilton towered over the poor lady with a judgmental look upon his face, but then his face softened and he said, trembling, “God damn that blackguard Bancroft, and if he ever sets foot in this theatre again, I shall personally throttle him.”

“Oh please, sir,” said Mrs. Simpson, softly, “I do not desire you to hate Mr. Bancroft. He is willful and passionate and what he has done he has done out of impulsiveness.”

“He has left you in ruins,” Mr. Wilton retorted. “He has destroyed your family and left you destitute. I should think you would hate him with every fiber of your being.”

“I do not hate him,” was Mrs. Simpson’s meek reply. “I had rather hate myself.”

One thing I have observed: the kinship that grows up inside a theatre is closer to blood than to water. In time, I think, even Mr. Simpson will be persuaded to forgive his wife.

* * *

As promised,
Mr. Farquhar Pratt submitted the remainder of his manuscript for the pantomime today, Acts Five and Six. The ream of papers he handed me was prodigious in weight, and I was certain that with a manuscript of this size, the pantomime’s length would exceed a day-and-a-half. Further perusal revealed that he had written only five or six words on some pages, and that in an exceedingly frail hand. Upon submitting the manuscript, Pratty said that he did not feel well and that he would not be available for today’s rehearsal. Indeed, his face was sallower than usual, and he leaned more heavily than ever upon the plain wooden cane he had with him. His breathing was heavy and, when he spoke, his voice was a fluttering of hummingbirds’ wings.

“You have finished your masterpiece,” I said to him. “Go home now. Go home and rest. I will see that the manuscript is in the copyist’s hands within the hour.”

“You are a kind gentleman,” Pratty replied, and I watched as he rattled across the stage and descended precariously to the stage door. I felt as if I were witnessing a momentous event or an epoch passing.

* Chapter Thirteen *

Tuesday, 17 December 1850

I had forgotten that the supernumeraries
were to be in attendance at rehearsals today, and when I saw that motley bunch standing about backstage, I immediately went up to Mr. Wilton’s office. He was there early, business as usual, even though attendance has not picked up since his open letter came out in the newspapers last week. He was writing a letter to the Lord Chamberlain when I arrived, and even in the act of writing he was uncommonly animated, but he paused to look at me, his quill still in hand. “How’s the pantomime coming along, Phillips?”

There was no way but to broach the issue in a frontal manner. I stood at attention, my hands feeling large and awkward by my side. “The supernumeraries have been engaged too soon, sir.”

Practically throwing his quill at the bottle of India ink which rested at one corner of his furlong-large desk, he said, “Too soon? Next Monday is the twenty-second of December.” He was looking at his desk calendar and frowning.

“Nevertheless, sir,” I said, “the copyist has just finished with the last scenes of Pratty’s play. We will only be able to have a read-through of them today.” If my spine had been any straighter at that moment, I fear I would have snapped in two.

He sat back in his chair and scrubbed his teeth with his tongue, as he sometimes does when he is making a decision. “Well then, they’ll have to attend the read-through. I needn’t remind you, Phillips, that the supernumeraries are dependent upon the
small wage they earn here to see them through Christmas.” He returned to his letter-writing with a singular concentration, and I knew that it would be of no use to continue arguing.

Having set up the tables in the rehearsal hall earlier, I returned there twenty minutes before the read-through of the final acts was to commence. I am always amazed by the assemblage of otherwise unemployables who turn to the theatre for income during panto season. There was a lengthy queue of lithe little girls in tutus, whose mothers were at pains to explain that their daughters were the delight of their dance instructors and that they had the voices of angels. There were a few local dollymops who were eager to display their wares from the stage. Big Sam, the famous Thames dock worker who could lift a five-hundred-pound crate of coal over his head but who could not remember his lines or sometimes even his name, was in attendance. A midget from Wapping appeared, having understood that dwarfs were needed for this and every pantomime. A man named Ben Bourbon, who was dressed in a Beefeater costume and who claimed to be a guard at London Tower, flirted shamelessly with the dollymops before all present were invited to sit and witness the reading of the last two acts of the pantomime.

“Where, pray, is Mr. Farquhar Pratt?” Mrs. Wilton asked before we began. She was standing at the head of a long row of tables, looking in her pink off-the-shoulder gown like a large-breasted robin that hadn’t escaped the December snows.

“He was feeling ill yesterday and had to remain abed,” I replied, from my seat a few yards away. “I would highly doubt, judging by the appearance of him, that he will recover quickly.” I was busily sorting the copyist’s pages into neat prompt scripts for each actor. The supernumeraries, as usual, would not receive a copy of the script.

“Very well, then,” said Mrs. Wilton, pursing her lips unhappily at the thought of a stock playwright who had the impertinence to be deathly ill during the rehearsal of his pantomime, “we shall commence.”

The actors attacked Mr. Farquhar Pratt’s manuscript with great verve. Neville Watts had decided, after all, to make the best of Pratty’s offering, and the other actors followed suit. They read in loud declamatory voices, and with shadow gestures, imagining for themselves how this particular set of actions would play out upon the stage. Soon their enthusiasm turned to confusion, however, and then confusion became wonderment and wonderment lethargic unease. There was a moment of silence after the final words of the play were read, causing Big Sam to giggle hysterically.

“It is a sad thing to watch a once-respected playwright whose powers are failing him,” Neville Watts said, finally, “but I fear it is precisely that which we are now witnessing.” There was no malice in what he said, only sadness. His eyes did not meet mine; they were locked upon the manuscript as if he were lost in the Chiselhurst caves and trying to find his way out. His face was blank.

“Why do you say that?” I could see that Mr. Watts was stung by the impertinent force of my question.

“Why? Why?” he sputtered. “The play is six acts long. Who produces a pantomime which is six acts long? Set-up, transformation scene, harlequinade, a return to normalcy. That’s all the traditional panto audience expects and longs for.” He shook his head slowly and looked at the ceiling. I could see that he was pained at having to explain his theatrical instincts to me.

For once, Mr. Hicks was in complete agreement with Neville Watts. He was holding on to a corner of a table and looking seasick. “And such a dark fekking ending,” Mr. Hicks said. “To have the heroine die at the end, and with her infant son dead too on the barren hearth. Where is the Hand of Providence in that? Where is the morally uplifting message that the Police Commission longs for?” His face was entirely green, and I thought that he might unburden himself of the contents of his stomach if he was allowed to continue.

I found myself standing. I am not entirely certain why I decided to stand at that particular moment. “You must understand, gentlemen and ladies,” I said, “this manuscript may be the final communiqué Mr. Farquhar Pratt makes with this world. I beg you, this once, to change nothing. Let the play stand as it is written, without adulteration.”

“It is the work of an obvious madman,” said Mrs. Wilton. Her lips were twitching at my audacity in speaking as I had. “If Mr. Farquhar Pratt is incapable of rewriting it at this time, then I shall rewrite it myself.”

The tone of my own voice appalled me, but I continued speaking. “Then I must say, Mrs. Wilton, that your sentiments regarding Mr. Farquhar Pratt’s manuscript are really beyond the pale. You talk of family, incessantly you talk of family, and yet when a member of your theatrical family displays weakness you pounce upon him with the ferociousness of a jungle cat.” I felt a vein in my temple begin to pulse, and I could hear the thunderous tumult of my own heart.

Mrs. Wilton eyed me archly. “You are making a spectacle of yourself, Phillips,” she hissed. “I am sure that this theatre has shown Mr. Farquhar Pratt every lenience during his illness. He could hardly expect more.”

“He could expect to have his final words preserved as he has written them!” I said. The entire company was stunned by my boldness. Even Fanny was refusing to look at me, her averted face a portrait of unhappiness. I caught hold of myself and sat down again. “I apologize for this outburst,” I said. “It is, of course, a decision for the administration of this theatre to make.”

I sat and listened quietly as the company discussed the panto for the next half hour. What could be salvaged? What had to be excised from the script? How to remain true to the puffs, which had already been published in city newspapers? How to put Mrs. Hayes’ costumes and Mr. Sharpe’s scenery to their best use? I sat and listened and, as I listened, I realized that my hours in this theatre are finite.

A grand daydream began to take shape in my pitiable imagination, one which I fear will never leave me. I began to think of my brother Charles, my good-hearted and always cheery brother Charles, with whom I had once exchanged unkind words. I daydreamed of Manchester and of a little furniture-making concern there, one which my family has owned for almost a hundred years. Sometimes I have wished that I could go home, return to the awaiting embrace of my brother and his new wife, but never moreso than at that moment.

Friday, 20 December 1850

Mr. Wilton was assaulted after leaving the theatre last evening! I had seen him depart the building shortly after eleven o’clock.
He was carrying his customary valise, which contained the mea
ger takings of the evening’s performance. He always carries a sword-cane for the post-theatre walk to his home. The old Major is still gruffly confident in his ability to protect himself and his belongings should he be confronted with errant knaves during his late-night amble. This morning, his craggy face badly bruised and with a gash above his left eye, he narrated to me the sequence of events which had befallen him last night.

He had just turned off Whitechapel Road into the smoldering
darkness of Fieldgate Street when a young man approached him asking for a light for his cigar. Sensing some duplicity, Mr. Wilton attempted to barrel past the young man, who was dressed in the traditional attire of the mob swell – beaver hat and frock coat and greasy white shirt.

“Where are you off to then, governor?” said the young man. “I asked you for a light.”

Mr. Wilton sensed another presence behind him, but before he could turn and see who was there, he saw a glint of shining wire before his eyes. He instinctively brought his hand up, which now accounts for the nasty gash along the inside of his knuckles. He felt the garroter's wire at his throat and the garroter's leg buckling his knees, forcing him almost to a prostrate position. The swell young man in front of him administered a number of blows and kicks to Mr. Wilton’s stomach and groin, and a third party, whom he did not get a good look at, relieved him of his satchel and of the evening’s profits. This being done, the garroter urged the swell to commit murder. “Shiv him, Wully,” he said, his accent unmistakable, “the bastard did not hesitate to cut me loose when he had the chance.”