New Albion Page 4

  He is not a very prepossessing young man. Less than five-and-a-half feet tall and narrow as the railings on my front step, he has a criminally low forehead and a lean and hungry look. Like Shakespeare, I can never quite find it within myself to trust a man with such abominable physiognomy. His age is unascertained – he could be anywhere between fifteen and thirty. With a face slightly jaundiced from a lacking of vegetables in his diet, with a pug nose, shifty, wolfish eyes and teeth that protrude in all directions, he could have been a lolly prigger in a former life. Who knows? He walks with a slight limp and is stooped in the shoulders from what looks like a lengthy period of indentured servitude, and yet his hands are as white and soft as any maiden’s upon her confirmation day. His name is Colin Tyrone.

  Mr. Wilton brought him around to my desk this morning. The young man was wearing a new suit of tweed and a starched shirt – a suit which might have been purchased for him Saturday last, judging by the crispness of the fabric. His face and hands seemed to poke out of the new suit at odd angles, as though he was unaccustomed to wearing such fine apparel. He was restless and fidgeted constantly, which gave him the appearance of a starved and stunted chained animal. “Have I not seen ya, sar, in the vicinity of Soho?” he said to me. “In a dance hall or like that?”

  “I’m sure I’ve never frequented any such establishment in Soho,” I said, bristling at his insolence.

  A hideous smirk curled his battered lips. “My mistake then. In my former trade, I made the hacquaintance of a number of hupstanding men.”

  “Have you written for any of the other theatres in town,” I asked him, “that you are now apprenticing as stock playwright at the New Albion?”

  The young man directed a surly glance at Mr. Wilton and then back at me. “What the divil are you sayin?” he replied, his voice smooth and surprisingly rich but also full of threats. “That a necessary qualification for this hemployment would be time spent in a theatur?” His gaze was disarming; he fixed his eyes firmly upon mine, as though he were offering up niceties to an opponent before a pugilistic contest.

  “I – I was only asking,” I stammered, “because experience with the pen might be considered a prerequisite for this job.”

  The young man chuckled at that, and with his chuckle, the atmosphere of tension which had pervaded my small backstage cubicle dissipated. “Well now, let me see then.” He held his hands in front of him and tried to remember his resume by counting out the positions on his lily-white fingers. “Since comin to London almost heighteen months ago, I farst found hemployment as a bricklayer for Jack Smith and Associates. I was an actor in the Surrey Coal-hole for about a week before they realized that I didn’t have a head for larnin dialogue. Then I was barman at the Prince of Wales and a hawker of wares in Petticoat Lane. After that, I composed some horiginal melodramas for the penny gaff up there in Islington. And then I did some things which I hain’t too proud of and which can’t be mentioned here although they did bring with them some measure of fame and fortune. And that, I think, is about all the qualifications that an happrentice stock playwright needs to have.”

  Mr. Wilton had been looking at the ceiling and sighing rather forcibly. He is a man alive to the roots of his grey hair at all times, but he was almost fidgety today. His posture was a semaphore for ill-tempered awkwardness and embarrassment, which I know he feels whenever he has to descend from his office and to traverse in the vicinity of the stage, where another breed of beast altogether has dominion. I think that his own hard upbringing, caused by his being orphaned at an early age, has made Mr. Wilton sympathetic to the downtrodden elements in our society. He also seems to believe that anybody can write for the theatre or, at least, can write as well as our current stock playwright. Mr. Wilton glanced wearily at me and said, “Mr. Tyrone has already provided good service to the New Albion in another capacity, and so I thought it would be mutually beneficial to hire him on as an apprentice.”

  The young man smirked knowingly at Mr. Wilton. “I guess ya could say that I knows where Mister Wilton has hid the bodies,” he said cheerily. “Faith, how difficult can it be to slap a few words on paper?”

  I was fumbling for a reply when Mr. Wilton whisked the young man off to meet his wife and daughter.

  Mrs. Wilton, her left leg bandaged from ankle to knee, was in the process of berating Mr. Sharpe for the previous Saturday’s accident. She wielded a cane, newly borrowed from the Properties Department, directly at Mr. Sharpe’s person. “Where were you,” she demanded, “when you should have been protecting me from imminent danger?”

  Mr. Sharpe seemed genuinely apologetic; he is a good actor for a stagehand. “T’other side of the stage, ma’am,” he stammered, “where I was told to be for the changeover into the dream sequence.”

  “The other side of the stage?” Mrs. Wilton snorted, moving so quickly toward Mr. Sharpe that she momentarily forgot her injury. “And who, pray, told you to stand there?”

  “Mr. Phillips, ma’am.” Mrs. Wilton cast a withering glance my way, and I began wishing for a vampire trap of my own – or some such exit, camouflaged and mounted in the wall – into which I might disappear.

  The other stagehands were going about their work, all the while listening to the conversation between Mr. Sharpe and Mrs. Wilton. None of them had been sorry to hear of Mrs. Wilton’s run-in with the chair in the wings. Mrs. Wilton noticed that they were moving a trifle more slowly than usual. “And what about Mr. Hampton?” she said, casting a frumpled glance at the retired sailor who now made much of his living whistling up in the fly tower. He suddenly began marching about the backstage area as if the setup for tonight’s bill depended entirely upon him. “Where was he?”

  “Looking after the fire can, ma’am,” said Mr. Sharpe, more firmly now. “Mr. Wilton warned us that we can’t have another crinoline catching fire like we did two weeks ago.”

  “And what of Mr. Manning?”

  “He’ll have to speak for himself, ma’am. I can’t be accountable for everyone here.”

  At that precise moment, Mr. Wilton happened to be standing beside his wife, with Mr. Tyrone nearby. “Sarah,” Mr. Wilton said, “I would like you to meet our new playwright’s apprentice, Mr. Tyrone.”

  Mrs. Wilton held her hand out to the young man as though she were Queen of England, not just queen of the New Albion Theatre; a complete change had come over her. “Goodness knows,” she said, “that you have arrived at a fortuitous moment, young man. The national theatre is in decline for want of another Shakespeare. Mr. Farquhar Pratt has done his best in our little establishment, but he has proven himself capable of little more than Newgate sensations. Have you anything in your portfolio with a strong role for the soubrette?”

  Mr. Tyrone stood gawking at Mrs. Wilton’s outstretched hand for a moment before taking it in his own and shaking it vigorously. “I don’t thoroughly know what a portfolio is,” he replied, “but if yer meanin to ask if I’ve ever put pen to paper before, the answer is yes – at the gaff over in Islington but, more importantly, to sign my cheques over to the Prince of Wales whilst I bin drinkin there.”

  Momentarily ignoring the apprentice’s social ineptitude, Mrs. Wilton turned to her husband with a hurt expression. “The stage hands are all against me,” she whined. “They are trying to pretend that their absence at the vampire trap for my last exit on Saturday evening was an oversight when, in truth, they are happy to see that I have fallen in harm’s way.”

  Mr. Wilton’s expression back at her was a mixture of consolation and recognition, on his part, that she was correct in her assumptions. “I’m certain that they intended no harm,” he said quietly.

  “But they did intend to harm me,” Mrs. Wilton replied, rather gruffly. “And this morning they are flitting about the backstage like larks in springtime.”

  “We will discuss it at the company meeting tomorrow,” Mr. Wilton said, “but I’m sure no man working under this roof could be so callow as that.” This last part was intended for Mr. Sharpe’s e
ars, and Mr. Manning’s, and Mr. Hampton’s. “This morning I’m occupied with introducing Mr. Tyrone to his new colleagues.” Mr. Wilton grabbed young Tyrone by the elbow, and before Mrs. Wilton could say another word, they were across the stage and down to an aisle in the pit where his daughter Eliza was having a word with young Master West.

  The Parisian Phenomenon and Master West were engaged in an intense conversation when her father happened by with the new apprentice. I heard the last few sentences that they uttered to one another, sentences which sounded a great deal like other conversations the Parisian Phenomenon had had with other young romantic leads who had been employed briefly at our theatre.

  “I am sure, Mr. West, that if I had known that you love another,” Eliza said, weeping real tears into a new lace handkerchief, “I never would have permitted you –”

  Master West then discreetly clasped her downstage hand in his own. “If there is anything that your good graces have taught me in these last two months, it is that it is possible for a man to be in love with two women at once.”

  Eliza offered up a jejeune expression. “It may be possible for you,” she said, “but it is utterly impossible for me. I can only love once the way I have loved you.”

  “My heart breaks to hear it,” the young man replied, on cue, “but I am betrothed to another. Please find it in your heart to release me from the bondage to which I have enthralled myself.”

  When Mr. Wilton entered in upon this conversation with the new apprentice, Master West had the good sense to make an exit. Mr. Wilton’s eyes followed Master West wearily out of the doors and into the front-of-house. “Darling, may I present the new apprentice,” he said, after a moment. “Mr. Tyrone.”

  Eliza Wilton did not find the young man appealing. “Pleased to meet you, I’m sure,” she said in a curt tone, depositing her handkerchief up her sleeve.

  “This is my daughter, Eliza,” Mr. Wilton continued, “although you may know her from our playbills as the Parisian Phenomenon, Mademoiselle Champetre.” Mr. Wilton gazed at the young man expectantly, but there was no glimmer of recognition in Colin Tyrone’s eyes.

  “I’m sure yer daughter is every inch a phenomenon,” said the young man ominously.

  To which Mr. Wilton replied, “Yes, well, let me take you to meet the man to whom you are apprenticing, without further ado.”

  It had been apparent at his entrance through the stage door that Mr. Farquhar Pratt was not having one of his good days. He had arrived later than usual, his greatcoat weighing heavily across his shoulders, his gait unsteady, and his eyes tired and uncertain. Upon his arrival at the theatre, Pratty had shuffled by us, mumbling to himself about a conversation two of his characters were having, and gone directly to the stage, where Mr. Watts and Mr. Hicks were waiting for their dialogue.

  This Friday, we are opening Karim, the Spirit Magician, A Supernatural Extravaganza, and Pratty has been tardy, as usual, in delivering the prompt scripts to the actors. Our two leading men, Mr. Watts and Mr. Hicks, forced by circumstances of their employment into a conflictual union, both hurriedly read through their own lines while keeping an eye on the other’s promptbook, trying to gauge who had the larger role. The incurably sensitive and effete Mr. Watts talked volubly all the while of his performance with Macready in Edinburgh and how the great man really did wave the white handkerchief as Hamlet and how the boorish American, Forrest, had hissed from the boxes. One would think that Watts had played Claudius to Macready’s Hamlet by the familiar manner in which he spoke of the Great Actor, but I happen to know through inside sources that he was Horatio with most of his lines cut on the evening. Mr. Hicks pretended to be listening and enjoying the story, but when Pratty arrived with the pages of dialogue, and after he had measured his own stack of pages against Watts’, he retired to the men’s dressing room for a wee snog of gin and a more thorough perusal of his lines.

  Mr. Wilton escorted the new apprentice to Mr. Farquhar Pratt’s side. Pratty tried to ignore both the young man and Mr. Wilton; he pretended to be engrossed in Mr. Watts’ narrative, and he began to tell Mr. Watts the same story he has faithfully told all of us – how he had understudied Kean at Exeter in 1813. “Kean, let me tell you sir,” Pratty expounded in the most forceful voice he could muster, “was an actor’s actor. As Arlecchino, he was able to perform back flips whilst simultaneously bringing a tear to your eye. As Hamlet –”

  “Excuse me, Ned,” Mr. Wilton interrupted, “I would like to introduce you to –”

  “He could make women faint, as far back as the third row,” Mr. Farquhar Pratt continued, as though he had not heard the voice of his employer, “with his histrionics.”

  Mr. Wilton is not a man to be kept waiting, certainly not by his own employees. “Mr. Farquhar Pratt!” he fairly shouted. “I would like you to meet your new apprentice. Colin Tyrone.”

  Pratty glanced at the apprentice, and his eyes slid off the young man like drizzle off newly kilned shingles. “I’m sorry, Thomas,” the old man said rather sweetly, “I haven’t the foggiest conception of what you are talking about. You had asked me, some time ago, about the possibility of hiring an apprentice, and I responded, at that time, that I had no need of one.”

  This infuriated Mr. Wilton. “Damned insolence, sir!” he declared, red-faced. “You will be a very fortunate man, Mr. Pratt, if I do not have you thrown out of the theatre this instant.”

  The young apprentice eyed Mr. Farquhar Pratt in a sinister manner. “Do you want me to do the darty deed for ya?” he asked Mr. Wilton.

  “No, damn me, I do not want you to do anything but learn the craft of play-writing from Mr. Pratt here.”

  “You forget,” responded Pratty, in a voice low and well modulated, “that I am he who saved your theatre from degradation and despondency. Shame on you! On your knees, you came to me, on your knees, begging me to retire from a lucrative contract with the Royal Victoria –”

  “They were happy to see the back of you!” Mr. Wilton interjected hotly. “Osbaldiston begged me to take you off his hands!”

  Stung by this, Pratty continued with his tirade. “How dare you, sir, for shame! How dare you! I was the acknowledged Master of the Domestic Melodrama. London was at my feet. I could have had a posting at Covent Garden if I had pleased.”

  “A posting at Covent Garden? Yes, as doorman! Mr. Farquhar Pratt, your reputation as Master of the Domestic Melodrama, as you so charmingly phrase it, was founded upon a single play which ran for six weeks at the Vic. I hardly think that The Vicissitudes of a Servant Girl makes you the savior of the English stage.”

  “I, sir, am a Member of the Playwrights’ Society,” protested Mr. Farquhar Pratt. “I will not be condescended to by a dilettante who buys theatres so that he can fornicate with their leading actresses!”

  Mr. Wilton turned crimson and then white with rage. It was clear that Pratty had gone too far. Jowls shaking with fury, Mr. Wilton barked, “You will regret saying such a thing, sir, and I must ask you to apologize for it immediately.”

  “I will not apologize to you or any man.”

  Mr. Wilton’s eyes darkened, lowered over by his savage unkempt eyebrows. “Then I must ask you, Mr. Pratt, to visit me in my office at your earliest convenience.”

  * * *

  I was not privy to Mr. Wilton’s and Mr. Farquhar Pratt’s conversation after they had retired to his office, but I did manage to overhear something of it when Pratty vented to our gentle Properties Master, Mr. Benjamin Granville, shortly afterwards. Mr. Farquhar Pratt was still livid and hardly making sense when he spoke to Mr. Granville; enraged at “the pertinence of that charlatan of a lessee,” Pratty went on at length, speaking so volubly that Mr. Granville was embarrassed lest others might hear his voice, which was usually booming but now more so, through the slender walls of the Properties storage shed. Mr. Granville was correct in his assumption, for it was at that moment that I happened to be passing the Properties Shed, and I could not help but stop and listen to such a muscularly arti
culated discussion.

  “How dare he impugn my good reputation?” the old man roared. “I once understudied Kean, I was being groomed for management at Covent Garden. I have forgotten more of the Theatre than he will ever know. He wanted me to apologize both to him and to his wife, that slut, for the way in which I had assailed her unblemished virtue. Unblemished virtue! When I was playing leads at the Royal Victoria, she was cocking a leg for every ragtag and bobtailed strolling player who came up to the City to try his luck.”

  “Still,” said Mr. Granville, who is known for his level head and his sage ways, “one should not insult the proprietor’s wife –”

  “But it is the truth!”

  “Yes, it may well be true, for aught I know, but it is nevertheless extremely impolitic to hurl such grievous insults at the wife of one’s employer.” Mr. Granville’s voice was hushed and modulated, as if by sheer will and setting a good example he might alleviate Pratty’s rage.

  The old man was in no mood to listen to sage advice. “And then his upstart apprentice had the audacity to threaten me. Threaten me! A man of advanced years, as well as a playwright of some notoriety in this City and, yes, outside of it. I addressed Mr. Wilton singularly – ‘You are attempting to place an albatross around my neck, sir. One can tell at a solitary glance that this young hooligan has neither the sensitivity nor the education to bring to the stage the essence of human nature’.”

  After some time, Pratty’s rage had lost its edge, and Mr. Granville was able to counsel him. “Don’t you think,” he asked, “that you should issue an apology to Mrs. Wilton? In the interests of keeping the theatre running smoothly, if not in the interests of keeping your job in these hard times.”

  “I don’t care a pin about my job,” Pratty replied, somewhat weakly.

  Mr. Granville paused and then said, “Where would you go?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Where would you go, Mr. Farquhar Pratt, if you had no job to come to here?”