New Albion Page 5

  Pratty blustered heroically, again, for a moment. “Where would I go? Why, back to the Royal Victoria. They would hire me again in an eye blink.”

  “I think you should apologize,” Mr. Granville replied softly.

  * Chapter Four *

  Wednesday, 9 October 1850

  Mr. Holman arrived in the theatre today with a story that left both of us shaken.

  He reported that he had seen August Levy in nautical costume at the Euston railway station, proffering a letter evidently signed by three magistrates and six ministers of religion, which gave credence to his story that he had survived the wreckage of the Albatross somewhere between this island and North America. He had appended a bosun’s pipe around his neck as a sign of his authenticity, and he danced a hornpipe – probably the same hornpipe I had seen him dance with Mr. Bancroft on occasion – if further proof was needed. This stellar performance was good for twopence from any man gullible enough to believe that it was possible to survive in the icy waters of the Atlantic for six days and seven nights, until a passing merchant ship had spotted him and plucked him away from the hands of death. His letter professed that he had done good service in his country’s name, and so he had, but it was service on the boards of the good ship Albion and not onboard any other kind of ship.

  Tears were standing in Mr. Holman’s eyes as he related this tale to me. “I was on my way home from the North,” he said. “I had no idea…no idea.”

  I think Mr. Holman feels somehow responsible for supplanting August Levy, and I tried to console him by saying, “There now, Ernest, you know that every man has his day in the sun.”

  He was inconsolable. “I had no idea,” he said again.

  Thursday, 10 October 1850

  The company meeting. Crowded into the rehearsal hall were the actors chattering ebulliently among themselves, the stagehands leaning against the walls and smoking, and the denizens of the Properties and Costume departments looking like moles who’ve just resurfaced after months of hibernation. Our new playwright’s apprentice, young Colin Tyrone, kept to himself in a corner of the room, smoking a clay pipe and observing the company with surly bemusement. Mr. and Mrs. Wilton kept us all waiting for fifteen or twenty minutes and then, when they arrived, swept across the room and occupied their customary chairs. Mr. Wilton motioned to me to begin.

  There was something in the air, a frisson of excitement at some shard of gossip. Mr. Sharpe, Mr. Manning, and Mr. Hampton were whispering to each other. Occasionally, they would scan the throng of actors before returning to their quiet conversation. The actors, for their part, were somewhat too excited, too energetic and talkative. All except for George Simpson, who sat apart from the others and kept his gaze fixed on the wall in front of him, and Mr. Farquhar Pratt. Mrs. Simpson and the comic man Bancroft were conspicuous in their absence.

  In my ignorance, I assumed that Pratty was the subject of the gossip, and so I resolved to stay clear of any mention of yesterday’s improprieties. I did not relish my intended role in today’s proceedings. Standing up, I said falteringly, “Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. We have a number of issues to discuss today, most of them connected with the opening of our Christmas panto.” I informed the assemblage that Mr. Farquhar Pratt had agreed to deliver the script by the beginning of next week and that I was to have the puffs written and ready for the printers by the fifteenth. I would then prepare a list of properties and costumes from that script and have it in to the pertinent departments by the end of the month, at which time set construction would commence. We would begin rehearsing with the actors on the first of December and would engage the supernumeraries from about the tenth. The theatre would be dark from the twenty-first, as that is the date of the end of the season this year. “Please be prepared for long rehearsals once the theatre is dark and until opening,” I told the company, “which is the twenty-sixth.”

  Mr. Neville Watts stood up slowly and began to speak, enunciating meticulously and self-consciously. “May I ask what is the title of this extravaganza?”

  This brought Pratty to his feet. His quiet mumble, like a man talking more to himself than to other men, coupled with the glassiness of his eyes, led me to believe that he had been no stranger to the laudanum bottle these past few hours. He said some words which were intelligible to no one and then sat down.

  Mr. Watts rose again, his face chalky. “I’m sorry, Mr. Farquhar Pratt, I failed to catch that.”

  After a pause, Pratty spoke again, this time more volubly but not so well articulated as he was wont to be. “The title of the pantomime is –” he said, and again he pronounced some undecipherable syllables. I am not able to spell or to regurgitate what he said. “It will be set” – he paused as though he could not for the life of him remember what he had been talking about or whether he was standing in a theatre and not a green grocer’s – “it will be set in China and will…involve a battle between the King of Siam… and the people of the underworld.”

  The assembled company had stony expressions on their faces. No one appeared overly zealous about the playwright’s concept.

  Mr. Wilton did not stand up to speak. “That’s all very well,” he said. “Is there any other business relating –”

  “My wife,” said Mr. Simpson, his voice dead as fish in Petticoat Lane, “has run off with Mr. Bancroft.” He did not seem to be addressing anyone in particular; his eyes were glued firmly to the wall opposite.

  A hush fell over the hall. Mr. Wilton rose hesitantly to his feet. “Beg pardon?”

  Mr. Simpson did not look at him, did not look anywhere, but I could see that his eyes were almost jaundiced with unhappiness. “Mr. Bancroft has filched the heart of my wife.”

  “Of Suzy?” There was an incredulous pause. “But who is going to play Fatima on Friday?”

  “Dunno,” said Mr. Simpson flatly. “I wasn’t consulted.”

  Colin Tyrone, who had been sitting like a sullen puppy in the corner, suddenly became animate. “Do ya mean to say she was cockin’ a leg for the comedy man?” He seemed beside himself with joy at the news. Even Mr. Wilton darted him an unhappy glance.

  There was a deep and embarrassing silence, and then the hall erupted in outpourings of affection for poor Mr. Simpson, outcries of derision against the two errant lovers, vows on Mr. Wilton’s part that Bancroft would never be welcome again in his theatre. “The blackguard,” Mr. Wilton kept saying. “The scoundrel. To have seduced poor Suzy like that straight out of her husband’s arms.”

  “Dunno what will become of little Emma now,” Mr. Simpson said, “with her mother eloped.”

  Mrs. Wilton rose to her feet now, and her jowls were shaking with softer emotions. “There,” she said, “don’t you worry about Emma, Mr. Simpson. As long as I live, she’ll be a part of our family, here in the theatre. Our little theatrical family.”

  There were general shouts of huzzah! for Mrs. Wilton, and when the hubbub had died down Mr. Sharpe stepped forward. His hands seemed too large for his arms, and he attempted to encase them in his trouser pockets as he spoke. “I’d just like to apologize to Mrs. Wilton for not being there to catch her when she came through the trap last Saturday night. Me and the boys is all as sorry as can be.”

  Thrilled by this apology, Mrs. Wilton strode across the hall to Mr. Sharpe amidst much applause and gave him her hand. Mr. Sharpe kissed the stubby fingers awkwardly, and there was more applause.

  Again, Mr. Wilton spoke up, looking at no one in particular. “Are there any other apologies forthcoming?” he said in a low voice.

  As if cued by the word “apologies,” Mr. Farquhar Pratt shifted in his chair and then got himself unsteadily to his feet. “I will apologize too, by gawd, for what I said about Mrs. Wilton yesterday.” He stopped to think for a moment and evidently could not remember what he had said about Mrs. Wilton. He shook his head. “It doesn’t bear repeating.”

  Mrs. Wilton sailed across the floor to Mr. Farquhar Pratt, offering her hand, which he kissed with an old-fas
hioned bow that almost toppled him to the floor.

  “Very good,” said Mr. Wilton. His face was ashen, and his broad-backed bearing had momentarily given way to an almost imperceptible slumping of the shoulders. “The meeting is adjourned.”

  Friday, 11 October 1850

  I had promised Sophie that we would use the morning to inspect Mr. Paxton’s grand conception in Hyde Park. Leaving the younger children in care of Hortense, Sophie and I traveled by means of hansom cab from our apartments in Cloudsey Road through the bustle of Oxford Street, finally turning into the treed splendor of Kensington. The grass in the park had browned considerably since Sophie and I were last there, and many of the trees had begun to shed their leaves, but Hyde Park was still a robust sanctuary for horsemen running their animals through the rigors of daily exercise.

  And of course the Crystal Palace, brainchild of the Royal Gardener, which has been so much in the papers of late. When the structure was first proposed last summer, I, like others, dismissed it as a hoax. A palace crafted of glass and steel, covering eighteen acres! Why, the jarring footpads of a hundred people milling about inside would be enough to rattle the panes and send them crashing down in ballistic shards. Now, as the frame of tubular steel begins to take shape, I see that the hoax has become a near reality. Sophie and I, standing south of the structure near the park’s edge, quietly compared Paxton’s startling new conception to an elaborate greenhouse.

  By ten o’clock, a crowd had begun to gather, ruining the placidity of our morning’s sojourn in the park. Some heckled the labourers for presuming to build a veritable Tower of Babel. “Who’s s’posed to be cleaning all them winders?” one of them shouted. Others ruminated aloud about the grandeur of the imagination responsible for this edifice. The workmen themselves went about their exertions in indubitable silence, never intimating their thoughts on the utter madness or the sheer sublimity of Joe Paxton’s vision.

  Sophie, being seventeen, is in love with Mr. Paxton’s creation. She is the daughter most like Jane, and in many ways she has become Jane, caring for me and the children, preparing meals, worrying over the household finances. I fear that dear Jane’s passing will prove too much for Sophie in the end, that she will develop some nervous complaint owing to the weight of the burden she has chosen to bear. In the last months, I have tried to find opportunities for her to be away from the house and the children so that she might relax and be her seventeen-year-old self again. When asked, her inclination has often been to see the progress of the glass emporium.

  On this day, however, Sophie was discomfited by the obvious presence of footpadders and cadgers milling about the crowd, and she suggested that we take our picnic elsewhere in the park. As we were leaving the Palace, I heard a shrill voice call my name: “Em! Em!” Sophie and I both turned to see Sally, a dollymop I know, careening towards us. She had a large tatty shawl covering her dress. She carried her infant, God knows by what father, in one arm and a basket of hand-sewn pincushions in her other hand. She must have been hawking the cushions to onlookers. As she neared us, Sally caught sight of Sophie and stopped dead in her tracks, too late for Sophie not to have seen the surprise in her face. Fortunately, Sally has a nimble mind to match her nimble body. “I’m sorry,” she growled, in a guttural Cockney, “I had you mistaken for someone else.” With a hurt look on her face, Sally turned and dissolved into the multitude.

  “Who was she?” Sophie asked, as I whisked her down Rotten Row toward the Serpentine.

  “Never saw her before,” I said. “Case of mistaken identity.”

  We settled down in the grass under the shade of a broad chestnut tree far from the gathering crowd. After we had spread a thick woolen blanket on the ground, Sophie carefully emptied the basket of its contents – roast beef and cucumber sandwiches, a bottle of wine, French bread and paté. We had begun to eat and to enjoy this glorious and sunny late autumn day, to enjoy each other’s company, when an elderly beggar materialized out of nearby bushes. His clothes were ragged, his face leathery with constant exposure to the elements. He was wearing threadbare stockings but no shoes. He was not a sane man. He ranted in a high-pitched voice about the evils of cross-racial breeding, all the while feinting to punch or kick some phantasm in the air before him. I fed him some bread and paté, although the wine seemed to be the real object of his desires, and persuaded him to carry on down toward the Palace where there was promise of more people and more food and drink. As the popular song goes, there is no honour given to white hairs when they are buried, buried down in London town.

  Sophie and I hurried through the rest of our picnic.

  * * *

  In the afternoon, I was back inside the theatre preparing a prompt script for Crosby Ravensworth. I continue to have fits of apoplexy about the pantomime. Mr. Farquhar Pratt was not at all convincing at the company meeting yesterday. He is usually quite free with his ideas when he is writing; usually, he will regale me and anybody else who will listen with a hundred and fifty plots which are clattering about inside his addled brain or he will babble on about the creation of a villain, black-moustachioed and hissing freely like the serpent in the proverbial garden, to rival Iago. There is no such expansiveness in the old man now.

  The fissure of time between now and Boxing Day began to crumble and to implode at the precise moment when the new apprentice came into view. The opening of the panto, toward which we are all in this theatre labouring with singleness of purpose, now seems two days, and not two months, away. I need remind no one that the Boxing Day opening is the most significant event of the New Albion’s season. Upon its success depends the annual New Year’s bonus which all employees of the theatre have come to expect. There will be much gnashing of teeth if the play script is not worthy.

  Saturday, October 12, 1850

  A brief and anonymous article appeared in The Tatler today, dealing with the daily movements of our own Fanny Hardwick, a young actress with the company. The article is symptomatic of the kind of smutty journalism we have come to expect. I quote the opening paragraphs:

  While shopping for trendy clothes in Covent Garden last week, the author happened to see young Fanny Hardwick, celebrated beauty and now actress at the New Albion Theatre. She was dressed in a fashionable skirt and shawl, a hat partially covering her auburn ringlets. Carrying a plethora of packages, no doubt articles of clothing she had purchased on that day, she negotiated her way through the crowded streets. The author remained at a distance but followed her from Covent Garden to Leicester Square, where the morning rain had rendered the cobblestones so slippery as to make it impossible for Miss Hardwick to keep her footing. A stiletto heel caught in the fissure between the stones, and the beautiful young actress slid to the pavement, her skirt and crinolines rising to a point immediately before the knee. Many male admirers, the present author included, were in awe of Miss Hardwick’s pristine beauty, her shapely legs exposed inside satin stockings, her tall red shoes laced past the ankle.

  It has long been rumored that Miss Hardwick comes of genteel stock, and if sheer physical perfection is an indication of good breeding, then the present author professes to be a convert to that theory. The young actress has often been seen in the company of an aristocratic-looking young man. If she is indeed a rich man’s daughter, what might have possessed her to take up a life in the theatre, especially in a theatre so scandalous for its panderings to a criminal class of spectators as the New Albion in Whitechapel? It is well known that the New Albion does not even have separate dressing rooms for its actors and its actresses. How can a young lady of quality maintain her innocence in such an environment? The present author promises to cogitate upon these questions in the future and to investigate the probability of Miss Hardwick’s noble lineage. Further installments on the lives of actors and actresses of London will be available in future columns of The Tatler.

  Not only are the facts wrong in this blasphemous piece of journalism – the New Albion does now have partitioned dressing rooms for actresses and act
ors, in part owing to the agitation of Miss Hardwick herself – the article also constitutes an invasion of the young lady’s privacy. Some would argue that an actress, by being an actress, subjects herself to the unrelenting scrutiny of the public, but I would argue that every human being deserves a modicum of privacy whatever their station or occupation in life.

  Of course, the article was passed from hand to hand inside the theatre. I could not help but think that many of the ladies in the company had taken a secret delight in Fanny’s misfortune as the ladies’ dressing room seemed particularly filled with jollity this morning. When I encountered Fanny at my desk at the stage left arch, her face was drawn and she appeared to be on the verge of tears.

  “There was an article in The Tatler this morning,” she murmured. She was readying herself to begin rehearsing.

  “Oh, yes,” I said.

  “Have you read it, Mr. Phillips?” She offered this as a probe and as a challenge; it was an attempt to ascertain whether I agreed with the tone or purpose of the article.

  “I have read it,” I admitted, “and I think the article singularly distasteful. It is an injustice to you.” By gawd, she is a beautiful woman, and her vulnerability only serves to enhance her physical charms.

  Tears filled her eyes. “Oh, thank you, Mr. Phillips. I have spent a good part of the morning wondering what I have done to bring on such a holocaust.”

  I would have liked to grasp the young lady in my arms, to kiss her moist eyelids, but that action would have negated the fatherly advice she is accustomed to from me. I did not touch her. “You have done nothing, my dear,” I said. “Only pursued your calling.”

  Fanny seemed heartened by this. She took a handkerchief from the pocket of her rehearsal skirt and daubed her eyes. “Some days, Mr. Phillips, I feel that I have made a bad choice in my profession. Why can’t a lady pursue a career in the world of theatre? In a world she loves?”

  “There is no reason,” I said, but I knew that there were many reasons. Would I want any of my daughters, Sophie or Davina or Hortense or dear young Susan, to pursue a career as an actress? The answer is, categorically, no.