New Albion (16 page)

This was an odd question, given the old man’s previous
antagonism toward the new apprentice. “I think I saw him lurk
ing about in the dressing room earlier this morning. He has been railroaded into playing some of the juvenile leads in Master West’s absence. Perhaps you’ll find him in his customary spot in the Green Room by now.”

“And how is he as an actor?” Pratty inquired. His interest seemed sincere.

“Limited” was the best word I could use to describe Mr. Tyrone’s proficiency in that department.

Mr. Farquhar Pratt turned to leave, then turned back again, as if he had forgotten his satchel, which was still under his right arm. “I only wish to make good on my promise to offer the young man what little wisdom I can muster,” he said. “It would be good to know that a competent stock playwright is in place at this theatre when I am done.”

After Pratty had gone to find Mr. Tyrone, I took advantage of a few minutes of uninterrupted free time to peruse the script he had left me. The scrawl had indeed deteriorated even from what Mr. Farquhar Pratt had submitted to us with his first act, but I was able to decipher most of his words, probably owing to the fact that I have been deciphering his handwriting for several years now. I can only imagine that Pratty’s script will be received with skepticism by the acting company and by Mr. Wilton. All this discussion about the inevitability of Rust and the need for resistance against the advances of the Power Loom. Factory workers singing dark songs about the loss of their way of life and the looked-for crumbling of their little kingdom. It is clearly the work of an incapacitated mind, and yet there is something in all of this madness which comes close to genius. Such an elaborate act of the imagination, to create this other universe where even the inanimate tools of the carpet weavers’ trade have voice. I think that, in some ways, this will be Mr. Farquhar Pratt’s best and most original work.

At ten-thirty, I adjourned to the Green Room for my morning
tea, to find Mr. Farquhar Pratt in hushed conference with Mr. Tyrone near the drafty window at the far corner of the room. Pratty was gesticulating wildly, the veins in his forehead bulging grotesquely. “I know what my advice was earlier,” he bellowed, “but I want you to forget that now. No more
Newgate Calendar
. Forget the works of J. B. Howe. They will lead you down blind alleys by the dozen. Read Shakespeare. Read Coleridge. That is where the future lies!”

Young Mr. Tyrone was slouched back in his chair, peering laconically at Pratty from under the floppy hat that was still on his head, despite the fact that the young man had been in the theatre for two hours by that point. He eyed Mr. Farquhar Pratt as though the older man had entirely left his senses. “Try as I might,” he exclaimed, “I can’t hunderstand them poncy-men and poetasters. All wanderin lonely as a cloud and alas poor York I knew his uncle.”

Beads of sweat were standing on Mr. Farquhar Pratt’s ashen brow. “You do not want to end as I have, young man,” he declared in a feverish whisper. “A wasted talent, a hack, his life frittered away in drumming up burlettas at a rate of two per week for the princely sum of three pounds six per manuscript. You do not want to be that kind of failure. Set your sights high, young man, and if you fail then you will have known that you failed in a grand endeavor.” Pratty reached into his satchel and then slid a thin volume across the table at Mr. Tyrone. The less enthusiasm Mr. Tyrone displayed for his own education as a playwright, the more a sense of urgency crept into Mr. Farquhar Pratt’s voice. “I have taken the liberty of providing you with a copy of Shakespeare’s original work on the Scottish play. Not of Mr. Cibber’s criminal bastardization but the original words, as the playwright intended them.”

Colin Tyrone picked up the chapbook and thumbed through
its pages like a man reading Hindi or ancient Abyssinian. “I can
not read this tripe, godammit. The words make no sense.”

Adamant, Mr. Farquhar Pratt went on. “Pay particular attention to Act Four Scene Two. I won’t quote from it here. Note how the Master deals with the passage of Time therein.” He brought himself unsteadily to his feet and assumed the pose of an elderly but imperious schoolmarm. “And then I want you to complete an exercise for me. Prepare a two-person scene – any characters you want but they must each have a need which brings them into conflict – in which the passage of Time becomes a factor.”

“Sometimes Time passes like a locomotive and other times it passes like the proverbial tortoise,” young Mr. Tyrone responded, smirking sidelong at me. “And that’s about all there is to know about the passage of Time.”

Not to be put off, Mr. Farquhar Pratt continued. “It needn’t be long. Two or three pages. Please have it ready for me by next Tuesday.” With that, Pratty placed his scuffed brown satchel under his arm and shuffled out of the Green Room, his wooden cane clacking against the tiled floor.

The young hoodlum, Mr. Tyrone, raised his eyebrows to me after the old man had left. “Old Wanky Twanky Fum’s really gone off the deep end now.”

Tuesday, 3 December 1850

As luck would have it, I have finally managed to procure the services of a juvenile lead, not through an advertisement in
The Theatrical Journal and Gentleman’s Guide
but through a friend of a friend. An old acting mate had forwarded to me a letter from one Sylvester Weekes, green grocer of Clerkenwell. In the letter, Mr. Weekes fairly begged my friend to find his son Edwin
a posting in some theatre or other. “The boy has shewn an apti
tude for theatre while at Sunday School,” the elder Weekes wrote, “and he has the right temperament for it.” In my experience, a father who actively seeks a posting in the theatre for his son is something of an oddity, but perhaps he had been forced to that action by circumstances unknown to me.

I managed to get in touch with Weekes the elder by return post a few days ago, and a meeting was arranged not in the family home but in a back room of the green grocer’s shop. The younger Weekes is perhaps fifteen or sixteen, slender and of pale
complexion. He is a good-looking boy, though, and with a rel
atively forward voice. I asked the boy if he had ever been on stage before. “Yes, sir,” he replied very politely, “several times I have played Joseph in the Christmas pageant.”

“So you can read and write?” I asked him.

“Quite proficiently, sir.”

The boy piqued my interest. “If you are studious,” I said, “why not go into one of the other professions? Law perhaps.”

“I enjoy the theatre,” he replied. There was nothing disingenuous about him.

“I have eight children,” the green grocer, who had been standing behind his son amid baskets of cabbages, added. “There is no opportunity for any of them to become lawyers, sir. Edwin is the most learned of the lot.”

“Very well, then,” I said to the boy. “Please come to the theatre
tomorrow, and I will introduce you to our proprietor.”

“But you will continue his education?” the elder Weekes interrupted. “Give him books to read? Teach him a musical instrument?”

“One of the company’s actors will handle that task,” I reas
sured the father.

“Very well then,” the elder Weekes said. “You shall have him.”

* * *

Mr. Tyrone appeared on stage
this evening as Count di Corsi in
Fortune’s Fool
. It was nothing short of hilarious when young Tyrone, as the Italian Count, announced in his unshakeable Irish brogue, “I am he, sar, that did so abuse yer friendship and ruint yer datter.” Later in the evening, when Mr. Tyrone’s lines began to flee from his head like rats from a Chinese junk, he was forced to improvise. “What the feck is this?” he asked Mr. Watts on stage for all to hear. “This letter here sez I’m a bankrupt and a ruint git.”

Happily, with the addition of young Mr. Weekes, we will not have to hear too much more of Mr. Tyrone’s off-book ramblings.

Thursday, 5 December 1850

Young Miss Wilton returned to the theatre today, looking pale but definitely on the mend. She was bedecked in a lovely pink gown, her ringlets flirting with her bare shoulders. Mrs. Wilton escorted her daughter about the place in a lively fashion, as though she were a distinguished visitor from afar. I overheard Mrs. Wilton in the backstage area as she reintroduced her daughter to the stagehands. “Gentlemen,” she announced, “the Parisian Phenomenon has come back to us after a long sojourn.” Discussion of the nature of the Parisian Phenomenon’s sojourn was studiously avoided. Mr. Sharpe merely asked when we might expect to see the Parisian Phenomenon on our stage again, and Mrs. Wilton replied, “We will see, Mr. Sharpe, we will see. When the time is right. Perhaps in the New Year.” Mr. Sharpe and his cronies protested that the young lady looked as if she could perform a pas de deux that very evening, and Mrs. Wilton, satisfied, herded her daughter up to the Green Room to renew acquaintances with the acting company.

There, the young lady encountered Mr. Simpson, Mr. Tyrone, Mr. Hicks, Mr. Watts, Mrs. Toffat, and Fanny Hardwick, all of whom congratulated her upon getting herself up so prettily. She also met young Master Weekes, the new Juvenile lead, who greeted the Parisian Phenomenon in a friendly manner but with restraint. Master Weekes has been chosen for his incapacity to do Miss Wilton the same service as Mr. West has done. He is not as yet a serviceable actor, but Mr. Watts has kindly offered to take him under his wing and to give him the necessary tutelage.

Also in the Green Room at that hour was Enoch Wolsey, actor, ventriloquist, contortionist and magician. Mr. Wolsey had little time for the Parisian Phenomenon because he was involved in an exchange of witticisms with Seymour Hicks, who must have worked with Mr. Wolsey in the provinces. “Watch your mannerisms!” he was saying to Mr. Hicks but with an eye on Mr. Simpson and Mr. Watts who were standing nearby. “Seymour is a past master at the Comedy of Mannerisms. I know from experience. I used to very much enjoy, as we were playing Congreve together, the pauses which occurred during Seymour’s longest speeches.”

“Have a care,” said Mr. Hicks, wagging his forefinger under Wolsey’s nose. “I wager I could still dance a hornpipe upon your adam’s apple if I wished.”

Their conversation continued in this relaxed and breezy fashion for three-quarters of an hour, after which Mr. Hicks and Mr. Wolsey adjourned to the dressing room and imbibed copious amounts of gin. I began to fear the worst.

Receipts for this evening’s performances were substantially increased over last Thursday. While the theatre was not filled to capacity, it was at least respectfullly populated, and it was clear that audience members had come to witness Enoch Wolsey’s amazing performance. I had expected to see Mr. Wolsey in the theatre shortly after six, since his act of contortionism would require some physical warmup, particularly after the debauched morning he had spent with Mr. Hicks. At seven o’clock, when the curtain went up on
David Hunt
, Enoch Wolsey still had
not arrived in the theatre. I was frantic, sending word to his lodgings as well as to Mr. Wilton. There was no immediate reply from either; Mr. Wolsey was not to be found at his lodgings, which I took to be a good sign, and Mr. Wilton remained incommunicado in his office. During the last act of
David Hunt
, Mr. Wilton ventured downstairs to the backstage area and inquired as to whether Mr. Wolsey had yet made an appearance.

“Still no sign of him, sir,” I said, trying to retain my composure.

“God damn Mr. Hicks,” was the reply, “for carrying my star attraction off in an alcoholic haze.”

We both paused and listened as Mr. Hicks slurred his way through his line onstage. “I am the man who has seduced your daughter, brought about her ruin, and cursed your dotage.” He had moved into close proximity with Neville Watts’ person, much closer than his original blocking could have predicted, and he rested a hand on Mr. Watt’s shoulder in order to steady himself. Neville Watts leant backward like a country lass at a
Mayday celebration, in the embrace of an alcoholic burgomaster.
I am happy that our two leading actors are now getting along so swimmingly.

Mr. Wilton winced visibly.

At that moment, our aged doorman, Mr. Hardacre, padded up the stairs with a note in his hand. “Apparently from Mister Wolsey,” he wheezed, breathing heavily from the exertion of mounting the stairs.

He passed the note to Mr. Wilton, who read it and then passed it wanly to me. I read with horror: “Am currently indisposed. Will be certain to perform tomorrow night, when I shall so contort my body that I shall fit it into a two-quart sealer. Sincerest apologies. E. Wolsey.”

When I looked up from the note, Mr. Wilton‘s face was ashen. “What shall we do?” he asked. The curtain was going down on
David Hunt
, with Mr. Hicks and Mr. Watts behaving like the best of friends as they took their curtain call. Mr. Manning was standing in the wings, opposite Mr. Wilton and me, holding the pickling crock into which Enoch Wolsey had promised to fit himself this very evening. “What shall we do?” Mr. Wilton repeated like a monomaniac.

“If we cancel Wolsey’s engagement,” I blurted, “we’ll have to refund this evening’s patrons.”

Mr. Wilton looked horrorstricken. “I’ve already paid Mr. Wolsey, and handsomely too.”

I could hardly believe my ears. “You’ve paid out his contract entirely?”