New Albion (6 page)

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 mod
ulated, “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 dilet
tante 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 articulated 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?”

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.”