Things near & far
_mythos_ and on one _mythos_ only. They are grouped about some fact,
actual or symbolic, as the ritual of Freemasonry is said to have
as its centre certain events connected with the building of King
Solomon’s Temple, and they keep within their limits. But the Twilight
Star embraced all mythologies and all mysteries of all races and all
ages, and “referred” or “attributed” them to each other and proved
that they all came to much the same thing; and that was enough! That
was not the ancient frame of mind; it was not even the 1809 frame of
mind. But it was very much the eighteen-eighty and later frame of
mind.
I must say that I did not seek the Order merely in quest of odd
entertainment. As I have stated in the chapter before this, I had
experienced strange things--they still appear to me strange--of body,
mind and spirit, and I supposed that the Order, dimly heard of, might
give me some light and guidance and leading on these matters. But, as
I have noted, I was mistaken; the Twilight Star shed no ray of any
kind on my path.
* * * * *
It was towards the end of 1900 that I perceived that as I had lost
sight of the admirable Syon, so Bagdad was wearing badly enough. I
have seen from the train the architecture of the “White City” in
these recent years. It was never anything at its best, assuredly;
never anything save foolishness. Still, lit up on a summer night,
with its extravagant towers and walls, pavilions and domes and
minarets, with all its fretted and fantastic work, with its still
lakes and pouring waterfalls; in those old days before the war I have
no doubt that it symbolised joy and enchantment to young and simple
hearts. But afterwards, when long neglect had told upon it, when
winter rains had wept upon its walls and soot showers had drifted
on its pavilions, when the summer suns had scorched its whiteness,
and black March winds had torn its feigned embroideries and false
ornaments, when many autumn storms had beat upon its plaster
battlements and the waterfalls were stilled and the lakes were become
obscene pits of slime and rubbish--what an ugly mockery it stood
there, an idiot’s city fallen into ruin, a scenic fairyland in evil
days. So my Bagdad became like the “White City,” magic down at heel,
its enchantments silly and clumsy tricks, its mystic architecture a
shabby sham, its strange encounters, meetings with people who turned
out to be bores or worse than bores. You know the story of the fairy
gold: at night the man who had had happy commerce with the People
of the Hills found himself enriched with boundless and wonderful
treasure; but in the morning the marvel of gold had all turned into a
heap of dead leaves; such was my case.
And here I am moved to wonder, as I often wonder, whether what we
call “fairy tales” do not in fact contain a curious wisdom and the
secrets of a very strange and mysterious psychology. Take this old
tale of the fairy gold and its transmutation into ugly rubbish, as
an example. To most of us it is a tale and nothing more than a tale;
without any reason, without any meaning, without any sort of sense
or significance in it. We accept it just as a piece of picturesque
fancy and nothing more; the turning of the magic gold into leaves
was just a happy notion of the unknown and remote individual who
made up the story. But suppose that there is something more than
this: rather, something quite different from this. I am well aware,
of course, of the various explanations of the fairy mythology;
the fairies are the gods of the heathen come down in the world:
Diana become Titania. Or the fairies are a fantasy on the small,
dark people who dwelt in the land and under the land before the
coming of the Celts; or they are “elementals,” spirits of the four
elements: there are all these accounts, and, for all I know, all
may be true, each in its measure. But is it possible that there is,
now and then, a more hidden and interior sense in some of the tales
of the fairyland and the fairies? I am inclined to think that this
may be so; that the stories may be--occasionally, not always by any
means--the veils of certain rare interior experiences of mankind;
experiences, I may say, which are best avoided. The gold faded into
dead leaves; it may be more than an idle tale. At any rate, it was a
very dismal disenchantment to me when I woke up and found that I was
not the Commander of the Faithful, that the fair Circassian was, in
fact, a native not of Circassia but of Clapham, that Bagdad was not
Bagdad at all, but a London “Exhibition” fallen into very bad repair
and urgently in need of tacks and whitewash. The Palace was not
habitable; rain was coming in through cracks and rents in the marble
that was plaster on the head of him who for a time had been Haroun
Alraschid, who now began to suspect that his real style and title
was Silly Fool. And then I went on the stage, which is a world of
illusion certainly, but of a much less harmful illusion than that of
plaster-Bagdad and fairy gold and the hall under the hill.
I have wondered at times why there is no good novel of the stage.
But a little consideration shews that there can be no such thing.
George Moore wrote long ago a clever book called “A Mummer’s Wife.”
It is a capital book, and I should think a very faithful impression
of a “Cloches de Corneville” touring company in the early ’eighties.
I would say of an individual “Cloches de Corneville” company, for
the characters strike one as portraits of particular people; there
is nothing of the universal about the book, nothing of the essence
of the stage life. And it is probably impossible to write the real
novel of the stage, for the good reason that the stage is not one but
many. In the old days, in the days of the Crummles Company, it would
have been easier. The actor of those days was supposed, till he had
proved his supreme eminence in one particular line of business, to
be capable of all. He was to play “Hamlet,” he was also to go on in
the Farce, he was to dance a hornpipe between the acts, he was always
to be ready with a song; and, again, unless he were a very eminent
actor indeed, he very rarely associated with people beyond the
range of the call-boy’s voice. The stage in those days was a world
apart, and the men and women who trod it a race apart; the actor was
a type, just as the sailor of Smollett’s day was a type. But all
that is long over; it would be very difficult to find a general
formula to cover the life of the stage to-day. Commodore Trunnion
viewed all existence as a voyage on board one of His Majesty’s
ships; and I knew a stage-manager who, playing skittles, avowed his
determination to bring down “that O.P. skittle”; but the Commodore
is dead, and the stage-manager is dying. In fact I should say that
the average actor of to-day is far from being gratified when he is
recognised as an actor; rather he is inclined to be ashamed of his
profession. I remember that as I was talking to two stage friends
on a London pavement an old man who was selling laces and studs
and such matters in the gutter implored us to buy: “I was an actor
once myself, gentlemen.” I perceived that my friends were very far
from being pleased. I think that the poor old man would have done
better if he had said: “I was an officer in the Guards once myself,
gentlemen.” So, in brief, the actors are no longer the race apart of
the old days; they mix with all sorts of people and have, naturally,
become very much like all sorts of people. Some of them think that
the change is for the better, others disagree. I venture no judgment
save this: that they are certainly less picturesque, because less
differenced than of old, and thus it is that nobody is likely to do
much good with a story of the stage.
I daresay that few people outside the profession are aware that the
old players had a language of their own, or rather a language which
they shared with another and a widely different craft. Not merely
the technical language of the stage, though that had its curiosities
too. For example, I once heard George Alexander at rehearsal say
to one of the company: “Too much of the old, Smith, too much of the
old!” And Smith, though he had been for many years on the stage,
told me afterwards that he had never heard the phrase before, and
didn’t know what it meant. I knew what it meant, having associated,
like Mr. Lillyvick, with members of the theatrical profession in the
provincial, that is more or less, the less fortunate grade. “The old”
means the melodramatic style of acting, the manner which used to be
associated with the name of Barry Sullivan. When an actor said, “I
gave them a bit of the old,” he meant that he exaggerated somewhat
both in his tones and in the business of the scene; in other words,
that he made it “big” and “broad.”
But this is not the language I mean. Once on a provincial tour I
found that the stage-manager had somehow heard of my connection with
literature, and was inclined, in consequence, to suspect me a little
of being, as we should say now, a “high-brow” and to resent the
supposed fact. So I put him through an examination. I asked if he
knew what “omees” were, in particular as to the character signified
by the phrase “omee of the carser.” Then as to the idioms “nunty
munjare” and “nunty dinnari” and so on. He broke down badly, but he
put away his evil suspicions from that moment; he knew that if I had
written books in my day I had turned over a new leaf and had become a
reformed character: I knew the curious speech better than he did. It
is barbarous Italian, and was the lingo of old-fashioned actors and
thieves.
_Chapter XI_
It is a very odd experience to go on the stage at the age of
thirty-nine. It is, of course, unpractical, since at that age a
man is too old to learn the business properly; but it is a great
entertainment. The change was so extreme. I had always lived a
very quiet life. I had few friends, few acquaintances. My life was
in reading books and in writing them. All my preoccupations were
literary. Every morning after breakfast I went over what I had
written the night before, correcting here and there and everywhere,
generally convinced that the passage which had pleased me so much as
I wrote it was, after all, not magnificent. I took the bulldog for
a walk from 12 to 1, and another half-hour walk in the afternoon.
Then two cups of tea without milk or sugar at 4, and the rigour of
the literary game till 7, and again after dinner till 11. It was a
life of routine, and all its adventures, difficulties, defeats and
rare triumphs were those of the written page. I did not know a single
actor, and had no curiosity as to the actor’s life, circumstances,
customs or manners. And then, one afternoon in February, 1901, I
found myself stuck up with a number of ladies and gentlemen on a
thing like a greenhouse flower-pot stand, and we were all required
to express suitable and varied emotions as Shylock appealed for the
fulfilment of the bond which Antonio had given him. This was the
first thing I had tried to do on the stage, and I believe it was
the most difficult. No doubt Mr.--afterwards Sir Frank--Benson was
right in saying that it was the only way to learn how to act; but
gesture, facial expression, pantomime, the knack of knowing how to be
individual and yet to join in effectively with the crowd; all these
things are extremely difficult, very much more difficult than the art
of speaking an effective line effectively.
But--very likely because the change from my former way of living
was so tremendous in every respect--I found the life an enchanting
one. Of course I could not have begun under happier auspices; nay, I
could not have begun under any auspices half so happy. It has been