Book: Austin and His Friends

F >> Frederic H. Balfour >> Austin and His Friends




"Guests, to my pledge!
Down on your knees, and drink a measure to
The safety of the King--the monarch, say I?
The god Sardanapalus! mightier than
His father Baal, the god Sardanapalus!"
[_Thunder. Confusion._]

Ah, that was thrilling, if you like, in spite of the halting rhythm.
And yet, even at that supreme moment, the vision of the umbrella and
the rather shabby hat would crop up again, and Austin didn't quite
know whether to let himself be thrilled or to lean back and roar. The
conspiracy burst out a few minutes afterwards, and then there ensued
a most terrifying and portentous battle, rioters and loyalists
furiously attempting to kill each other by the singular expedient of
clattering their swords together so as to make as much noise as
possible, and then passing them under their antagonists' armpits, till
the stage was heaped with corpses; and all this bloody work entirely
irrespective of the valuable glass and china on the supper-table, and
the costly hearthrugs strewn about the floor. Even Sardanapalus,
having first looked in the glass to make sure that his helmet was
straight, performed prodigies of valour, and the curtain descended to
his insatiable shouting for fresh weapons and a torrent of tumultuous
applause from the gallery.

"Now for it!" said Austin to himself, when another act had been got
through, in the course of which Sardanapalus had suffered from a
distressing nightmare. He took Mr Buskin's card out of his pocket,
and, hurrying out as fast as he could manage, stumped his way round to
the stage door. Cerberus would fain have stopped him, but Austin
flourished his card in passing, and enquired of the first
civil-looking man he met where the manager was to be found. He was
piloted through devious ways and under strange scaffoldings, to the
foot of a steep and very dirty flight of steps--luckily there were
only seven--at the top of which was dimly visible a door; and at this,
having screwed his courage to the sticking-place, he knocked.

"Come in!" cried a voice inside.

He found himself on the threshold of a room such as he had never seen
before. There was no carpet, and the little furniture it contained was
heaped with masses of heterogeneous clothes. Two looking-glasses were
fixed against the walls, and in front of one of them was a sort of
shelf, or dresser, covered with small pots of some ungodly looking
materials of a pasty appearance--rouge, grease-paint, cocoa-butter,
and heaven knows what beside--with black stuff, white stuff, yellow
stuff, paint-brushes, gum-pots, powder-puffs, and discoloured rags
spread about in not very picturesque confusion. In a corner of this
engaging boudoir, sitting in an armchair with a glass of liquor beside
him and smoking a strong cigar, was the most extraordinary and
repulsive object he had ever clapped his eyes on. The face, daubed and
glistening with an unsightly coating of red, white, and yellow-ochre
paint, and adorned with protuberant bristles by way of eyebrows,
appeared twice its natural dimensions. The throat was bare to the
collar-bones. A huge wig covered the head, falling over the shoulders;
while the whole was encircled by a great wreath of pink calico roses,
the back of which, just under the nape of the neck, was fastened by a
glittering pinchbeck tassel. The arms were nude, their natural growth
of dark hair being plastered over with white chalk, which had a
singularly ghastly effect; a short-skirted, low-necked gold frock, cut
like a little girl's, partly covered the body, and over this were
draped coarse folds of scarlet, purple, and white, with tinsel stars
along the seams, and so disposed as to display to fullest advantage
the brawny calves of the tragedian.

"Great Scott, if it isn't young Dot-and-carry-One!" exclaimed Mr
Sardanapalus Buskin, as the slim figure of Austin, in his simple
evening-dress, appeared at the entrance. "Come in, young gentleman,
come in. So you've come to beard the lion in his den, have you? Well,
it's kind of you not to have forgotten. You're welcome, very welcome.
That was a very pleasant little meeting we had the other day, over
there in the fields. And what do you think of the performance? Been in
front?"

"Oh, yes--thank you so very much," said Austin, hesitatingly. "It is
awfully kind of you to let me come and see you like this. I've never
seen anything of the sort in all my life."

"Ah, I daresay it's a sort of revelation to you," said Sardanapalus,
with good-humoured condescension. "Have a drop of whiskey-and-water?
Well, well, I won't press you. And so you've enjoyed the play?"

"The whole thing has interested me enormously," replied Austin. "It
has given me any amount to think of."

"Ah, that's good; that's very good, indeed," said the actor, nodding
sagely. "Do you remember what I was saying to you the other day about
the educative power of the stage? That's what it is, you see; the
greatest educative power in the land. How did that last scene go? Made
the people in the stalls sit up a bit, I reckon. Ah, it's a great
life, this. Talk of art! I tell you, young gentleman, acting's the
only art worthy of the name. The actor's all the artists in creation
rolled into one. Every art that exists conspires to produce him and to
perfect him. Painting, for instance; did you ever see anything to
compare with that Banqueting Scene in the Palace? Why, it's a triumph
of pictorial art, and, by Jove, of architecture too. And the actor
doesn't only paint scenes--or get them painted for him, it comes to
the same thing--he paints himself. Look at me, for instance. Why, I
could paint you, young gentleman, so that your own mother wouldn't
know you. With a few strokes of the brush I could transform you into a
beautiful young girl, or a wrinkled old Jew, or an Artful Dodger, or
anything else you had a fancy for. Music, again--think of the effect
of that slow music in the first act. There was pathos for you, if you
like. Oratory--talk of Demosthenes or Cicero, Mr Gladstone or John
Bright! Why, they're nowhere, my dear young friend, literally nowhere.
Didn't my description of the dream just _fetch_ you? Be honest now; by
George, Sir, it thrilled the house. Look here, young man"--and
Sardanapalus began to speak very slowly, with tremendous emphasis and
solemnity--"and remember what I'm going to say until your dying day.
If I were to drink too much of this, I should be intoxicated; but what
is the intoxication produced by whiskey compared with the intoxication
of applause? Just think of it, as soberly and calmly as you
can--hundreds of people, all in their right minds, stamping and
shouting and yelling for you to come and show yourself before the
curtain; the entire house at your feet. Why, it's worship, Sir, sheer
worship; and worship is a very sacred thing. Show me the man who's
superior to _that_, and I'll show you a man who's either above or
below the level of human nature. Whatever he may be, I don't envy him.
To-morrow morning I shall be an ordinary citizen in a frock-coat and a
tall hat. To-night I'm a king, a god. What other artist can say as
much?"

So saying, Sardanapalus puffed up his cigar and swallowed another
half-glass of liquor. The pungent smoke made Austin cough and blink.
"It must indeed be an exciting life," he ventured; "quite delirious,
to judge from what you say."

"It requires a cool head," replied Sardanapalus, with a stoical shrug.
"Ah! there's the bell," he added, as a loud ting was heard outside.
"The curtain's going up. Now hurry away to the front, and see the last
act. The scene where I'm burnt on the top of all my treasures isn't to
be missed. It's the grandest and most moving scene in any play upon
the stage. And watch the expression of my face," said Mr Buskin, as he
applied the powder-puff to his cheeks and nose. "Gestures are all very
well--any fool can be taught to act with his arms and legs. But
expression! That's where the heaven-born genius comes in. However, I
must be off. Good-night, young gentleman, good-night."

He shook Austin warmly by the hand, and precipitated himself down the
wooden steps. Austin followed, regained the stage-door, and was soon
back in the dress-circle. But he felt that really he had seen almost
enough. The last act seemed to drag, and it was only for the sake of
witnessing the holocaust at the end that he sat it out. Even the
varying "expressions" assumed by Sardanapalus failed to arouse his
enthusiasm. He reproached himself for this, for poor Buskin rolled his
eyes and twisted his mouth and pulled such lugubrious faces that
Austin felt how pathetic it all was, and how hard the man was trying
to work upon the feelings of the audience. But the flare-up at the end
was really very creditable. Blue fire, red fire, and clouds of smoke
filled the entire stage, and when Myrrha clambered up the burning pile
to share the fate of her paramour the enthusiasm of the spectators
knew no bounds. Calls for Sardanapalus and all his company resounded
from every part of the house, and it was a tremendous moment when the
curtain was drawn aside, and the great actor, apparently not a penny
the worse for having just been burnt alive, advanced majestically to
the footlights. Then all the other performers were generously
permitted to approach and share in the ovation, bowing again and again
in acknowledgment of the approbation of their patrons, and looking,
thought Austin rather cruelly, exactly like a row of lacqueys in
masquerade. This marked the close of the proceedings, and Austin, with
a sigh of relief, soon found himself once more in the cool streets,
walking briskly in the direction of the country.

Well, he had had his experience, and now his curiosity was satisfied.
What was the net result? He began sifting his sensations, and trying
to discover what effect the things he had seen and heard had really
had upon him. It was all very brilliant, very interesting; in a
certain way, very exciting. He began to understand what it was that
made so many people fond of theatre-going. But he felt at the same
time that he himself was not one of them. For some reason or other he
had escaped the spell. He was more inclined to criticise than to
enjoy. There was something wanting in it all. What could that
something be?

The sound of footsteps behind him, echoing in the quiet street, just
then reached his ears. The steps came nearer, and the next moment a
well-known voice exclaimed:

"Well, Austin! I hoped I should catch you up!"

"Oh, Mr St Aubyn, is that you? How glad I am to see you!" cried the
boy, grasping the other's hand. "This is a delightful surprise. Have
you been to the theatre, too?"

"I have," replied St Aubyn. "You didn't notice me, I daresay, but I
was watching you most of the time. It amused me to speculate what
impression the thing was making on you. Were you very much carried
away?"

"I certainly was not," said Austin, "though I was immensely
interested. It gave me a lot to think about, as I told Mr Buskin
himself when I went to see him for a few minutes behind the scenes.
You know I happened to meet him a few days ago, and he asked me to--it
really was most kind of him. By the way, he was just on his way to
call upon you at the Court."

"Well--and now tell me what you thought of it all. What impressed you
most about the whole affair?"

"I think," said Austin, speaking very slowly, as though weighing every
word, "that the general impression made upon me was that of utter
unreality. I cannot conceive of anything more essentially artificial.
The music was pretty, the scenery was very fine, and the costumes were
dazzling enough--from a distance; but when you've said that you've
said everything. The situations were impossible and absurd. The
speeches were bombast. The sentiment was silly and untrue. And
Sardanapalus himself was none so distraught by his unpleasant dream
and all his other troubles but that he was looking forward to his
glass of whiskey-and-water between the acts. No, he didn't impose on
me one bit. I didn't believe in Sardanapalus for a moment, even before
I had the privilege of seeing and hearing him as Mr Buskin in his
dressing-room. The entire business was a sham."

"But surely it doesn't pretend to be anything else?" suggested St
Aubyn, surprised.

"Be it so. I don't like shams, I suppose," returned the boy.

"Still, you shouldn't generalise too widely," urged the other. "There
are plays where one's sensibilities are really touched, where the
situations are not forced, where the performers move and speak like
living, ordinary human beings, and, in the case of great actors, work
upon the feelings of the audience to such an extent----"

"And there the artificiality is all the greater!" chipped in Austin,
tersely. "The more perfect the illusion, the hollower the
artificiality. Of course, no one could take Sardanapalus seriously,
any more than if he were a marionette pulled by strings instead of the
sort of live marionette he really is. But where the acting and the
situations are so perfect, as you say, as to cause real emotion, the
unreality of the whole business is more flagrantly conspicuous than
ever. The emotions pourtrayed are not real, and nobody pretends they
are. The art, therefore, of making them appear real, and even
communicating them to the audience, must of necessity involve greater
artificiality than where the acting is bad and the situations
ridiculous. There's a person I know, near where I live--you never
heard of him, of course, but he's called Jock MacTavish--and he told
me he once went to see a really very great actress do some part or
other in which she had to die a most pathetic death. It was said to be
simply heart-rending, and everybody used to cry. Well, the night Jock
MacTavish was there something went wrong--a sofa was out of its place,
or a bolster had been forgotten, or a rope wouldn't work, I don't know
what it was--and the language that woman indulged in while she was in
the act of dying would have disgraced a bargee. Jock was in a
stage-box and heard every filthy word of it. Of course _he_ told me
the story as a joke, and I was rather disgusted, but I'm glad he did
so now. That was an extreme case, I know--such things don't occur one
time in ten thousand, no doubt--but it's an illustration of what I
mean when I say that the finer the illusion produced the hollower the
sham that produces it."

"You're a mighty subtle-minded young person for your age," exclaimed
St Aubyn, with a good-humoured laugh. "I confess that your theory is
new to me; it had never occurred to me before. For one who has only
been inside a theatre two or three times in his life you seem to have
elaborated your conclusions pretty quickly. I may infer, then, that
you're not exactly hankering to go on the stage yourself?"

"_I_?" said Austin, drawing himself up. "I, disguise myself in paint
and feathers to be a public gazing-stock? Of course you mean it as a
joke."

"And yet there _are_ gentlemen upon the stage," observed St Aubyn, in
order to draw him on.

"So much the better for the stage, perhaps; so much the worse for the
gentlemen," replied Austin haughtily.

A pause. They were now well out in the open country, with the moonlit
road stretching far in front of them. Then St Aubyn said, in a
different tone altogether:

"You surprise me beyond measure by what you say. I should have thought
that a boy of your poetical and artistic temperament would have had
his imagination somewhat fired, even by the efforts of the poor
showman whom we've seen to-night. Now I will make you a confession. At
the bottom of my heart I agree with every word you've said. I may be
one-sided, prejudiced, what you will, but I cannot help looking upon a
public performer as I look upon no other human being. And I pity the
performer, too; he takes himself so seriously, he fails so completely
to realise what he really is. And the danger of going on the stage is
that, once an actor, always an actor. Let a man once get bitten by the
craze, and there's no hope for him. Only the very finest natures can
escape. The fascination is too strong. He's ruined for any other
career, however honourable and brilliant."

"Is that so, really?" asked Austin. "I cannot see where all this
wonderful fascination comes in. I should think it must be a dreadful
trade myself."

"So it is. Because they don't know it. Because of the very fascination
which exists, although you can't understand it. Let me tell you a
story. I knew a man once upon a time--he was a great friend of
mine--in the navy. Although he was quite young, not more than
twenty-six, he was already a distinguished officer; he had seen active
service, been mentioned in despatches, and all the rest of it. He was
also, curiously enough, a most accomplished botanist, and had written
papers on the flora of Cambodia and Yucatan that had been accepted
with marked appreciation by the Linnaean Society. Well--that man, who
had a brilliant career before him, and would probably have been an
admiral and a K.C.B. if he had stuck to it, got attacked by the
theatrical microbe. He chucked everything, and devoted his whole life
to acting. He is acting still. He cares for nothing else. It is the
one and only thing in the universe he lives for. The service of his
country, the pure fame of scientific research and authorship, are as
nothing to him, the merest dust in the balance, as compared with the
cheap notoriety of the footlights."

"He must be mad. And is he a success?" asked Austin.

"Judge for yourself--you've just been seeing him," replied St Aubyn.
"Though, of course, his name is no more Buskin than yours or mine."

"Good Heavens!" cried the boy. "And Mr Buskin was--all that?"

"He was all that," responded the other. "It was rather painful for me
to see him this evening in his present state, as you may imagine. As
to his being successful in a monetary sense, I really cannot tell you.
But, to do him justice, I don't think he cares for money in the very
least. So long as he makes two ends meet he's quite satisfied. All he
cares about is painting his face, and dressing himself up, and
ranting, and getting rounds of applause. And, so far, he certainly has
his reward. His highest ambition, it is true, he has not yet attained.
If he could only get his portrait published in a halfpenny paper
wearing some new-shaped stock or collar that the hosiers were anxious
to bring into fashion, he would feel that there was little left to
live for. But that is a distinction reserved for actors who stand at
the tip-top of their profession, and I'm afraid that poor Buskin has
but little chance of ever realising his aspiration."

"Are you serious?" said Austin, open-eyed.

"Absolutely," replied St Aubyn. "I know it for a fact."

"Well," exclaimed Austin, fetching a deep breath, "of course if a man
has to do this sort of thing for a living--if it's his only way of
making money--I don't think I despise him so much. But if he does it
because he loves it, loves it better than any other earthly thing,
then I despise him with all my heart and soul. I cannot conceive a
more utterly unworthy existence."

"And to such an existence our friend Buskin has sacrificed his whole
career," replied St Aubyn, gravely.

"What a tragedy," observed the boy.

"Yes; a tragedy," agreed the other. "A truer tragedy than the
imitation one that he's been acting in, if he could only see it. Well,
here is my turning. Good-night! I'm very glad we met. Come and see me
soon. I'm not going away again."

Then Austin, left alone, stumped thoughtfully along the country road.
The sweet smell of the flowery hedges pervaded the night air, and from
the fields on either side was heard ever and anon the bleating of some
wakeful sheep. How peaceful, how reposeful, everything was! How strong
and solemn the great trees looked, standing here and there in the wide
meadows under the moonlight and the stars! And what a contrast--oh,
_what_ a contrast--was the beauty of these calm pastoral scenes to
the tawdry gorgeousness of those other "scenes" he had been witnessing,
with their false effects, and coloured fires, and painted, spouting
occupants! There was no need for him to argue the question any more,
even with himself. It was as clear as the moon in the steel-blue sky
above him that the associations of the theatre were totally, hopelessly,
and radically incompatible with the ideals of the Daphnis life.




Chapter the Eighth


It is scarcely necessary to say that Austin knew nothing whatever
about his aunt's preoccupation, and that even if she had taken him
into her confidence, he would have paid little or no attention to the
matter. I am afraid that his ideas about finance were crude in the
extreme, being limited to a sort of vague impression that capital was
what you put into a bank, and interest was what you took out; while
the difference between the par value of a security and the price you
could get for it on the market, would have been to him a hopelessly
unfathomable mystery. Aunt Charlotte, therefore, was very wise in
abstaining from any reference, in conversation, to the great
enterprise for extracting gold from sea-water, in which she hoped to
purchase shares; for one could never have told what foolish remark he
might have made, though it was quite certain that he would have said
something foolish, and probably very exasperating. So she kept her
secret locked up in her own breast, and silently counted the hours
till she could get a reply from her bankers.

Of course Austin had to give his aunt an account, at breakfast-time
next morning, of the pageant of the previous night; and as he confined
himself to saying that the scenery and dresses were very fine, and
that Mr Buskin was quite unrecognisable, and that all the performers
knew their parts, and that he had walked part of the way home with
Roger St Aubyn afterwards, the impression left on the good lady's mind
was that he had enjoyed himself very much. This inevitable duty
accomplished, Austin straightway banished the whole subject from his
memory and gave himself up more unreservedly than ever to his garden
and his thoughts. How fresh and sweet and welcoming the garden looked
on that calm, lovely summer day! How brightly the morning dewdrops
twinkled on the leaves, like a sprinkling of liquid diamonds! Every
flower seemed to greet him with silent laughter: "Aha, you've been
playing truant, have you? Straying into alien precincts, roving in
search of something newer and gaudier than anything you have here?
Sunlight palls on you; gas is so much more festive! The scents of the
fields are vulgar; finer the hot smells of the playhouse, more meet
for a cultured nostril!" Of course Austin made all this nonsense up
himself, but he felt so happy that it amused him to attribute the
words to the dear flower-friends who were all around him, and to whom
he could never be really faithless. Faugh! that playhouse! He would
never enter one again. Be an actor! Lubin was a cleaner gentleman than
any painted Buskin on the stage. Here, in the clear, pure splendour of
the sunlit air, the place where he had been last night loomed up in
his consciousness as something meretricious and unwholesome. Yet he
was glad he had been, for it made everything so much purer and sweeter
by contrast. Never had the garden looked more meetly set, never had
the sun shone more genially, and the air impelled the blood and sent
it coursing more joyously through his veins, than on that morning of
the rejuvenescence of all his high ideals.

Then he drew a small blue volume out of his pocket, and lay down on
the grass with his back against the trunk of an apple-tree. Austin's
theory--or one of his theories, for he had hundreds--was that one's
literature should always be in harmony with one's surroundings; and
so, intending to pass his morning in the garden, he had chosen 'The
Garden of Cyrus' as an appropriate study. He opened it reverently, for
it was compact of jewelled thoughts that had been set to words by one
of the princes of prose. He, the young garden-lover, sat at the feet
of the great garden-mystic, and began to pore wonderingly over the
inscrutable secrets of the quincunx. His fine ear was charmed by the
rhythm of the sumptuous and stately sentences, and his pulses throbbed
in response to every measured phrase in which the lore of garden
symmetry and the principles of garden science were set forth. He read
of the hanging gardens of Babylon, first made by Queen Semiramis,
third or fourth from Nimrod, and magnificently renewed by
Nabuchodonosor, according to Josephus: "_from whence, overlooking
Babylon, and all the region about it, he found no circumscription to
the eye of his ambition; till, over-delighted with the bravery of this
Paradise, in his melancholy metamorphosis he found the folly of that
delight, and a proper punishment in the contrary habitation--in wild
plantations and wanderings of the fields_." Austin shook his head over
this; he did not think it possible to love a garden too much, and
demurred to the idea that such a love deserved any punishment at all.
But that was theology, and he had no taste for theological
dissertations. So he dipped into the pages where the quincunx is
"naturally" considered, and here he admired the encyclopaedic learning
of the author, which appeared to have been as wide as that attributed
to Solomon; then glanced at the "mystic" part, which he reserved for
later study. But one paragraph riveted his attention, as he turned
over the leaves. Here was a mine of gold, a treasure-house of
suggestiveness and wisdom.

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