told us this tale in the Stage Door Club one night. We were sitting round the fire, talking of perfect love, and somebody asked him if he had ever thought of marrying.
"Once," said the comedian cheerfully.
"Couldn't you afford it?" His talent and the remains of his good looks were worth fifty pounds a week to him then, but there had been days—well, listen to Bagot!
"It wasn't that I couldn't afford it," he said with a laugh; "actors never wait till they can afford it. I escaped in a curious way. What saved me was being such an artist. Fact! I was really smitten. If I hadn't been an artist in spite of myself I should be shivering in the last train home to Bedford Park now, instead of talking to you dear boys in an arm-chair, with a glass at my side. What? Oh, I'll tell you about it with pleasure!
"Of course, you know I made my name as the 'Rev. Simon Tibbits' in poor Pulteney's Touch and Go. Some things a man doesn't forget, and I remember how I felt when I settled for the part better than I remember yesterday. You see it was my first London engagement, and I had been trying to get one in London for sixteen years. Sixteen years I had been on the road—and seen the amateurs with money sauntering on to the West End stage from their Varsity Club!
"My agent had told me to try my luck at the office over the theatre, one morning in July, and when I went in, there was nobody there but a young man who I guessed must be Pulteney. He was sitting at the table with a pencil in his hand, fiddling with a model of one of the scenes, and looking as worried as if he had been Chancellor of the Exchequer.
"‘Have I the honour of speaking to Mr. Pulteney?' said I. In those days I imagined authors were important persons.
"He flushed, and smiled—rather on the wrong side of his mouth, I thought. 'That's my name.'
"‘I was sent round to see you about the part of the clergyman in your farcical comedy, Mr, Pulteney,' I said. I had really been sent to see the stage-manager, but soft soap is never wasted, and I was always a bit of a diplomatist.
"He asked me to sit down, and we talked. He was smoking a cigarette, and I thought for a moment he was going to offer me one. I suppose it occurred to him that it wouldn't be the right thing to ask an actor to smoke in the manager's room, for he threw his own cigarette away. He was a gentleman, poor Pulteney, though he was a deuced bad dramatist.
"The manager came bustling back soon, and began to hum and haw, but Pulteney put in a word that made it all right. I was told it was a capital part, and a big chance for me, and I skipped downstairs and out into the street, feeling as puffed-up as if I owned the Strand. As a matter of fact, the salary wasn't much—I had had better money in the provinces—but the thought of making a hit in the West End so excited me that I was nearly popping with pride.
"Great Cumberland Place! wasn't I sold when the part came. You've no idea how duffing it really was. I don't mind saying that a good many jolly fine comedians would never have got a laugh in it. When I read the jokes I could have cried. It wasn't funny as the author wrote it, dear boys, believe me. I don't want to brag of what I've done—I'm not the man to gas about myself—but it was the character I put into it that made Pulteney's piece!
"Well, the rehearsals weren't beginning for three weeks, and I kept hoping I'd see how to do something with it before the first call. I spoke the lines one way, and I spoke the lines another way, and the more I studied the glummer I felt. I had my dinner at Exeter Hall several times and listened to the people giving their orders; it was cheap, and I thought I might hear the sort of tone I was trying to get hold of. But I didn't. On the Sunday I went to three churches and sat through three sermons. Honest Injun! And that was no use. Talk about an R.A.'s difficulty in finding the right model? I spent eight dusty days scouring London for a model for the 'Rev. Simon Tibbits'!
"Then one afternoon I had come out of Prossers' Avenue. As it happened I wasn't thinking shop; I wasn't thinking about anything in particular; and all of a sudden I heard a voice. A voice? I heard the voice. I heard the voice I needed for the part!