My Autobiography (3 page)

Every night, after she came home from the theatre, it was her custom to leave delicacies on the table for Sydney and me to find in the morning – a slice of Neapolitan cake or candies – with the understanding that we were not to make a noise in the morning, as she usually slept late.

Mother was a soubrette on the variety stage, a
mignonne
in her late twenties, with fair complexion, violet-blue eyes and long light-brown hair that she could sit upon. Sydney and I adored our mother. Though she was not an exceptional beauty, we thought her divine-looking. Those who knew her told me in later years that she was dainty and attractive and had compelling charm. She took pride in dressing us up for Sunday excursions, Sydney in an Eton suit with long trousers and me in a blue velvet one with blue gloves to match. Such occasions were orgies of smugness, as we ambled along the Kennington Road.

London was sedate in those days. The tempo was sedate; even the horse-drawn tram-cars along Westminster Bridge Road went at a sedate pace and turned sedately on a revolving table at the terminal near the bridge. In Mother’s prosperous days we also lived in Westminster Bridge Road. Its atmosphere was gay and friendly with attractive shops, restaurants and music halls. The fruit-shop on the corner facing the Bridge was a galaxy of colour, with its neatly arranged pyramids of oranges, apples, pears and bananas outside, in contrast to the solemn grey Houses of Parliament directly across the river.

This was the London of my childhood, of my moods and awakenings: memories of Lambeth in the spring; of trivial incidents and things; of riding with Mother on top of a horse-bus trying to touch passing lilac-trees – of the many coloured bus tickets, orange, blue, pink and green, that bestrewed the pavement where the trams and buses stopped – of rubicund flower-girls at the corner of Westminster Bridge, making gay
boutonnières
, their adroit fingers manipulating tinsel and quivering fern – of the humid odour of freshly watered roses that affected me with a vague sadness – of melancholy Sundays and pale-faced parents and their children escorting toy windmills and coloured balloons over Westminster Bridge; and the maternal penny steamers that softly lowered their funnels as they glided under it. From such trivia I believe my soul was born.

Then objects in our sitting-room that affected my senses: Mother’s life-size painting of Nell Gwyn, which I disliked; the long-necked decanters on our sideboard, which depressed me, and the small round music-box with its enamelled surface depicting angels on clouds, which both pleased and baffled me. But my sixpenny toy chair bought from the gypsies I loved because it gave me an inordinate sense of possession.

Memories of epic moments: a visit to the Royal Aquarium,
^*
viewing its side-shows with Mother, watching ‘She’, the live head of a lady smiling in flames, the sixpenny lucky dip, Mother lifting me up to a large sawdust barrel to pick a surprise packet which contained a candy whistle which would not blow and a
toy ruby brooch. Then a visit to the Canterbury Music Hall, sitting in a red plush seat watching my father perform…

Now it is night and I am wrapped in a travelling rug on top of a four-in-hand coach, driving with Mother and her theatrical friends, cosseted in their gaiety and laughter as our trumpeter, with clarion braggadocio, heralds us along the Kennington Road to the rhythmic jingle of harness and the beat of horses’ hoofs.

*

Then something happened! It could have been a month or a few days later – a sudden realization that all was not well with Mother and the outside world. She had been away all the morning with a lady friend and had returned home in a state of excitement. I was playing on the floor and became conscious of intense agitation going on above me, as though I were listening from the bottom of a well. There were passionate exclamations and tears from Mother, who kept mentioning the name Armstrong – Armstrong said this, Armstrong said that, Armstrong was a brute! Her excitement was strange and intense so that I began to cry, so much so that Mother was obliged to pick me up and console me. A few years later I learned the significance of that afternoon. Mother had returned from the law courts where she had been suing my father for non-support of her children, and the case had not gone too well for her. Armstrong was my father’s lawyer.

I was hardly aware of a father, and do not remember him having lived with us. He too was a vaudevillian, a quiet, brooding man with dark eyes. Mother said he looked like Napoleon. He had a light baritone voice and was considered a very fine artist. Even in those days he earned the considerable sum of forty pounds a week. The trouble was that he drank too much, which Mother said was the cause of their separation.

It was difficult for vaudevillians not to drink in those days, for alcohol was sold in all theatres, and after a performer’s act he was expected to go to the theatre bar and drink with the customers. Some theatres made more profit from the bar than from the box office, and a number of stars were paid large salaries not alone for their talent but because they spent most of their money at the theatre bar. Thus many an artist was
ruined by drink – my father was one of them. He died of alcoholic excess at the age of thirty-seven.

Mother would tell stories about him with humour and sadness. He had a violent temper when drinking, and during one of his tantrums she ran off to Brighton with some friends, and in answer to his frantic telegram: ‘What are you up to? Answer at once!’ she wired back: ‘Balls, parties and picnics, darling!’

Mother was the elder of two daughters. Her father, Charles Hill, an Irish cobbler, came from County Cork, Ireland. He had rosy apple cheeks, a shock of white hair and a beard like Carlyle in Whistler’s portrait. He was doubled over with rheumatic gout due, he said, to sleeping in damp fields hiding from the police during the nationalist uprisings. He eventually settled in London, establishing himself in a boot-repairing business in East Lane, Walworth.

Grandma was half gypsy. This fact was the skeleton in our family cupboard. Nevertheless, Grandma bragged that her family always paid ground-rent. Her maiden name was Smith. I remember her as a bright little old lady who always greeted me effusively with baby talk. She died before I was six. She was separated from Grandpa, for what reason neither grandparent would tell. But according to Aunt Kate there was a domestic triangle in which Grandpa surprised Grandma with a lover.

To gauge the morals of our family by commonplace standards would be as erroneous as putting a thermometer in boiling water. With such genetic attributes, two pretty cobbler’s daughters quickly left home and gravitated to the stage.

Aunt Kate, Mother’s younger sister, was also a soubrette; but we knew little about her, for she wove in and out of our lives sporadically. She was pretty and temperamental and never got along very well with Mother. Her occasional visits usually ended abruptly with acrimony at something Mother had said or done.

At eighteen Mother had eloped with a middle-aged man to Africa. She often spoke of her life there; living in luxury amidst plantations, servants and saddle horses.

In her eighteenth year my brother Sydney was born. I was told he was the son of a lord and that when he reached the age of twenty-one he would inherit a fortune of two thousand pounds, which information both pleased and annoyed me.

Mother did not stay long in Africa, but returned to England and married my father. I had no knowledge of what ended the African episode, but in our extreme poverty I would reproach her for giving up such a wonderful life. She would laugh and say that she was too young to be cautious or wise.

What degree of feeling she had for my father I never knew, but whenever she spoke of him it was without bitterness, which makes me suspect she was too objective to have been deeply in love. Sometimes she would give a sympathetic account of him, and at other times talk of his drunkenness and violence. In later years, whenever angry with me she would ruefully say: ‘You’ll finish up in the gutter like your father.’

She had known Father before she went to Africa. They had been sweethearts, and had played together in the same Irish melodrama called
Shamus O’Brien
. At sixteen she played the leading role. While touring with this company, she met and ran off with the middle-aged lord to Africa. When she returned to England, Father took up the broken threads of their romance and they married. Three years later I was born.

What other facts besides drink were involved I do not know, but a year after my birth my parents separated. Mother did not seek alimony. Being a star in her own right, earning twenty-five pounds a week, she was well able to support herself and her children. Only when ill-fortune befell her did she seek relief; otherwise she would never have taken legal steps.

She had been having trouble with her voice. It was never strong, and the slightest cold brought on laryngitis which lasted for weeks; but she was obliged to keep working, so that her voice grew progressively worse. She could not rely on it. In the middle of singing it would crack or suddenly disappear into a whisper, and the audience would laugh and start booing. The worry of it impaired her health and made her a nervous wreck. As a consequence, her theatrical engagements fell off until they were practically nil.

It was owing to her vocal condition that at the age of five I made my first appearance on the stage. Mother usually brought me to the theatre at night in preference to leaving me alone in rented rooms. She was playing the Canteen at Aldershot at the time, a grubby, mean theatre catering mostly to soldiers. They
were a rowdy lot and wanted little excuse to deride and ridicule. To performers, Aldershot was a week of terror.

I remember standing in the wings when Mother’s voice cracked and went into a whisper. The audience began to laugh and sing falsetto and to make catcalls. It was all vague and I did not quite understand what was going on. But the noise increased until Mother was obliged to walk off the stage. When she came into the wings she was very upset and argued with the stage manager who, having seen me perform before Mother’s friends, said something about letting me go on in her place.

And in the turmoil I remember him leading me by the hand and, after a few explanatory words to the audience, leaving me on the stage alone. And before a glare of footlights and faces in smoke, I started to sing, accompanied by the orchestra, which fiddled about until it found my key. It was a well-known song called
Jack Jones
that went as follows:

Jack Jones well and known to everybody

Round about the market, don’t yer see,

I’ve no fault to find with Jack at all,

Not when ’e’s as ’e used to be.

But since ’e’s had the bullion left him

’E has altered for the worst,

For to see the way he treats all his old pals

Fills me with nothing but disgust.

Each Sunday morning he reads the
Telegraph
,

Once he was contented with the
Star
.

Since Jack Jones has come into a little bit of cash,

Well, ’e don’t know where ’e are.

Half-way through, a shower of money poured on to the stage. Immediately I stopped and announced that I would pick up the money first and sing afterwards. This caused much laughter. The stage manager came on with a handkerchief and helped me to gather it up. I thought he was going to keep it. This thought was conveyed to the audience and increased their laughter, especially when he walked off with it with me anxiously following him. Not until he handed it to Mother did I return and continue to sing. I was quite at home. I talked to the audience, danced, and did several imitations including one of Mother singing her Irish march song that went as follows:

Riley, Riley, that’s the boy to beguile ye,

Riley, Riley, that’s the boy for me.

In all the Army great and small,

There’s none so trim and neat

As the noble Sergeant Riley

Of the gallant Eighty-eight.

And in repeating the chorus, in all innocence I imitated Mother’s voice cracking and was surprised at the impact it had on the audience. There was laughter and cheers, then more money-throwing; and when Mother came on the stage to carry me off, her presence evoked tremendous applause. That night was my first appearance on the stage and Mother’s last.

When the fates deal in human destiny, they heed neither pity nor justice. Thus they dealt with Mother. She never regained her voice. As autumn turns to winter, so our circumstances turned from bad to worse. Although Mother was careful and had saved a little money, that very soon vanished, as did her jewellery and other small possessions which she pawned in order to live, hoping all the while that her voice would return.

Meanwhile from three comfortable rooms we moved into two, then into one, our belongings dwindling and the neighbourhoods into which we moved growing progressively drabber.

She turned to religion, in the hope, I suppose, that it would restore her voice. She regularly attended Christ Church in the Westminster Bridge Road, and every Sunday I was made to sit through Bach’s organ music and to listen with aching impatience to the Reverend F. B. Meyer’s fervent and dramatic voice echoing down the nave like shuffling feet. His orations must have been appealing, for occasionally I would catch Mother quietly wiping away a tear, which slightly embarrassed me.

Well do I remember Holy Communion on one hot summer’s day, and the cool silver cup containing delicious grape-juice that passed along the congregation – and Mother’s gentle restraining hand when I drank too much of it. And how relieved I was when the Reverend closed the Bible, for it meant that the sermon would soon end and they would start prayers and the final hymn.

Since Mother had joined the church she seldom saw her theatrical friends. That world had evaporated, had become only
a memory. It seemed that we had always lived in wretched circumstances. The interim of one year seemed a lifetime of travail. Now we existed in cheerless twilight; jobs were hard to find and Mother, untutored in everything but the stage, was further handicapped. She was small, dainty and sensitive, fighting against terrific odds in a Victorian era in which wealth and poverty were extreme, and poorer-class women had little choice but to do menial work or to be the drudges of sweatshops, Occasionally she obtained work nursing, but such employment was rare and of short duration. Nevertheless, she was resourceful: having made her own theatrical costumes, she was expert with her needle and able to earn a few shillings dressmaking for members of the church. But it was barely enough to support the three of us. Because of Father’s drinking, his theatrical engagements became irregular, as did his payments of ten shillings a week.