I HAVE RECEIVED by post a number of papers inviting me to become a member of the Irish Writers, Actors, Artists, Musicians Association, and to pay part of my money to the people who run this company. I am also invited to attend a meeting in Jury’s Hotel on Sunday week. Foot I will not set inside that door; act, hand or part I will not have with that party.
At one of the preliminary meetings of this organisation, I bought a few minor novelists at five bob a skull and persuaded them to propose me for the presidency. Then I rose myself and said that if it was the unanimous wish of the company, etc., quite unworthy, etc., signal honour, etc., serve to the best of my ability, etc., prior claims of other persons, etc., if humble talents of any service, etc., delighted to place knowledge of literary world at disposal of, etc., undoubted need for organisation, etc.
To my astonishment, instead of accepting my offer with loud and sustained applause, the wretched intellectuals broke up into frightened groups and started whispering together in great agitation. From where I sat in my mood of Homeric detachment I could distinctly hear snatches of talk like ‘never sober’, ‘literary corner-boy’, ‘pay nobody’, ‘Stubbs every week’, ‘running round with a TD’s wife’, ‘skip with the Association’s assets’, ‘great man for going to Paris’, ‘sell his mother for sixpence’, ‘belly full of brandy and unfortunate children without a rag’, ‘summoned for putting in plate glass window in Santry’, ‘pity unfortunate wife’, ‘half the stuff cogged from other people’, ‘sneer at us behind our backs’, ‘use Association’s name’, ‘what would people think’, ‘only inviting attention of Guards’, ‘who asked him here’, ‘believe he was born in Manchester’, ‘probably fly-boy’, ‘cool calculated cheek’: and so on, I regret to say. Subsequently a man with glasses got up and mumbled something about best thanks of all concerned, proposal somewhat premature, society not yet wholly formed, bring proposal forward at later date, certain that choice would be a popular one, with permission of company pass on to next business, disgraceful sweat rates paid by broadcasting station … I thought this was fair enough, but think of my feelings a few days afterwards on hearing that Mr Sean O Faoláin had been elevated to the same Presidency. One shrinks from gratuitous comparisons, but man for man, novels for novels, plays for plays, services to imperishable Irish nation for services to i. I.n., popularity as drawingroom raconteur for p. as d.r., which was the better choice? I leave the answer not only to my readers but also to a betrayed posterity who may yet decide that Dermot MacMurrough was not the worst.
In any event, I was completely opposed to some of this organisation’s aims. For instance, it is proposed to secure ‘improved rates for all literary work’. This simply means an even heavier deluge of unpardonable ‘poetry’, more articles entitled ‘Big John: A Sketch’, and a premium on mediocrity generally. It is also sought to have ‘concerted agreement on copyrights, contracts, etc.’ What sort of an agreement is a ‘concerted agreement’, or is there such a thing as a unconcerted, disconcerted, or misconcerted agreement? ‘Special rates for radio scripts.’ Why? They all bore even my thick wife. Reduce the rates and you’ll get less of them making a clack in your ear. ‘Free legal advice.’ This will disemploy several worthy solicitors, a fiery celtic breed that I admire. ‘Recovery of fees.’ Yes, but minus ten per cent. Get your money in your hand before you put pen to paper, that’s what I say.
Also, having regard to the categories mentioned, membership seems to be open to every man, woman and child in Ireland. Even my wife could claim to be a ‘commentator’ (whatever they mean by that word) and everybody knows that all these organisations are really formed in order to give people a pretext for getting away from their families. So what’s the use?
This is the land of Ireland and now that WAAMA is in existence and in active operation, it is time that a ‘split’ was organised and a rival body formed. Would any person who thinks that he or she has not had a fair deal from WAAMA please communicate with me at this office? We will form our own organisation, with better aims and heavier annual dinners. Pretty girls will be admitted free and nobody will be bored with guff about Sigrid Undset or James Joyce Cabell. How about it, lads? I am determined to be president of something before I die—of Ireland itself, if need be.
MY SUGGESTION the other day that the lines to be spoken in a new play at the Abbey should be displayed on banners suspended from the balcony and read off by the players as they go along, has won me golden opinions from the acting clique in WAAMA. They say that they are frequently asked to perform in very bad plays, and that no torment is so terrible as that of being compelled to commit muck to memory. An authoritative spokesman in official circles also stated last night that there appeared to be ‘no objection’ to my plan. That, of course, pleases me. Had his reaction been otherwise, I should have been compelled to ‘view’ his pronouncement ‘with concern’.
Yes, the plan is a good one. There would be no necessity to tell the actors beforehand what play they are appearing in. They just come out on the stage, peer into the auditorium, and then come out with some dreadful remark about ‘Old John’, or ‘Brigid, his wife’.
My plan has another great advantage in these nights of rushing for last ’buses. Supposing it is a case of missing the end of the play or missing your ’bus. Being possessed of reason, you are damned if you’ll miss your ’bus. But neither is it necessary to go home wondering what happened. You simply turn round and peer up at the balcony. Admittedly, it would look queer near the end of the play to have half the audience sitting with their backs to the stage and spelling out in loud whispers what the actors are going to say when they get a chance. Anything, however, is better than walking home in the rain. In an extreme case the entire audience might agree to take the rest of the play ‘as read’, and clear out en masse in the middle of the last act, thus releasing the tired actors and given them a chance of getting a lift home also. For the actors are human, too. Each had a mother.
A VISIT that I paid to the house of a newly-married friend the other day set me thinking. My friend is a man of great wealth and vulgarity. When he had set about buying bedsteads, tables, chairs and what-not, it occurred to him to buy also a library. Whether he can read or not, I do not know, but some savage faculty for observation told him that most respectable and estimable people usually had a lot of books in their houses. So he bought several book-cases and paid some rascally middleman to stuff them with all manner of new books, some of them very costly volumes on the subject of French landscape painting.
I noticed on my visit that not one of them had ever been opened or touched, and remarked the fact.
‘When I get settled down properly,’ said the fool, ‘I’ll have to catch up on my reading.’
This is what set me thinking. Why should a wealthy person like this be put to the trouble of pretending to read at all? Why not a professional book-handler to go in and suitably maul his library for so-much per shelf? Such a person, if properly qualified, could make a fortune.
Let me explain exactly what I mean. The wares in a bookshop look completely unread. On the other hand, a school-boy’s Latin dictionary looks read to the point of tatters. You know that the dictionary has been opened and scanned perhaps a million times, and if you did not know that there was such a thing as a box on the ear, you would conclude that the boy is crazy about Latin and cannot bear to be away from his dictionary. Similarly with our non-brow who wants his friends to infer from a glancing around his house that he is a high-brow. He buys an enormous book on the Russian ballet, written possibly in the language of that distant but beautiful land. Our problem is to alter the book in a reasonably short time so that anybody looking at it will conclude that its owner has practically lived, supped and slept with it for many months. You can, if you like, talk about designing a machine driven by a small but efficient petrol motor that would ‘read’ any book in five minutes, the equivalent of five years or ten years’ ‘reading’ being obtained by merely turning a knob. This, however, is the cheap soulless approach of the times we live in. No machine can do the same work as the soft human fingers. The trained and experienced book-handler is the only real solution of this contemporary social problem. What does he do? How does he work? What would he charge? How many types of handling would there be?
These questions and many more I will answer the day after tomorrow.
YES, this question of book-handling. The other day I had a word to say about the necessity for the professional book-handler, a person who will maul the books of illiterate, but wealthy, upstarts so that the books will look as if they have been read and re-read by their owners. How many uses of mauling would there be? Without giving the matter much thought, I should say four. Supposing an experienced handler is asked to quote for the handling of one shelf of books four feet in length. He would quote thus under four heads:—
‘Popular Handling—Each volume to be well and truly handled, four leaves in each to be dog-eared, and a tram ticket, cloak-room docket or other comparable article inserted in each as a forgotten book-mark. Say, £1 7s 6d. Five per cent discount for civil servants.’
‘Premier Handling—Each volume to be thoroughly handled, eight leaves in each to be dog-eared, a suitable passage in not less than 25 volumes to be underlined in red pencil, and a leaflet in French on the works of Victor Hugo to be inserted as a forgotten book-mark in each. Say, £2 17s 6d. Five per cent discount for literary university students, civil servants and lady social workers.’
The great thing about this graduated scale is that no person need appear ignorant or unlettered merely because he or she is poor. Not every vulgar person, remember, is wealthy, although I could name …
But no matter. Let us get on to the more expensive grades of handling. The next is well worth the extra money.
‘De Luxe Handling—Each volume to be mauled savagely, the spines of the smaller volumes to be damaged in a manner that will give the impression that they have been carried around in pockets, a passage in every volume to be underlined in red pencil with an exclamation or interrogation mark inserted in the margin opposite, an old Gate Theatre programme to be inserted in each volume as a forgotten book-mark (3 per cent discount if old Abbey programmes are accepted), not less than 30 volumes to be treated with old coffee, tea, porter or whiskey stains, and not less than five volumes to be inscribed with forged signatures of the authors. Five per cent discount for bank managers, county surveyors and the heads of business houses employing not less than 35 hands. Dog-ears extra and inserted according to instructions, twopence per half dozen per volume. Quotations for alternative old Paris theatre programmes on demand. This service available for a limited time only, nett, £7 18s 3d.’
The fourth class is the Handling Superb, although it is not called that—Le Traitement Superbe being the more usual title. It is so superb that I have no space for it today. It will appear here on Monday next, and, in honour of the occasion, the Irish Times on that day will be printed on hand-scutched antique interwoven demidevilled superfine Dutch paper, each copy to be signed by myself and to be accompanied by an exquisite picture in tri-colour lithograph of the Old House in College Green. The least you can do is to order your copy in advance.
And one more word. It is not sufficient just to order your copy. Order it in advance.
IT WILL BE remembered (how, in Heaven’s name, could it be forgotten) that I was discoursing on Friday last on the subject of book-handling, my new service, which enables ignorant people who want to be suspected of reading books to have their books handled and mauled in a manner that will give the impression that their owner is very devoted to them. I described three grades of handling and promised to explain what you get under Class Four—the Superb Handling, or the Traitement Superbe, as we lads who spent our honeymoon in Paris prefer to call it. It is the dearest of them all, of course, but far cheaper than dirt when you consider the amount of prestige you will gain in the eyes of your ridiculous friends. Here are the details:
‘Le Traitement Superbe’. Every volume to be well and truly handled, first by a qualified handler and subsequently by a master-handler who shall have to his credit not less than 550 handling hours; suitable passages in not less than fifty per cent of the books to be underlined in good-quality red ink and an appropriate phrase from the following list inserted in the margin, viz:
Rubbish!
Yes, indeed!
How true, how true!
I don’t agree at all.
Why?
Yes, but cf. Homer, Od., iii, 151.
Well, well, well.
Quite, but Boussuet in his Discours sur l’histoire Universelle has already established the same point and given much more forceful explanations.
Nonsense, nonsense!
A point well taken!
But why in heaven’s name?
I remember poor Joyce saying the very same thing to me.
Need I say that a special quotation may be obtained at any time for the supply of Special and Exclusive Phrases? The extra charge is not very much, really.
That, of course, is not all. Listen to this:
‘Not less than six volumes to be inscribed with forged messages of affection and gratitude from the author of each work, e.g.,
‘To my old friend and fellow-writer, A.B., in affectionate remembrance, from George Moore.’ ‘In grateful recognition of your great kindness to me, dear A.B., I send you this copy of The Crock of Gold. Your old friend, James Stephens.’
‘Well, A.B., both of us are getting on. I am supposed to be a good writer now, but I am not old enough to forget the infinite patience you displayed in the old days when guiding my young feet on the path of literature. Accept this further book, poor as it may be, and please believe that I remain, as ever, your friend and admirer, G. Bernard Shaw.’
‘From your devoted friend and follower, K. Marx.’
‘Dear A.B.,—Your invaluable suggestions and assistance, not to mention your kindness, in entirely re-writing chapter 3, entitles you, surely, to this first copy of “Tess”. From your old friend T. Hardy.’
‘Short of the great pleasure of seeing you personally, I can only send you, dear A.B., this copy of “The Nigger”. I miss your company more than I can say … (signature undecipherable).’
Under the last inscription, the moron who owns the book will be asked to write (and shown how if necessary) the phrase ‘Poor old Conrad was not the worst.’
All this has taken me longer to say than I thought. There is far more than this to be had for the paltry £32 7s 6d that the Superb Handling will cost you. In a day or two I hope to explain about the old letters which are inserted in some of the books by way of forgotten book-marks, every one of them an exquisite piece of forgery. Order your copy now!
I PROMISED to say a little more about the fourth, or Superb, grade of book handling.
The price I quoted includes the insertion in not less than ten volumes of certain old letters, apparently used at one time as bookmarks, and forgotten. Each letter will bear the purported signature of some well-known humbug who is associated with ballet, verse-mouthing, folk-dancing, wood-cutting, or some other such activity that is sufficiently free from rules to attract the non-brows in their swarms. Each of the letters will be a flawless forgery and will thank A.B., the owner of the book, for his ‘very kind interest in our work’, refer to his ‘invaluable advice and guidance’, his ‘unrivalled knowledge’ of the lep-as-lep-can game, his ‘patient and skilful direction of the corps on Monday night’, thank him for his very generous—too generous—subscription of two hundred guineas, ‘which is appreciated more than I can say’. As an up-to-the-minute inducement, an extra letter will be included free of charge. It will be signed (or purport to be signed) by one or other of the noisier young non-nationals who are honouring our beautiful land with their presence. This will satisfy the half-ambition of the majority of respectable vulgarians to maintain a second establishment in that somewhat congested thoroughfare, Queer Street.
The gentleman who are associated with me in the Dublin WAAMA League have realised that this is the off-season for harvesting the cash of simple people through the medium of the art-infected begging letter, and have turned their attention to fresh fields and impostures new. The latest racket we have on hands is the Myles na gCopaleen Book Club. You join this and are spared the nerve-racking bother of choosing your own books. We do the choosing for you, and, when you get the book, it is ready-rubbed, ie, subjected free of charge to our expert handlers. You are spared the trouble of soiling and mauling it to give your friends the impression that you can read. An odd banned book will be slipped in for those who like conversation such as:—
‘I say, did you read this, old man?’
‘I’m not terribly certain that I did, really.’
‘It’s banned, you know, old boy.’
‘Ow.’
There is no nonsense about completing a form, asking for a brochure, or any other such irritation. You just send in your guinea and you immediately participate in this great cultural uprising of the Irish people.
Occasionally we print and circulate works written specially for the Club by members of the WAAMA League. Copies are sent out in advance to well-known critics, accompanied by whatever fee that is usually required to buy them. We sent one man ten bob with a new book and asked him to say that once one takes the book up one cannot leave it down. The self-opinionated gobdaw returned the parcel with an impudent note saying that his price was twelve and sixpence. Our reply was immediate. Back went the parcel with twelve and sixpence and a curt note saying that we were accepting the gentleman’s terms. In due course we printed the favourable comment I have quoted.
But for once we took steps to see that our critic spoke the truth. The cover the volume was treated with a special brand of invisible glue that acts only when subjected to the heat of the hands. When our friend had concluded his cursory glance through the work and was about to throw it away, it had become practically part of his physical personality. Not only did the covers stick to his fingers, but the whole volume began to disintegrate into a viscous mess of treacly slime. Short of having his two arms amputated, putting the book down was an impossibility. He had to go round with the book for a week and submit to being fed like a baby by his maid. He got rid of the masterpiece only by taking a course of scalding hot baths that left him as weak as a kitten.
That’s the sort of customers we of the WAAMA League are.
Letters have been pouring in in shoals (please notice that when it is a question of shoals of letters they always pour) regarding the book-handling service inaugurated by my Dublin WAAMA League. It has been a great success. Our trained handlers have been despatched to the homes of some of the wealthiest and most ignorant in the land to maul, bend, bash, and gnaw whole casefuls of virgin books. Our printing presses have been turning out fake Gate Theatre and Abbey programmes by the hundred thousand, not to mention pamphlets in French, holograph letters signed by George Moore, medieval playing cards, and the whole paraphernalia of humbug and pretence.
There will be black sheep in every fold, of course. Some of our handlers have been caught using their boots, and others have been found thrashing inoffensive volumes of poetry with horsewhips, flails, and wooden clubs. Books have been savagely attacked with knives, daggers, knuckle-dusters, hatchets, rubber-piping, razor-blade-potatoes, and every device of assault ever heard of in the underworld. Novice handlers, not realising that tooth-marks on the cover of a book are not accepted as evidence that its owner has read it, have been known to train terriers to worry a book as they would a rat. One man (he is no longer with us) was sent to a house in Kilmainham, and was later discovered in the Zoo handing in his employer’s valuable books to Charlie the chimpanzee. A country-born handler ‘read’ his books beyond all recognition by spreading them out on his employer’s lawn and using a horse and harrow on them, subsequently ploughing them in when he realised that he had gone a little bit too far. Moderation, we find, is an extremely difficult thing to get in this country.
That, however, is by the way. A lot of the letters we receive are from well-off people who have no books. Nevertheless, they want to be thought educated. Can we help them, they ask?
Of course. Let nobody think that only book-owners can be smart. The Myles na gCopaleen Escort Service is the answer.
Why be a dumb dud? Do your friends shun you? Do people cross the street when they see you approaching? Do they run up the steps of strange houses, pretend they live there and force their way into the hall while you are passing by? If this is the sort of a person you are, you must avail yourself today of this new service. Otherwise, you might as well be dead.
Here is how it happened. The WAAMA League has had on its hands for some time past a horde of unemployed ventriloquists who have been beseeching us to get them work. These gentlemen have now been carefully trained and formed in a corps to operate this new escort service.
Supposing you are a lady and so completely dumb that the dogs in the street do not think you are worth growling at. You ring up the WAAMA League and explain your trouble. You are pleased by the patient and sympathetic hearing you get. You are instructed to be in attendance at the foyer of the Gate Theatre that evening, and to look out for a tall, distinguished-looking gentleman of military bearing attired in immaculate evening dress. You go. You meet him. He advances towards you smiling, ignoring all the other handsome baggages that litter the place. In an instant his moustaches are brushing your lips.
‘I trust I have not kept you waiting, Lady Charlotte,’ he says pleasantly. What a delightfully low, manly voice!
‘Not at all, Count,’ you answer, your voice being the tinkle of silver bells. ‘And what a night it is for Ibsen. One is in the mood, somehow. Yet a translation can never be quite the same. Do you remember that night … in Stockholm … long ago?’
The fact of the matter is, of course, that you have taken good care to say nothing. Your only worry throughout the evening is to shut up and keep shut up completely. The trained escort answers his own manly questions in a voice far pleasanter than your own unfeminine quack, and gives answers that will astonish the people behind for their brilliance and sparkle.
There are escorts and escorts according to the number of potatoes you are prepared to pay. Would you like to score off your escort in a literary argument during an interlude? Look out for further information on this absorbing new service.
‘Well, well, Godfrey, how awfully wizard being at the theatre with you!’
‘Yes, it is fun.’
‘What have you been doing with yourself?’
‘Been trying to catch up with my reading, actually.’
‘Ow, good show, keep in touch and all that.’
‘Yes, I’ve been studying a lot of books on Bali. You know?’
‘Ballet is terribly bewitching, isn’t it? D’you like Petipa?’
‘I’m not terribly sure that I do, but they seem to have developed a complete art of their own, you know. Their sense of décor and their general feeling for the plastic is quite marvellous.’
‘Yes, old Dérain did some frightfully good work for them; for the Spectre, I think it was, actually. Sort of grisaille, you know.’
‘But their feeling for matière is so profound and … almost brooding. One thinks of Courbet.’
‘Yes, or Ingres.’
‘Or Delacroix, don’t you think?’
‘Definitely. Have you read Karsavina?’
‘Of course.’
‘Of course, how stupid of me. I saw her, you know.’
‘Ow, I hadn’t realised that she herself was a Balinese.’
‘Balinese? What are you driving at?’
‘But—’
‘But—’
This ridiculous conversation took place recently in an Irish theatre. The stuff was spoken in loud voices so that everybody could hear. It was only one of the many fine things that have been done by the Dublin WAAMA League’s Escort Service. The League’s horde of trained ventriloquists can now be heard carrying out their single-handed conversations all over the city and in the drawing-rooms of people who are very important and equally ignorant. You know the system? If you are very dumb, you hire one of our ventriloquists to accompany you in public places, and he does absolutely all the talking. The smart replies which you appear to make will astonish yourself as much as the people around you.
The conversation I have quoted is one of the most expensive on the menu. You will note that it contains a serious misunderstanding. This makes the thing appear extraordinarily genuine. Imagine my shrewdness in making the ventriloquist misunderstand what he is saying himself! Conceive my guile, my duplicate duplicity, my play on ignorance and gullibility! Is it any wonder that I have gone into the banking business?
I want now to turn to something rather more important. Some ladies have approached me for advice. They are in trouble with their ballet. They are too fat to lep the requisite six feet and have been sternly warned that they will be expelled from the corps unless they can show better ‘altitude’—the latter a technical term that is used by Dublin teachers. Could I help them?
‘Yes, yes, yes. The ‘Myles’ Patent Ballet Pumps meet and demolish this difficulty. Each shoe is fitted with three diminutive land mines, one in the heel and one in each side of the front foot. If you give a little hop and take care to land on one mine (e.g., land with the full weight on the ball of the foot or the heel) the mine will go off and you will be sent flying through the air with the greatest of ease. When you land, there is another explosion and away up with you again. If you don’t want a second superlep, you simply take care to land on the spent or exploded mine, and there you are. The pumps ensure at least six terrific jumps in the one performance and refills, of course, can be had very cheaply. The audience may think it strange that a dancing piece should be punctuated by loud detonations followed by smoke and the acrid stench of dynamite and gun-powder, but they will not mind if they are assured that it is the usual thing in Russia. Your foot, of course, is protected by a steel shield, but I am afraid the stage—
The Plain People of Ireland: That’s a fine looking lump of a girl. What’s her address?
Myself: I was wondering how long I’d have to wait for that question. Her address is none of your business.
But I am afraid the stage will be full of holes. I have for disposal a limited number of cork bungs suitable for stopping up the holes, price four shillings per dozen while they last. Bungs, pumps and all in a presentation casket with a suitable greeting card, twenty-eight bob, post free.
Remind me to come back to this subject.
‘HEAR YOU were at old Lebensold’s bottle do the other night. How was it, sticky and all that?’
‘Pretty average grim, actually. Old Peter Piper was there.’
‘Not that intoxicatingly witty painter person?’
‘Sorry, one hadn’t thought of him as a painter, actually. His work irritates one, you know, so derivative and all that.’
‘I do quite definitely agree, but personally I trace his influences more in sorrow than in anger.’
‘You do mean more in Seurat than in Ingres, old thing, I s’ppowse.’
This is just a sample of the very special dialogues that our WAAMA League ventriloquist escorts have prepared for the round of Christmas parties. The extra charge is paltry.
And do not think that an escort will humiliate you by making you crack smart jokes like the one above after it has already been cracked at several other parties. Each service is exclusive. The same build-up will be retained (you can’t have everything different) but the names in the last line will be changed. For instance, if the ‘conversation’ is on a philosophic topic, the names will be Suarez and Engels. If on a literary topic, Thoreau and Béranger. And so on, until every reference book and guide to this and that has been ransacked.
Mark your envelope ‘Christmas Escort’ and enclose two pounds.
Desperate is the only word that will do when it comes to describing the latest developments of the WAAMA League Escort Service. Several ‘incidents’ (using the word practically in the Japanese sense) have occurred in recent weeks, and it is now practically certain that we may expect unsavoury court sequels. Such a prospect makes me shudder, because the presence of even one small Escort in the High Court could lead to unheard of complications. Soon the nation may be faced with a vast constitutional crisis arising from pronouncements made (or, at all events, distinctly heard to have been made) by the princes of the bench and all sorts of lesser judicial dignitaries. I am afraid the astonishment on His Honour’s own face will not be accepted as evidence to the contrary. Nor will a plea of gross-feasaunce be valid either.
Briefly, the ranks of my respectable and loyal Escorts have been infiltrated by cheats and disaffected elements who have, however, surpassing competence at the game of voice-throw. Extraordinary utterances have been made in public places, but nobody knows for certain who made them. Worse, intelligent and perfectly genuine remarks made by dowdy young women have been completely ignored by the person to whom they were addressed, whose first instinct is to turn round and search the faces of inoffensive strangers to find the ‘genuine’ speaker.
I will have more to say on this matter in a day or two.
THE TROUBLE I referred to the other day began like this. A lady dumbbell hired out what she took to be a genuine WAAMA League Escort, and went with him to the Gate Theatre. Before the play and during the first interval dozens of eavesdroppers were astounded at the brittle cut and thrust of the one-man conversation. The lady herself, who barely knew how to ask for her porridge, was pleased at the extraordinary silence that was won by her companion’s conversational transports. Quite suddenly he said loudly:
‘By the way, old girl, is that your old woman’s dress you are wearing tonight?’
Simultaneously, the unfortunate client found a printed card shoved under her nose. It read:
‘Don’t look round, don’t move, and don’t scream for the police. Unless you sign on the dotted line promising to pay me an extra fiver for tonight, I will answer in the affirmative, and then go on to talk about your wretched tinker-woman’s blouse. Play ball and nobody will be hurt. Beware! Signed, the Black Shadow.’
The poor girl, of course, had no alternative but to accept the proffered pencil and scrawl her name. Instantly she was heard to say in her merry twinkling voice:
‘Really, Godfrey, it’s the first time I ever wore the same gown twice, why must you be so quaint! One must make forty guineas go a bit further nowadays, you know, tightening the belt and all that.’
After the show there was an extraordinary scene in the foyer. The lady’s husband called to fetch her home, and was immediately presented with her IOU by the ‘Escort’. The demand for £5 out of the blue made his face the colour of war-time bread. He roared at his wife for an explanation. Floods of tears and mutterings was the best she could do. Then the husband rounded on the escort and denounced him as one who preyed on women, an extortionist, and a blackmailer of the deepest dye.
‘And you over there with the whiskey face on you,’ he added, apparently addressing a well-known and respected member of the justiciary, ‘I don’t like you either, and I’ve a damn good mind to break your red neck!’
The flabbergasted jurist (not that he was one whit less flabbergasted than the excited husband) turned the colour of cigar-ash and ran out into the street in search of a Guard. In his absence the husband began to insult the wife of another bystander and to ‘dar and double-dar’ her companion to hit him. This favour was no sooner asked for than received. The unobtrusive ‘Black Shadow’ gallantly ran forward and picked up the prostrate figure, adroitly extracting in the process every item of silver and notes in his pockets. It was a chastened warrior that was delivered in due course into the arms of the rain-glistening Guard.
All this, I need hardly say, is only a beginning. Horrible slurs on our civilisation were to follow.
LET ME give some further details of the Escort mess I mentioned the other day. When it became generally known that a non-union man had succeeded in extracting a five-pound note from a client by menaces, hordes of unscrupulous ventriloquists descended upon the scene and made our theatre foyers a wilderness of false voices, unsaid remarks, anonymous insults, speakerless speeches and scandalous utterances which had no known utterer. Every second person wore a blank flabbergasted expression, having just offered some gratuitous insult to a stranger, or, perhaps, received one. Of course, blows were exchanged. Innocent country visitors coming to the theatre for the first time, and unaware of the situation could scarcely be expected to accept the savage jeers of some inoffensive bystander. Nor was the boot always on the same foot. The visitor’s first impression of our intellectual theatres was all too frequently a haymaker in the belly, the price of some terrible remark he was heard to have made as he pushed in through the door.
Practised theatre-goers have trained themselves to listen for the almost imperceptible little pause between the genuine answer to a question and the bogus addendum of some ill-disposed ventriloquist. Thus:
‘Have a cigarette?’
‘No, thanks (pause), you parrot-clawed, thrush-beaked, pigeon-chested clown!’
‘Do you like the play, Miss Plug? (pause) I’m only asking for politeness, because how an illiterate slut like you would presume to have an opinion on anything is more than I can understand!’
‘The first act was wizard, actually. (Pause). There’s egg on your tie, you pig!’
And so on, I regret to say.
Several people prefer to remain inside at intervals nowadays. They are afraid of their lives of what they might blurt out if they ventured forth for a little air. This means, of course, putting up with the quieter and more deadly snake-bites of the seated malcontents, living in a phantom world of menacing mumble, ghost-whisper, and anonymous articulations of the most scandalous character, not to mention floods of threatening postcards. This sort of thing:
‘Slip me a pound or I will see that you ask the gentleman beside you where he got the money to pay for his seat. Beware! Do not attempt to call for help! Signed, The Grey Spider.’
‘Empty everything in your handbag into my right-hand coat pocket and make sure that nobody sees you doing it! Otherwise you will spend the evening plying strangers with salacious conundrums, even in the middle of the play. Don’t think too hard of me, we all have to live. I have a wife and ten children. I do this because I have to. Signed, The Firefly.’
‘Pay me 25s instantly or I will make a holy show of you. Be quick or you’re for it. No monkey work! Signed, The Hooded Hawk.’
‘This is a stick-up. Slip off that ring and drop it in the fold of my trousers. Otherwise you are going to heckle the players in the next act and think of what Hilton will have to say. Signed, The Mikado.’
This is merely the background of this ramp. What happened afterwards is another day’s story. Just imagine Lord Longford saying: ‘Has anybody here got a handball? I challenge any man here to a moonlight game above in the gardens, against the gable of the Nurses’ Home!’
‘PUT FIVE single bank-notes in an envelope and stick the envelope under your seat with chewing gum before you leave the theatre for the first interval. Stay out for at least ten minutes. No monkey-work, mind. Fail me in this and I will fix your hash for you. Signed, the Green Mikado.’
The somewhat scared lady who showed me this mysterious missive at the Abbey the other night asked me what she was to do. Naturally, I counselled courage and no truck with the evil voices that were infesting the national theatre like plague-nits in a rat’s back. I promised her the assistance of my genuine WAAMA League Escorts, in ever-growing volume, until the stream became a torrent. Grievous and sombre as the prospect was, I assured her, our mighty and illimitable resources would be marshalled towards the common-end. I then telephoned for my ace-escort. His wife said that he was out, but that she would send a message to him. I knew that he had no wife. He arrived just as the curtain was going up.
My lady friend had bravely ignored the threat and all of us sat down for the second act with some little trepidation. Just how would the dread Mikado strike? What did he mean by his threat to settle my friend’s hash? I was waiting every moment to hear her make some horrible remark, of which she would be as innocent as the child unborn.
Quite suddenly the blow fell. It happened that there was a lengthy pause in the play where the story had reached a stage of crisis. A pause, but not silence. A player standing on the left of the stage electrified the audience by saying:
‘Do you know, I have been wondering all night who in the name of Pete that fat cow in the fur coat is. The one second from the left in the third row!’
I turned to my own escort, thunderstruck.
‘It’s all right,’ he whispered. ‘Your lady friend is fifth from the right. The addendum was mine. I was expecting this. It is common Leipzig practice.’
Meanwhile, the unknown victim was being assisted out, the theatre was in uproar, the curtain had been rung down and the livid husband was already on his way behind the scenes to ask the reason why.
HORRIBLE DEVELOPMENTS have taken place in the Escort scandal. One particular theatre has become a bedlam of ‘voices’ and coarse badinage, notwithstanding the foolish rule of the management that ‘no one who looks like a ventriloquist is to be admitted.’ If you say something, no one will believe that you said it. Even a simple ‘what-time-is-it?’ simply evokes a knowing smile and an involuntary search of the nearest bystander’s countenance; that or some extraordinary reply like ‘Pie-face!’ ‘Who wants to know?’ or ‘Time we were rid of a hook like you!’
Meanwhile, decent people are taking steps to protect their interests. I was at a play the other night and could not help overhearing a scandalous monologue that was apparently being recited by my neighbour on the right, a very respectable-looking elderly man. I watched him through the corner of my eye and saw the hand go into an inside pocket. Was he searching for his card? Was he The Black Dragon about to shove some printed threat under my nose? Yes, yes, the small white card was in his claw! In a second it was held adroitly for my gaze. Imagine my astonishment when I read it:
‘I give you my solemn word of honour that I am a civil servant and that the appalling language that you hear coming from me is being uttered by some other person. Signed, JUST A MINOR STAFF OFFICER.’
You see the point? He was afraid to say this. Because if he did, his explanation would be instantly followed up with a coarse insult to my wife, who was sitting beside me.
I had further evidence of this later in the foyer. I was standing smoking when a small gentleman said to me: ‘Excuse me for addressing a stranger, but I cannot help assuring you that it is only with the greatest difficulty that I restrain myself from letting you have a pile-driver in your grilled steak and chips, me bucko?’ Instantly he produced a card and handed it to me:
‘So help me, I am a crane-driver from Drogheda, and I have not opened my beak since I came in tonight. Cough twice if you believe me. Signed, NED THE DRIVER.’
I coughed and walked away. Just for fun I said to a lady who was standing near: ‘Hello, hag! How’s yer ould one?’ Her reply was the sweet patient smile that might be exchanged between two fellow-sufferers from night starvation. What a world!
Next day I want to tell you about the lady who hired out two Escorts, thinking that each would keep the other down.
THERE WAS HELL and holy bedlam at a recent meeting of the inner council of the Myles na gCopaleen WAAMA League. Our horde of literary ventriloquists sent in a demand for more pay. I agreed to hear a deputation from them, although determined to take my stand on Order 83 and to die rather than concede a blue farthing. They were barely in the room when I heard myself saying: Well, gentlem’n, I’m not surprised to see you, I may say right away that I recognise that your wages are ridiculously low and that an increase of fifty per cent is the least I would have the effrontery to offer you.
Before I had recovered from my astonishment, the spokesman said that such a response was disappointing, but that they were prepared to accept the increase under protest and without prejudice to their right to re-open the matter after consultation with their union. Then they filed out. The whole matter was over and done with before I had an opportunity of opening my beak. I mention the humiliating episode only because I see in it the idea for a new and exclusive WAAMA League service. Why not make my ventriloquists a bulwark of the Trade Union movement? Why not use their unique gifts to bring the parasite boss class to heel? Why not arrange beforehand, beyond yea or nay, that you will get the answer you are looking for? I’m talking to Mr O’Shannon.
My little engraving today is intended to help you through life. It shows, and very plainly, too, how to cross a river without letting your top hat get wet. You use your cane, see. Of course, you are finished if a clap of rain comes when you are in mid-stream. All this is surrealist stuff. The Senegalese tiger will eat the tri-coloured bread. Observe that small cottage in the picture. It is an old Land League cabin. Valuation: On land, 15s; on other hereditaments, 13s. Arrears of rates payable to the County Council, £84 8s od. A tall farmer is sitting inside the cottage, sucking his hollow tooth. His wife, daughter, and nine strong sons are in Amerikey. There is not a stick of furniture in the house, no fire, no food, no other living thing, unless you want to count eleven gaunt rats. But the man is happy, he smiles to himself and keeps fiddling absently for a watch-chain that is long gone. A sharp fox’s smile flits on his old face. He is undoubtedly suffering from an incurable disease. There are weals on his legs from the whipping of the wind, his trousers have no seat. Long-standing suppurations of the joints have elongated his thin fingers. But he is happy, his mind is pleased. He is a member of WAAMA.
A recent visit to the ‘Plough and the Stars’ set me thinking. Here is the old play re-vitalised and re-done by new players. It is better, perhaps, but different. Could it not be ordained that a play shall be played by the same players so long as they live? If after the years one or two have died, a brief programme note could explain the absence of the missing characters and the remaining players could work in suitable gags. ‘Ah, sure it was here poor ould Fluther used to come in the good ould days, the Lord be good to him, the place has never been the same since he went.’ Picture the Covey as an old man of seventy, the sole survivor of the original caste, trying desperately to carry on the play single-handed, muttering all sorts of explanations and blessings on the departed in between his own lines.
Possibly when the last player has gone to his reward, I might be prepared to hear of an entirely new company being recruited to do the play. But not until then.
‘To within five minutes of the fall of the curtain on the first act people were streaming into the reserved seats, requesting those already seated to divulge the numbers of the seats they were occupying, to arise to let them squeeze past, and frequently to arise again to let them struggle back on their discovering they had entered the wrong row and invariably the wrong end. The stage was completely blocked from the view of those behind; the tip-up seats were banged up and down, and the ‘tut-tuts’ ‘shushes’ and more robust imprecations frustrated all hopes of listening to the play.’
From a letter to the Irish Times.
Yes, yes. I know. I have been campaigning on this matter for many years. Please see my design for a doorless theatre in the ‘Irish Engineer and Builder’, June 1933. My idea is that the patron should approach his seat through a trap-door situated where he keeps his feet when seated. The patrons approach the building through a cellar and locate their seats before they enter the theatre at all. They then mount velvet-runged ladders and reach their seats with the minimum fuss and interference. Take your stand at the back of such a theatre and watch the audience arriving. There is no door, entrance or exit of any kind. All is silence and soft light. After a time you hear a gentle click and, hey-presto, a solitary bald head has appeared in the middle of the parterre. One by one, heads appear silently throughout the vast auditorium. The usual hot-tempered, wrangling about seats and ticket stubs is going on hell for leather in the cellar, but not a word of it reaches the sacred cathedral of the drayma.
Occasionally, if you like, a wit will book a seat and hoist a sack of potatoes instead of mounting the ladder himself. This will not make much difference unless it is done on a large scale. A ‘house’ that is composed mainly of solemn sacks of spuds would probably have a bad effect on the players and even offend a certain type of female playgoer, who is fastidious about what she is asked to sit beside. The knobby shoulder of a bag of Kerrs Pinks would not appeal to many ladies, excepting possibly our handful of native Marxy-arxies, the little girls who read what they are told to read by the Left Book Club. But please excuse such a boring digression.
Incidentally, I don’t know that it is fair to complain about the row made by an audience without also adverting to the clatter that comes not infrequently from the stage. Often in the theatre I can hardly hear myself talking or assuring my doxy that so-and-so is the same fellow that played so-and-so in so-and-so, he’s very good, he’s a civil servant in the Department of Agriculture, I met a sister of his in Skerries, and so on. Actors should conduct themselves like the rest of us and practise the unobtrusive intonation of the gentleman.
As regards the correspondent’s other complaint about loud feeding during the course of an important play, this can be got over by hoisting trays of grub through the trap-doors at half-time. The humiliating exodus for whiskey (how is it so few can stand a play cold sober?) could also be prevented by sending up rubber tubes through which our middle-aged sucklings could draw their golden pap without leaving their seats and inconveniencing eccentric people who don’t drink.
And think of this. You are sitting comfortably in your seat when you feel some ignorant clown (too lazy to look carefully at the number on his ticket) pushing his way up through your trap-door. Lift your feet quickly off it until his head is halfway up. Then smash the trap-door down with every ounce of weight and strength you can command. Listen for the remote thud of his falling body then resume giving your attention to Micheál.
Excuse me.
Round to the Gaiety there last week (I say ‘round’ because I live on the NCR and my approach was necessarily more circuitous than tangential) to see a piece of Mr Mac Liammóir’s entitled—if memory fools me not—‘The Packed Ewer of Doreen Grey’. There was not much in it that I would criticise. Or should I say criticize? For the piece was described in the programme as ‘a dramatization of Oscar Wilde’s only Novel’. Wilde I never met; though the father and I were close friends in the early daze.
One thing rather puzzles me. Wilde wrote a number of plays and also this ‘only’ novel. Unless he was mad, he must have intended to write ‘Doreen Gay’ as a novel, otherwise he would have done what was for him the customary thing—written it as a play. Since, however, a man of the calibre of Mr Mac Liammóir does not hesitate to reverse Wilde’s judgment in this regard, I fear we are faced (unless we also are mad—a thing that would not astonish me in the least) with the theory that Wilde fully intended to write it as a play. He couldn’t think of the word, went ahead writing, and the thing turned out to be a novel!
But … is there not then a complementary theory? If Wilde mixed up the dissimilar modes of play and novel, how can we be satisfied that he did not intend to be a novelist only—that his plays were so written in error? If his novel (and we do not admit it is a novel, m’lud) if his novel be a play … em … a play manqué, then why not a novelization of his ‘plays’?
I am terribly serious about this, because it involves a major problem in aesthetics. I go to an exhibition of ‘paintings’. I am astounded by what I appear to see with my (own) eyes. The ‘message’ of this or that canvas eludes me, sometimes I am distressed by the frames. (You see, I too am an artist.) It does not follow that I denounce the author of these … these … practices. This painter, I say, can it be that he is a novelist? A poet? A worker in exquisite enamels? A musician in the manner of Ravel? For certain it is, that painter he is not.
There can be a fusion of artistic activities directed towards the communication of a single artistic concept. Example: a song—a poem sung to an air. But is artistic function interchangeable? Can a play be made a novel? Some people are chronically incapable of appreciating a thing in terms of itself. (My wife thinks I am a husband, for example—whereas, of course, I am a philosopher.) Show a cobbler a cow. Note his trade union obtuseness in relation to all kine! He simply cannot see how fine they are! ‘Ah yes,’ he will say, ‘there’s many a fine pair of shoes in that animal.’ Show this or that patriot an equestrian statue and he will say ‘Hah! Pretty big job that. That’d take the 24-foot ladder and a double-handled gauge-4 saw.’ Tell a Hollywood man about the Kabbala, or the Koran, and he will ask you whether you could get 34 thousand feet out of it. Show a certain type of funny (?) writer something sincere, serious, and he will mutter: ‘I wonder how we can make a laugh of this.’
You see? The problem is everywhere. No Irish farmer appreciates his young strapping son for the attractive healthy agricultural type he is (and must intrinsically remain). The Irish farmer sees his son as a potential Higher Executive Officer, Grade II, Temporary, Unestablished, full of grievances about bonus.
Do engine drivers, I wonder, eternally wish they were small boys?
I have not been to the Abbey since the decline set in, nor indeed has Blythe sent me the customary free pass since the day we had words about the terminology adopted in the program when plays in Irish are being presented. You have been there, of course, you have noticed that for the word ‘stall’ (costing 3/6, I think) they say: steallai.
My point was that such a term is recherché, difficult and obviously mined out of Dinneen and that there is no justification at all for using it when you have in Irish—every chisler in Dublin knows it—(PS. O’H. please note spelling of chisler) the simple word: stól.
I might as well be talking to the wall, of course, though this phrase has always seemed strange in view of the belief that walls have ears. Equally fruitless was another effort I made about the title of the theatre. They call it ‘Amharclann na Mainistreach’, although everybody knows that ‘mainistir’ means monastery. Do they not then know the Irish for ‘abbey’? Are they too stuck-up to ask some one who does?
It follows from the opening sentence above that I have not seen Mr Tomelty’s play, ‘The End House’. I couldn’t go, of course—it would never do to hear theatre-going ‘wits’ (foyer-flies if you like) making terrible jokes about ‘the house’.
‘Was there a good house last night?’
‘O just the same—the end house.’
A slogan that interests me immensely is that one that they came out with some months ago and still have despite its decrepit syntax—‘Late-comers not admitted until end of First Act.’ It has several undesirable implications. First, that every play must have not only acts but even a first act! (Nay, a First Act). What would, say, Rouault think of such unenterprise? Is it also suggested, forsooth, that every play must have a last act? I have several plays (opens drawer, points in, hastily covers half-exposed bottle, slams drawer shut) and competent people who have read them certify that there is neither beginning nor end to them. Some of them have no characters—I did not say character, mind—some are without ‘climaxes’, ‘plots’ and other dreary journeyman paraphernalia. As for Aristotle’s unities of thyme, plaice and auction—faugh! There are enough earnest souls observing them, we have a plenitude of knaves tricking with rules made by people who have not had the advantage of … of … being present for a couple of thousand years.
The second deplorable implication of the ‘late-comer’ slogan is that while those who are in at the beginning will not be disturbed during the first act they will not necessarily be undisturbed during subsequent acts. You can’t barge in in the middle of the first act but you can arrive in the middle of the second or third act, start tuning the piano, decide you haven’t enough light and stagger out with the thing on your back. What they really mean, you say, is ‘Patrons not admitted between the acts.’ But not quite. Because if that were the rule, nobody would ever get in. The … interval, shall we call it, before the first act is not, within the meaning of the statute, ‘between the acts.’
The Abbey should think of a more precise and literate slogan, something catchy—like this:
The National Theatre Society
Likes promptness and sobriety,
No patrons will be admitted
Unless promptly stalled (or pitted).
The real trouble is, of course, that too many of the patrons have learnt their manners from characters on the Abbey stage. Gach éan mar a adhbha!