XIVTHE ART OF ENTERTAININGNot as Easy as it Would Seem.—Scarcity of Good Stories for the Purpose.—Drawing-room Audiences are Fastidious.—Noted London Entertainers.—They are Guests of the People Who Engage Them.—London Methods and Fees.—Blunders of a Newly-wed Hostess from America.—Humor Displaces Sentiment in the Drawing-room.—My Own Material and Its Sources.
Not as Easy as it Would Seem.—Scarcity of Good Stories for the Purpose.—Drawing-room Audiences are Fastidious.—Noted London Entertainers.—They are Guests of the People Who Engage Them.—London Methods and Fees.—Blunders of a Newly-wed Hostess from America.—Humor Displaces Sentiment in the Drawing-room.—My Own Material and Its Sources.
An entertainer always leaves a pleasant impression on other men; otherwise he is not an entertainer. Sometimes his gestures and manner are more effective than his words. Yet he is not necessarily an actor. He is a sort of half-brother of the man on the stage, for, like the actor, he must endeavor to please his entire audience. The humorous paper or book, if it is not to the reader’s taste, may be dropped in an instant, but in a crowded hall or drawing-room one must listen, unless he is deaf.
So the entertainer must be very careful in selecting his material. Hundreds of jokes that are good in themselves and decent enough to tell to one’s wife and children are called vulgar by some people who aren’t noted for refinement in other ways. Other stories that are all right totry on your minister when you invite him to dinner, are shockingly irreverent to some folks who never go to church. Every man knows of honest hearty jokes that he wouldn’t venture when ladies are present, but entertainers know of some stories told by good women that would make all the men in a drawing-room face toward the wall. Selecting stories for society is almost as dangerous as umpiring a baseball game.
John Parry was the original entertainer in England, a country so loyal to whoever amuses it that it honors its favorites, even after they have lost the power of pleasing. He wrote many sketches for use in drawing-rooms and became very popular and successful. The entertainers most in vogue in England, until recently, were Corney Grain, a six-footer, who died about three years ago and George Grossmith, whom many Americans remember and who was quite prominent in connection with D’Oyley Carte productions of the Gilbert and Sullivan operas. These gentlemen, both of fine appearance and manner, had their fill of engagements throughout the London season, going from one drawing-room to another and always hailed with delight. Their monologues never wearied, no matter how oft-repeated, for it is an amiable characteristic of the Englishman, that he can never get too much of a good thing. The American goes so far to the otherextreme that he will stand something awfully bad if it is only new.
In England, the jester’s arrangements are made with great ease and simplicity. There are no annoying business details. His terms of fifteen or twenty pounds an evening are already known, so money is not mentioned by him or his host and there is no attempt at “beating down,” such as sometimes occurs in bargaining America. He goes to the house and the table as a guest and is treated as an equal by the hostess and her company, when he is making his adieus, which he does soon after completing his monologue, a sealed envelope is handed him, or the money reaches him at his hotel in the morning, and let me say right here for this custom, that in my own hundreds of English engagements I never lost a penny through bad pay.
Some of the more wealthy people do not limit themselves to the customary prices. For instance, Baron de Rothschild often pays sixty pounds for an entertainment not lasting more than ten minutes—a little matter of thirty dollars a minute, and by a strange coincidence, he never fails to get the entertainer he wants; some hosts do.
Most of my own London engagements are in May and June, up to July when the Goodwood races end the season. They are made some time in advance, the only preliminary on my partbeing a batch of letters I send off when my steamer reaches Queenstown. The fast mail reaches London before me, so by the time I reach my hotel, some replies are awaiting me. The receptions usually begin at ten in the evening. The hostess does not announce me formally, as if she owned me, body, soul and breeches, but asks graciously if Mr. Wilder will not kindly favor the company with some of his interesting experiences or reflections. Then I mount the piano, or a chair, if the affair is a dinner party, and the other guests listen politely, instead of all beginning to talk on their own account.
Entertainers almost never are subjected to snubs or other rudeness; when such unpleasantnesses occur they are promptly resented. An American woman who had “married into the nobility” invited me to come to her house at half past nine in the evening. I naturally assumed that this meant dinner. When I arrived, the flunkey took me into the parlor and left me there, saying Lady So-and-so and her guests were at dinner. I waited some moments, but as no one came to relieve me of my embarrassment, I rang the bell, requested the flunkey to take my card to his mistress and say I had been invited at that hour and had arrived. Word came back that “my lady” would be up in a few minutes. Then the ladies came into the drawing-room,leaving the gentlemen to their wine and cigars; those who knew me, the Princess Mary of Teck was one of them, greeted me kindly, but my hostess and countrywoman did not seem to think me worthy of notice.
Then my American spirit rose to boiling point. I called my cab and was bowling down the street when a panting servant overtook me and gasped:
“My cab was bowling down the Street.”
“My cab was bowling down the Street.”
“Lady Blank would like to see you a moment, sir.”
“Oh, would she?” I replied. When I returned I found the fair American in great distress. She wanted to know why I had desertedher at the critical moment, and when I told her bluntly that I was not in the habit of going to houses where I was not welcomed as a guest, she assured me her rudeness was unintentional, it was due to her ignorance of the custom, etc., etc., and she begged me not to leave her in the lurch. Of course, I pretended to be pacified, but the story got around London and did me much good, which is more than it did for her ladyship.
A peculiar thing about the English sense of humor is that although it is there and of full size, one must sometimes search hard to find it. Some types of American joking are utterly wasted on the Englishman.
The English greatly prefer burlesques on American characteristics to those on their own ways. I can’t call this a peculiarity, although Americans specially like to see themselves and their own people “hit off,” even if some one is hit hard. I am glad to say that although I am given to personalities, and exaggeration, I try never to cast ridicule on the people of whom I talk and I have never knowingly hurt any one’s feelings by my character sketches.
In London the theatres are almost countless and are steadily increasing in number, and comedy, burlesque and farce are the rule—all because of the demand for fun. The English enjoy eating and sleeping more than any other peopleon earth, but English chops and sleep without some fun between, are as sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal, for dyspepsia will knock out the chops and insomnia will knock out sleep. But fun takes dyspepsia on one knee and insomnia on the other and bounces both into forgetfulness.
Since the days when Ward McAllister came into style, there has been a marked change in the work of the American jester. Time was, when here, as in England, any old thing would do for parlor entertainments, no matter how often it had been heard before. It did not even have to be funny, either; who can exaggerate the number of times he heard “Curfew Shall Not Ring To-night,” in those good old times? Now, however, the entertainer must continually supply something new, or he will fall by the wayside. It must be something funny too; people used to crowd lecture rooms, and enjoy serious talks by great men—the greatest in the land, but whoever hears a lecture-course now? Fun—fun—fun, is the demand everywhere, so every entertainer is a joker.
In fact, to speak with my customary modesty, this demand for amusement places Mr. Depew and me on the same footing. Often I get letters from people who say they expect my friend the Senator, but, if he cannot come, will want me tofill the gap. Not long ago Mr. Depew cheated me out of a famous dinner at Delmonico’s, so I grumbled a bit when I met him. He got off the big, hearty laugh, on which he has a life patent, with no possible infringement in sight, and replied,
“Why, Marsh, why didn’t you tell me? If I’d known it, I wouldn’t have gone.”
“Enjoying serious talks by great men.”
“Enjoying serious talks by great men.”
Ha, ha, pretty good, wasn’t it?
Where do I get the material for my own sketches? From the originals every time. I pick it up in the streets, in the cars and restaurants, get it from the newsboys, from men of all sorts on the curb-stone, from almost everywhere, but never from books or newspapers, for the world is full of fun if one only has the ear to hear it.
When I get hold of a new thing that seems to be good, I always “try it on the dog”—that is, on my friends. I take it down to the Lambs’ Club and work it off on some of the good fellows there. If I escape alive with it, I inveigle a couple of newsboys into a dark corner and have them sample it. If it “goes” with them, I am pretty sure it is good, so I add it to my repertoire; but if it fails there, I never disagree with my critics; it is damned—absolutely, no matter who may think it might be made to work.
Few Americans are busier than the successful entertainer. His hands are full of the work of brightening up the heavy parts of the social affairs that crowd the long winter afternoon and evenings, so with hurrying between New York, Boston and Chicago, with occasional moves to Philadelphia and Baltimore, he is kept “on the jump.” Yet the public hears little of his work, for it is not advertised. Why, not long ago I went to a large party at a house only three blocks from my apartments, and I am sure thirty or forty of the guests had never heard my name before.
Such is fame.