Page:The Strand Magazine (Volume 65).djvu/216

 204 A Ventriloquist’s Stories

always rather a trying experience even at the best of times ; the laughs are apt to come in the wrong places—or not at all. Not so very long ago a doctor friend of mine at an asylum asked me if I would bring "Jim” with me and give the patients a little entertainment. Afterwards I overheard some of the criticisms.

“I never saw his mouth move once,” said a dear old granny (who seemed to me to be really intelligent).

“No,” said her friend, "I never saw his mouth move—but I saw Jim’s.”

It is rather difficult to please critics of that kind.

In my early days as a ventriloquist I thought it would be easier to win tears from an audience than to make them laugh, and I made up my mind to have a very sad, pathetic-looking doll for my entertainment. I dressed a figure up in a ragged suit, gave him a sallow complexion, and asked a candid friend to criticize.

“I should call the show ‘The Channel Crossing,’’’ said my candid friend. "The doll looks as though he’d been through it, and was still suffering acutely—no use, old man, no good at all.”

I concluded that my candid friend did not understand my business—what youngster ever welcomes real criticism of his efforts ?—so I found another candid friend. This one had a commercial mind. He suggested that my doll with the pasty complexion should be used for an advertisement of a patent medicine. Scene 1. Before the cure. Scene 2. Cured (doll with a very bright, healthy complexion). The change of complexion was to be done gradually in view of the audience, and when I asked my friend how the transformation was to be worked he said:—

“Oh, I thought you were a conjurer.”

I would have worked on that idea, only I was convinced that nobody would want to see the show when it was done.

Still being satisfied in my own mind that pathos was my line, I hit upon the idea of using a figure with only one arm. The little sketch was to be called "The Empty Sleeve.” It seemed to be a good title; besides, "sleeve" rhymed with “grieve,” and I saw myself drawing tears from the audience with the harrowing song at the end of the show.

I took this idea to a friend, who said :— “'The Empty Sleeve’ you call it? Why not call it ‘The Empty Purse’? That’s what yours will be if you go on like this. Why try and make people miserable?"

That I thought—and still think—was good advice, so I immediately went to the opposite extreme and invented a figure and thought of a dialogue which, I was convinced, would be a “scream.”

In this sketch the figure was to be suffering from face-ache, and the right cheek was to be swollen. I contrived a very grotesque swelling, and the means of subduing it gradually during the show; that is to say, I let out the air gradually.

At the beginning of the dialogue the figure was unable to speak very plainly because of the face-ache (I saw that that would be a help!), but his speech was to improve as the swelling went down.

I tried this once at a Sunday school—only once. The swelling of the face collapsed with a bang—the rubber having burst— and the audience very kindly laughed. I didn’t ; I hadn’t a scrap of dialogue ready for such an emergency, and my performance that evening was very brief.

After that I gave up the idea of trying to be original, and I made up my mind that I would have just an ordinary figure and collect all the old jokes I could remember, and "go in and win." At that time I used to stand up during my performance with one foot on a chair and the figure on my knee. I learned my dialogue, practised the movements of the figure, and was determined that this time I was going to be a success.

I succeeded, but not in the way I intended. I marched on to the stage with great confidence and a sort of "You've-got-to-have-it” expression, plumped my foot on to the seat of the chair, and went right through it. It was an old wicker-seated chair, and it hadn’t been used to that kind of treatment. As I hadn’t been prepared for this, I

"Jim"—one of the greatest music-hall favourites of the day.