William Maugham - Theatre

‘You blasted idiot, you don’t know what you’re talking about. Why, what I don’t know about acting isn’t worth knowing. Everything you know about it I’ve taught you. If you’re even a tolerable actor it’s due to me. After all, the proof of the pudding’s in the eating. D’you know how many curtain calls I got tonight? The play’s never gone better in all its run.’

‘I know all about that. The public are a lot of jackasses. If you yell and scream and throw yourself about you’ll always get a lot of damned fools to shout themselves silly. Just barnstorming, that’s what you’ve been doing the last four nights. It was false from beginning to end.’

‘False? But I felt every word of it.’

‘I don’t care what you felt, you weren’t acting it. Your performance was a mess. You were exaggerating; you were over-acting; you didn’t carry conviction for a moment. It was about as rotten a piece of ham acting as I’ve ever seen in my life.’

‘You bloody swine, how dare you talk to me like that? It’s you the ham.’

With her open hand she gave him a great swinging blow on the face. He smiled.

‘You can hit me, you can swear at me, you can yell your head off, but the fact remains that your acting’s gone all to hell. I’m not going to start rehearsing Nowadays with you acting like that.’

‘Find someone who can act the part better than lean then.’

‘Don’t be silly, Julia. I may not be a very good actor myself, I never thought I was, but I know good acting from bad. And what’s more there’s nothing about you I don’t know. I’m going to put up the notices on Saturday and then I want you to go abroad. We’ll make Nowadays our autumn production.’

The quiet, decisive way in which he spoke calmed her. It was true that when it came to acting Michael knew everything there was to know about her.

‘It is true that I’m acting badly?’

‘Rottenly.’

She thought it over. She knew exactly what had happened. She had let her emotion run away with her; she had been feeling, not acting. Again a cold shiver ran down her spine. This was serious. It was all very fine to have a broken heart, but if it was going to interfere with her acting… no, no, no. That was quite another pair of shoes. Her acting was more important than any love affair in the world.

‘I’ll try and pull myself together.’

‘It’s no good trying to force oneself. You’re tired out. It’s my fault, I ought to have insisted on your taking a holiday long ago. What you want is a good rest.’

‘What about the theatre?’

‘If I can’t let it, I’ll revive some play that I can play in. There’s Hearts are Trumps. You always hated your part in that.’

‘Everyone says the season’s going to be wonderful. You can’t expect much of a revival with me out of the cast; you won’t make a penny.’

‘I don’t care a hang about that. The only thing that matters is your health.’

‘Oh, Christ, don’t be so magnanimous,’ she cried. ‘I can’t bear it.’

Suddenly she burst into a storm of weeping.

‘Darling!’

He took her in his arms and sat her down on the sofa with himself beside her. She clung to him desperately.

‘You’re so good to me, Michael, and I hate myself. I’m a beast, I’m a slut, I’m just a bloody bitch. I’m rotten through and through.’

‘All that may be,’ he smiled, ‘but the fact remains that you’re a very great actress.’

‘I don’t know how you can have the patience you have with me. I’ve treated you foully. You’ve been too wonderful and I’ve sacrificed you heartlessly.’

‘Now, dear, don’t say a lot of things that you’ll regret later. I shall only bring them up against you another time.’

His tenderness melted her and she reproached herself bitterly because for years she found him so boring.

‘Thank God, I’ve got you. What should I do without you?’

‘You haven’t got to do without me.’ He held her close and though she sobbed still she began to feel comforted.

‘I’m sorry I was so beastly to you just now.’

‘Oh, my dear.’

‘Do you really think I’m a ham actress?’

‘Darling, Duse couldn’t hold a candle to you.’

‘Do you honestly think that? Give me your hanky. You never saw Sarah Bernhardt, did you?’

‘No, never.’

‘She ranted like the devil.’

They sat together for a little while, in silence, and Julia grew calmer in spirit. Her heart was filled with a great love for Michael.

‘You’re still the best-looking man in England,’ she murmured at last. ‘No one will ever persuade me to the contrary.’

She felt that he drew in his belly and thrust out his chin, and it seemed to her rather sweet and touching.

‘You’re quite right. I’m tired out. I feel low and miserable. I feel all empty inside. The only thing is to go away.’

AFTER Julia had made up her mind to that she was glad. The prospect of getting away from the misery that tormented her at once made it easier to bear. The notices were put up; Michael collected his cast for the revival and started rehearsals. It amused Julia to sit idly in a stall and watch the actress who had been engaged rehearse the part which she had played herself some years before. She had never lost the thrill it gave her when she first went on the stage to sit in the darkened playhouse, under dust-sheets, and see the characters grow in the actors’ hands. Merely to be inside a theatre rested her; nowhere was she so happy. Watching the rehearsals she was able to relax so that when at night she had her own performance to give she felt fresh. She realized that all Michael had said was true. She took hold of herself. Thrusting her private emotion into the background and thus getting the character under control, she managed once more to play with her accustomed virtuosity. Her acting ceased to be a means by which she gave release to her feelings and was again the manifestation of her creative instinct. She got a quiet exhilaration out of thus recovering mastery over her medium. It gave her a sense of power and of liberation.

But the triumphant effort she made took it out of her, and when she was not in the theatre she felt listless and discouraged. She lost her exuberant vitality. A new humility overcame her. She had a feeling that her day was done. She sighed as she told herself that nobody wanted her any more. Michael suggested that she should go to Vienna to be near Roger, and she would have liked that, but she shook her head.

‘I should only cramp his style.’

She was afraid he would find her a bore. He was enjoying himself and she would only be in the way. She could not bear the thought that he would find it an irksome duty to take her here and there and occasionally have luncheon or dinner with her. It was only natural that he should have more fun with the friends of his own age that he had made. She decided to go and stay with her mother. Mrs Lambert—Madame de Lambert, as Michael insisted on calling her—had lived for many years now with her sister, Madame Falloux, at St Malo. She spent a few days every year in London with Julia, but this year had not been well enough to come. She was an old lady, well over seventy, and Julia knew that it would be a great joy for her to have her daughter on a long visit. Who cared about an English actress in Vienna? She wouldn’t be anyone there. In St Malo she would be something of a figure, and it would be fun for the two old women to be able to show her off to their friends.

‘Ma fille, la plus grande actrice d’Angleterre,’ and all that sort of thing.

Poor old girls, they couldn’t live much longer and they led drab, monotonous lives. Of course it would be fearfully boring for her, but it would be a treat for them. Julia had a feeling that perhaps in the course of her brilliant and triumphant career she had a trifle neglected her mother. She could make up for it now. She would lay herself out to be charming. Her tenderness for Michael and her ever-present sense of having been for years unjust to him filled her with contrition. She felt that she had been selfish and overbearing, and she wanted to atone for all that. She was eager to sacrifice herself, and so wrote to her mother to announce her imminent arrival.