Read Ebook: Wappin' Wharf: A Frightful Comedy of Pirates by Brooks Charles S Charles Stephen Hatfield Gordon Contributor Flory Julia McCune Illustrator

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Ebook has 686 lines and 23820 words, and 14 pages

BY WAY OF EXPLANATION

Several weeks ago an actor-manager requested me to try my hand at a play for the winter season. The offer was unexpected. "My dear sir," I said, "I am immensely flattered, but I have never written a play." Then I hastened to ask, "What kind of play?" for fear the offer might be withdrawn. He replied with sureness and decision. "I want a play," he said, "with lots of pirates and--no poetry." He stressed this with emphatic gesture. "And at least one shooting," he added. It was a slim prescription. He left me to brood upon the matter.

The proposal was too flattering to be rejected out of hand.

After a furious week upon a plot and dialogue, I was given an opportunity to display my wares. The manager himself met me in the hallway. "Is there a shooting?" he asked, with what seemed almost a suppressed excitement. I was able to satisfy him and he led me to his inner office, where he pointed out an easy chair. The room was pleasantly furnished with bookshelves to the ceiling. Evidently his former ventures had been prosperous, and already I imagined myself come to fortune as his partner. While I fumbled with embarrassment at my papers--for I dreaded his severe opinion--he himself fetched a basket of coal for a fire that burned briskly on the hearth. Then he sat rigidly at attention.

It now appeared that he had summoned to our conference several of his associates--the subordinates, merely, of his ventures--his manager of finance , his costumer and designer, and another person who is his reader and adviser and, in emergency, fills and mends any sudden gap that shows itself.

My notion of theatrical managers has been that they are a cold and distant race--the more sullen cousin of an editor. Is it not considered that on the reading of a play they sit with fallen chin, and that they chill an author to reduce his royalty? It is naught, it is naught, saith the buyer. I am told that even the best plays are hawked with disregard from theatre to theatre, until the hungry author is out at elbow. They get less civility than greets a mean commodity. Worthless mining shares and shoddy gilt editions do not kick their heels with such disregard in the outer office. Popcorn and apples--Armenian laces, even--beg a quicker audience.

But none of this usual brusqueness appeared. Rather, he showed an agreeable enthusiasm as we proceeded--even an unrestraint, which, I must confess, at times somewhat marred his repose and dignity. Manifestly it was not his intention to depreciate my wares. He exchanged frank glances of approval with his subordinates--with his costumer especially, with whom his relation seems the closest.

In the first act of my play, when it becomes apparent that one of my pirates goes stumping on a timber leg, his eye flashed. And when it was disclosed that the captain wears a hook instead of hand, he forgot his professional restraint and cried out his satisfaction. He was soon wrapped in thought by the mysterious behaviour of the fortune-teller and he said, if she were short and stout, he had the very actress in his mind.

But it was in the second act that he threw caution to the winds. As you will know presently, Red Joe--one of my pirates--seizes his trusty gun and, taking breathless aim, shoots--But I must not expose my plot. At this exciting moment Belasco--or any of his kind--would have squinted for a flaw. He would have tilted his wary nose upon the ceiling and told me that my plot was humbug. What sailorman would mistake a lantern for a lighthouse? Nor were there lighthouses in the days of the buccaneers. He would have scuttled my play in dock and grinned at the rising bubbles. Mark the difference! My manager, ignoring these inconsequential errors, burst from his chair--this is amazing!--and turned a reckless somersault between the table and the fire.

His costumer, who knows best how his eccentricity runs to riot, checked him for this and sent him to his chair. He sobered for a minute and the play went on. Presently, however, when the enraged pirates gathered to wreak vengeance on their victim, I saw how deeply he was moved. His exultant eye sought the bookshelves, and I fancy that he was in meditation whether he might be allowed a handstand with his heels waving against the ceiling. His excited fingers obviously were searching for a dagger in his boot.

You may conceive my pleasure. If his cold and practiced judgment could be so stirred, might I not hope that the phlegmatic pit in shiny shirt-fronts would rise and shout its approval at our opening? And to what reckless license might not the gallery yield? I fancied a burst of somersaults in the upper gloom, and tremendous handsprings--both men and women--down the sharp-pitched aisle. It would be shocking--this giddy flash of lingerie--except that our broader times now give it countenance. Peeping Tom, late of Coventry, in these more generous days need no longer sit like a sneak at his private shutter. He has only to travel to the beach where a hundred Godivas crowd the sands. I saw myself on the great occasion of our opening night bowing in white tie from the forward box.

Our conference was successful. When the reading of the play was finished and the wicked pirates stood in the shadow of the gibbet, he thanked me and excused himself from further attendance by reason of a prior engagement. Under the stress of selection for his theatre he cannot sleep at night, and his costumer wisely packs him off early to his bed. She whispers to me, however, that although he had hopes for a storm at sea and a hanging at the end, his decision, nevertheless, is cast in my favor for a quick production, whenever a worthy company can be assembled.

But we have gone still further toward our opening. The manager has already whittled a dozen daggers and they lie somewhere on a shelf, awaiting a coat of silver paint. On the tip of each he has bargained for a spot of red. Furthermore, he owns a pistol--a harmless, devicerated thing--and he pops it daily at any rogue that may be lurking on the cellar stairs.

All pirates wear pigtails--pirates, that is, of the upper crust --and at first this was a knotty problem. But he obtained a number of old stockings--stockings, of course, beyond the skill of that versatile person who mends the gaps--and he has wound them on wires, curling them upward at the end and tieing them with bits of ribbon. The pirate captain is allowed an extra inch of pigtail to exalt him above his fellows. When he first adjusted this pigtail on himself, his costumer cried out that he looked like a Chinaman. This was downright stupidity and was hardly worthy of her perception; but ladies cannot be expected to recognize a pirate so instinctively as we rougher men. The stocking, however, was clipped to half its length, and now he is every inch a buccaneer.

As for the captain's hook, he is resourcefulness itself. These things are secrets of the craft, but I may hint that there is a very suitable hook in a butchershop around the corner. Surely the butcher--warmed to generosity by the family patronage--would lend it for the great performance. I have no doubt but that the manager, from this time forward, will beg all errands in his direction and that his smile will thaw the friendly butcher to his purpose. Certainly two legs of lamb, if whispered that the drama is at stake, will consent to hang for one tremendous day upon a single hook. Our hook is to be screwed into a block of wood, and there is something about knuckles and a cord around the wrist and a long sleeve to cover up the joining. Anyway, the problem has been met.

In the furnace room he has found a heavy sheet of tin for the thunder storm, and I have suggested that he dig in a nearby gravel pit for a basket of rain to hurl against the pirates' window. But hard beans, he says, are better, and he has won the cook's consent. For the slow monotone of water dripping from the roof in our second act, a single bean, he tells me, dropped gently in a pan is a baffling counterfeit.

The lightning seems not to bother him, for he owns a pocket flashlight; but the mighty wind that comes brawling from the ocean was at first a sticker. The vacuum cleaner popped into his head, but was put aside. The fireplace bellows were too feeble for any wind that had grown a beard. His manager of finance, however, laid aside his book one night--a weary tract upon the law--and displayed an ability to moan and whistle through his teeth. The very casement rattled in the blast. He has agreed to sit in the wings and loose a sufficient storm upon a given signal.

Our stage is cramped. Three strides stretch from side to side. "Can this cockpit" you ask, "hold the vasty fields of France?" It is not, of course, the vasty fields of France that we are trying to hold; but we do lack space for the kind of riot the manager has in mind in the final scene. He wants nothing girlish. Sabers and pistols are his demand--a knife between the teeth--and more yelling than I could possibly put down in print. A bench must be upset, the beer-cask overturned, a jug of Darlin's grog spilled, and one stool, at least, must be smashed--preferably on the captain's head, who must, however, be consulted. Patch-Eye and the Duke are not the kind of pirates that lie down and whine for mercy at a single punch.

At first our manager was baffled how the pirates were to ascend a ladder to their sleeping loft. They had no place to go. They would crack their ugly heads upon the ceiling. The costumer was positive that a hole--even a little hole--should not be cut in the plaster overhead for their disappearance. If the chandelier had been an honest piece of metal they might have perched on it until the act ran out. Or perhaps the candles could be extinguished when their legs were still climbing visibly. At last the manager has contrived that a plank be laid across the tops of two step-ladders, behind a drop so that the audience cannot see. No reasonable pirate could refuse to squat upon the plank until the curtain fell.

We are getting on. Our company has been selected. We need only a handful of actors, but the manager has enlisted the street. The dearest little girl has been chosen for Betsy, and each day she practices her lullaby at the piano with uncertain, questing finger. A gentle rowdy of twelve will speak the Duke's blood-curdling lines. I understand that two quarrelsome pirates have nearly come to blows which shall act the captain. The hero, Red Joe, will be played by the manager himself, for it is he who owns the pistol. Is not the boy who has the baseball the captain of his nine?

In every attic on the street a rakish craft flies the skull and crossbones, and roves the Spanish Main on rainy afternoons. Innocent victims--girls, chiefly, who will tattle unless a horrid threat is laid upon them--are forced blindfold to walk the plank. If the wind blows, scratching the trees against the roof, it is, by their desire, a tempest whirling their stout ship upon the rocks. What ho! We split! Mysterious chalkings mark the cellar stairs and hint of treasure buried in the coal-hole. At every mirror pirates practice their cruel faces.

And now the daggers are complete, and their tip of blood has been squeezed from its twisted tube. Chests and neighbors have been rummaged for outlandish costumes. From the kindling-pile a predestined stick has become the timber leg of the wicked Duke. The butcher's hook has yielded to persuasion.

Presently rehearsals will begin--

I have been reading lately, and I have come on a sentence with which I am in disagreement. I shall not tell the name of the book but I hope you know it or can guess. It is a tale of children and of a runaway perambulator and of folk who never quite grew up, with just a flick of inquiry--a slightest gesture now and then--toward precious rascals like our Patch-Eye and the Duke. Its author stands, in my opinion, a better chance of our lasting memory than any writer living.

If you have read this book, you have known in its author a man who is himself a child--one from whom the years have never taken toll. And if you have lingered from page to page, you know what humor is, and love and gentleness. I think that children must have clambered on his familiar knee and that he learned his plot from their trustful eyes.

Someone has been reading my very copy of this book, for it is marked with pencil and whole chapters have been thumbed. I would like to know who this reader is--a woman, beyond a doubt--who has dug in this fashion to the author's heart. But the book is from a lending library. She is only a number pasted inside the cover, a date that warns her against a fine.

Her pencil has marked the words to a richer cadence. I like to think that she has children of her own and that she read the book at twilight in the nursery, and that its mirth was shared from bed to bed. But the pathetic parts she did not read aloud, fearing to see tears in her children's eyes. Before her own at times there must have floated a mist. She is a gracious creature, I am sure, with a gentleness that only a mother knows who sits with drowsy children. And now that it is my turn to read the book--for so does fancy urge me--I hear her voice and the echo of her children's laughter among the pages.

It is a book about a great many things--about David and about a sausage machine, about a little dog which was supposed to have been caught up by mistake. But when the handle was reversed out he came, whole and complete except that his bark was missing. A sausage still stuck to his tail, which presently he ate. And it proved to be his bark, for at the last bite of the sausage his bark returned. And David took his salty handkerchief from his eyes and laughed. There is a chapter on growing old--marked in pencil--a subject which the author of this book knew nothing about, never having grown old himself. And there is another chapter about a spinster, also marked. This chapter sings with exquisite melody, but breaks once to a sob for a love that has been lost. But the book is chiefly about children.

There is one particular sentence in this book with which I am not in agreement. "... down the laughing avenues of childhood, where memory tells us we run but once...." I cannot believe that. I cannot believe we run but once. In the heart of the man who wrote the book there lives a child. And a child dwells in the heart of the woman of the lending library.

We are too ready to believe that childhood passes with the years--that its fine imagination is blunted with the hard practice of the world. Too long have we been taught that the clouds of glory fade in the common day--that the lofty castles of the morning perish in the noon-day sun. The magic vista is golden to the coming of the twilight, and the sunset builds a gaudy tower that out-tops the dawn. If a man permits, a child keeps house within his heart to the very end.

And therefore, as I think of those whittled daggers with their spot of blood, of that popping pistol, of the captain's horrid hook, of the black craft flying the skull and crossbones in the attic, I know, despite appearance, that I am young myself. I snap my fingers at the clock. It ticks merely for its own amusement. I proclaim the calendar is false. The sun rises and sets but makes no chilling notch upon the heart. Once again, despite the weary signpost of the years, I run on the laughing avenues of childhood.

My preface outstays its time. Even as I write our audience has gathered. Limber folk in front squat on the floor. Bearded folk behind perch on chairs as on a balcony. Already, behind the scenes, the captain of the pirates has assumed his hook and villainous attire. Patch-Eye mumbles his lines against a loss of memory. Paint has daubed him to a rascal. The evil Duke limps for practice on his timber leg. Presently our curtain will rise. We shall see the pirate cabin, with the lighthouse blinking in the distance, the parrot, Flint's lantern and the ladder to the sleeping loft. We shall hear a storm unparalleled, like a tempest from the ocean--hissed through the teeth. We shall see the pirates in tattered costume and in pigtails made of stockings.

ON CHOOSING A TITLE

I find difficulty in selecting a name for my pirate play. Children seem so easy in comparison--John or Gretchen, or Gwendolyn for parents of romantic taste. Gwendolyn I myself dislike, and I have thought I would give it to a cow if ever I owned a farm. But this is prejudice. To name a child, I repeat, one needs only to run his finger down the column of his acquaintance, or think which aunt will have the looser purse-strings in her will.

An unhappy choice, after all, is rare. Here and there a chocolate Pearl or a dusky crinkle-headed Blanche escapes our logic; but who can think of a sullen Nancy? Its very sound, tossed about the nursery, would brighten a maiden even if she were peevish at the start. I once knew an excellent couple of the name of Bottom, who chose Ruby for their offspring; but I have no doubt that the infelicity was altered at the font. The fact is that most of our names grow in time to fit our figure and our character. Margaret and Helen sound thin or fat, agreeable or dull, as our friends and neighbors rise before us; and any newcomer to our affection quickly erases the aspect of its former ugly tenant. I confess that till lately a certain name brought to my fancy a bouncing, red-armed creature; but that by a change of lease upon our street it has acquired an alien grace and beauty. Perhaps a scrawny neighbor by the name of Falstaff might remain inconsequent, but I am sure that if a lady called Messilina moved in next door and were of charming manner, a month would blur the bad suggestion of her name; which presently--if our gardens ran together--would come to sound sweetly in my ears.

But a play is offered for a sudden judgment--to sink or swim upon a first impression--and its christening is an especial peril. I have fretted for a month to find a title for my comedy.

It is quite a task to find a sufficient title. I have wavered for a month.

But now my efforts seem rewarded.

There is a wharf in London below the Tower, not far from the India docks. It has now sunk to common week-day uses, and I suppose its rotten timbers are piled with honest, unromantic merchandise. But once pirates were hanged there. It was the first convenient place for inbound ships to dispose of this dirty, deep-sea cargo. Doubtless hereabout the lanes and building-tops were crowded with an idle throng as on a holiday, and wherries to the bankside and the play paused with suspended oar for a sight of the happy festival. Did Hamlet wait upon this ghastly prologue? Shakespeare himself, unplayed script in hand, mused how tragedy and farce go hand in hand. In those golden days with which our comedy concerns itself, a gibbet stood on Wapping wharf and pirates stepped off the fatal cart to a hangman's jest. We may hear the shouts of the 'prentice lads echoing across the centuries.

I cannot hope that many persons--except dusty scholars--will know of the district's ancient ill-repute, yet Wapping wharf figures often in my dialogue as the somber motif of a pirate's life. It conveys to the plot the sense of mystery. It needs but a handful of electric lamps.

If no one offers me a better title I shall let it stand.

Wappin' Wharf

First produced in January, 1922, at the Play House, Cleveland, under the direction of Frederic McConnell. The settings and costumes were designed by Julia McCune Flory. The cast was as follows:

Wappin' Wharf

ACT I

PATCH: Darlin'! Darlin'! Darlin'!

PATCH: Me friend, the Duke, is thirsty. Will yer fill the cups? Hurry, ol' dear! And squeeze in jest a bit o' lemon. It sets the stomich.

DARLIN': Yer sets yer stomich like it were hen's eggs. Alers coddlin' it.

DUKE: There 's no one like Darlin' fer mixin' grog.

DARLIN': Fer that kind word I 'm lovin' yer. Ain 't he a figger o' a man? Wenus was nothin'. Jest nothin' at all.

PATCH: It 's grog beats off the melancholy. As soon as me pipes go dry, I gets homesick fer the ocean. Here we be, Duke, thrown up at last ter rot like driftwood on the shore. No more sailin' off to Trinidad! No tackin' 'round the Hebrides! We is ships as has sprung a leak. It was 'appy days when we sailed with ol' Flint on the Spanish Main.

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