The Making Of A Novelist: An Experiment In AutobiographyMurray, David Christie
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The Making Of A Novelist: An Experiment In Autobiography
Murray, David Christie
Murray, David Christie, 1847-1907; Novelists, English -- 19th century -- Biography
Amongst actors one finds some of the queerest people in the world. The
men of the modern school are very much like other people; but the old
stagers can still find some of their number who are as richly comical as
Mr. Vincent Crummies himself. They are like the dyer's hand, subdued
to what they work in. I was thrown a great deal into the society of one
elderly young gentleman whose speciality had for years been that sort
of high-flying rattling comedy of which Charles Mathews was the chief
exponent in my youth. He had the most suasive, genial, and gentlemanly
comedy manner conceivable, and was never for a minute away from the
footlights. At breakfast, at luncheon, at dinner, he played to the
public of the hotel coffee-room. In the street he played to his
fellow-promenaders. He played, and played hard, in the simplest private
conversation. He had no more sense of moral responsibility than a
butterfly. He was as admirable a stage liar, or nearly, as Mr. Hawtrey
is; and off the stage he was as free from the trammels of veracity as he
was when on it He could promise, explain, evade, as dexterously in
his own person as in the character of Lord Oldacre or Greythorne or
Hummingtop. The world to him was literally a stage, and all the men and
women merely players. Old age will teach him no sadness. He will play at
being old. Death will have none of its common terrors for him. He will
play at dying. When last I heard of him I was told that he was very,
very poor; but I am sure he suffers little. He is playing at making a
fortune or playing at having lost one: pluming himself on some visionary
splendour, or commiserating some picturesquely broken nobleman in his
own person.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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