THE two weeks that I spent on the Atlantic going
and coming from America on the occasion of that memorable first visit were
the longest, and incomparably the most delightful holidays I had ever had
in my life up till then. Unforgettable, too, on account of the
companionship and comrade- ship of John, all of whose rosy
prognostications of my success—"bones an' all"—had been so completely
fulfilled. I came to love Dr. Atlantic, the greatest medical man in the
world. Honestly I do not think I could ever have achieved my record of
world-work—four times round the globe and twenty visits to America,
singing every day and often twice a day, Sundays and travelling days
excepted—had it not been for the months I have spent on shipboard with the
winds of heaven blowing away all the cobwebs and filling the lungs and the
blood with new energy and fire. The busy business men and industrial
leaders of America know all about Dr. Atlantic. They appreciate him much
more than our people do. A week under his ministrations—sometimes, let me
admit, very drastic ministrations—and you step off his floating
consulting-room feeling fit to knock a house over. That was how I felt on
the Carmania coming home that first trip. The
only thing I didn't like was the sense of idleness and not earning
anything so I paced up and down the deck trying to get a new song to the
beat of my feet on the pitch-pine. I got it right enough. "When I Get Back
Again to Bonnie Scotland" was thought out and more or less welded together
on the promenade deck of the old Carmania. I
never wrote a better marching air than the lilt to which the words of this
song are set. It was an instantaneous hit when I put it
on in London a week or two later. I am told it was a favourite song with
the Scottish troops in France. And I sang it hundreds of times many years
after in camps, ruined chateaux, and other places behind the line on my
visits to France under the auspices of the British Government during the
war. With the
exception of my pantomime engagements my trip to New York had earned me
more money than I had ever before secured and I was a very proud man when
I reckoned up that I was now worth perhaps a couple of thousand pounds in
addition to my house at Tooting which had been purchased, or at least
finally paid for, out of my pantomime earnings. My great idea about this
time was to be independent. I remember telling myself over and over again
that any man who had a house of his own and five thousand pounds in the
bank should be able to hold up his head with the best and look the whole
world fearlessly in the face. This hankering after independence is inborn
in most Scots, especially in those who, like myself, have been reared in
poverty and who have bitter memories of fathers and mothers striving and
struggling and fretting themselves into their graves in order to make ends
meet and give their dear bairns some reasonable chance in the battle of
life. I decided that I would never rest until I had saved enough money to
keep me and mine if the day should arrive when I lost my voice or my
popularity. I had seen so many "stars" in an improvident and always
uncertain profession come to financial grief that my resolve was strong to
save all that I could and so hasten the day of independence for myself and
my loved ones. There were to be no "charity benefits" for Harry Lauder!
But the small salaries I had to
come back to in London .these old contracts again!—did not allow me much
scope for "makin' mickle mair" as Burns has it. I was now the undisputed
"top-liner" of the British vaudeville stage. I never played to anything
but a crowded house. Often there were artistes on the same bill with me
getting twice, three times, yes, ten times my salary but I was always the
drawing card. The public loved me and I loved playing to them. The
managers loved to have me—so much so that when I wanted a few days off to
nurse a cold or merely to take a rest they insisted on having a doctor's
certificate. They didn't believe me! But latterly I found a way of
circumventing the official doctors sent down to Tooting to find out if
Lauder was malingering. I would jump into bed just before the medico
arrived and it was an easy thing for me to assume a drawn and doleful
expression and to work up a cough which would have convinced the whole
College of Surgeons that I was in a state of incipient consumption. It
always worked. Indeed one doctor went back to London and reported that
poor Harry Lauder was not long for this world. This "stage" cough which I
developed so skilfully about this time came in very handy many years later
when I sang my song "When I was Twenty-One." Every time I sing the song
and start the old man's cough in the patter I feel that I want to laugh,
remembering how I fooled the managers' doctors many years ago. But please
do not think that I made a practice of getting out of a "cheap
engagement," Certainly not; I played every contract I ever made, either on
the date arranged or subsequently, and for the money agreed upon. But it
was very galling to me in these early days to feel that certain people
were determined, Shylock-like, to get their exact pound of flesh from me
no matter whether I was feeling well or ill. And I only tell you the story
to show how sure a money-spinner I was in the eyes of the managers.
However, what I was losing on the
swings, I was making on the roundabouts. In the early years of this
century it was a very common thing for the rich and titled people of the
West-end of London to give great private entertainments at their town
mansions. For these I was in much demand. I could have accepted private
engagements almost every night of the week at very handsome fees. But I
only went out for the "big stuff" and to the elite of the West-end
mansions. At the Tivoli I was perhaps drawing eight or ten pounds a week
yet it was no uncommon thing for me to refuse ten times that amount for
half-an-hour's singing in some great lady's salon after midnight. The
favourite song at these functions was always "I Love a Lassie"; indeed I
had to make a definite bargain with more than one hostess that this song
would be included in my list. There can be few of the really great London
mansions that I have not sung in at one time or another. At these private
entertainments the guests liked to join in the choruses and I have had
Royal Princes and Princesses, Dukes and Duchesses, Earls and Countesses,
Lords and Ladies all shouting my choruses at the pitch of their voices.
I think I must always have been a
lucky man in the way of free advertisement. Already I have told you how I
did nothing to stop, but rather to foster, the rumours and stories about
certain supposed Scottish characteristics which had become, so to say,
over-developed in my personality. But this was by no means the only
publicity I got. Everything I did for months after my return from America
seemed to find its way into the papers. If I got a present of a bull-dog
from an old Scottish admirer its photograph appeared in twenty different
papers. If I bought an American motor-car for John there was a "story"
about it and John was photographed driving it, standing beside it, or
underneath it. If he ran it into a neighbour's wall—as he did--the
neighbour was interviewed and there were photographs of the "gash." If I
put on my kilt and went down to Brighton of a Sunday for a whiff of the
sea the news was in the London papers next morning. I couldn't move a leg
in bed, or go to a barber's for a hair-cut, or buy a second-hand
overcoat—as I certainly once did in a theatrical costumer's shop in
London—but it duly appeared in print. If any of my audiences were more
than usually demonstrative there was a paragraph headed "Lauder's
Triumphant Return" or "Harry's Amazing Reception." Even the sober and
responsible writers like Archer, and James Douglas and Edgar Wallace, John
D. Irvine and many others all took to writing analyses of my art and stage
achievements. For me it was quite bewildering. Had I had a "soft patch" in
my make-up all this praise and notoriety would sure have found me out to
my undoing. "Of course you had a very clever press-agent" some of you will
say. The only press-agent I ever had in my life was entirely unpaid. I
refer to my life-long friend and pal Willie Blackwood, now a very
well-known journalist and one of the directors of the Amalgamated Press,
London, the largest periodical publishing house in the world. I forget
just how many millions of papers and magazines this amazing British firm
of publishers distributes every week but I think it is in the region of
ten millions. The only other printing combination in the world to compare
with it is in Philadelphia. "Wullie" certainly pulled lots of stunts about
his chum Harry Lauder in the old days when he lived in Glasgow and he was
almost as well-known in the London and provincial theatres as Tom and I
were. But in his case it was a pure labour of love. Only the other night
we were sitting in his house at Harrow recalling the old days over a pipe
and a "wee deoch" and we both agreed that no performer in the world had
got more publicity—and paid less for it—than me.
Willy-nilly, something was always
turning up to focus my name in the minds of the public. Take the case of
the horse which appeared with me on the stage of the London Pavilion when
I put on a song entitled "The Man They Left Behind," a comic soldier study
of a peculiarly ridiculous description. For the purpose of the song I
required a horse, preferably a funny horse. But there are no serious or
funny horses; there are just horses. That is, generally speaking. So I set
out to get a horse which would at least give the song a background.
Letting my desires be known to a Lambeth horse-dealer I was assured by
return of post that he had "just the animal I would have selected out of
ten thousand."
"Arry,
ole top," said the dealer when I went down to his yard, "this 'orse I got
'as been waitin' for twenty years for you! God knows 'ow old he is but if
you can get 'im on the stige he'll make the people ill larfln'. Just come
an' be interjooced to 'im !"
We walked into the stable, a ramshackle building
falling to pieces and presenting signs, both to eyes and nose, of not
having been cleaned since it was built. In the furthest away stall stood
the most ghastly-looking equine—a night-mare of a horse. He was leaning up
against the stone wall of the stable, his head hanging down so far between
his front legs that two long tufts of hair on his upper-lip were touching
the cobbled floor. Almost every bone in his body could have been counted
and his forelegs were bent outward so far that it was a wonder to me he
was able thus to support even his frail weight in front. This caricature
of a horse had only one good eye—good, that is, in so far as it was
complete. An accident to the other had had the effect of leaving it
permanently at half-cock. Immediately I went up to him he fixed his good
eye on me, slowly slewing round and raising his head the better to do so.
I swear Old Scraggy—as I instantly dubbed him—laughed at me. I most
certainly laughed at him, laughed so loudly and so long that Tom had to
help me from the stable, "How long do you think he'll live?" I asked the
dealer. "H you can guarantee him for a month I'll make him a national
horse-character!"
"Lorlunime, 'Arry," said the dealer, "e's bin Pullin'
two ton o' coal every clay for years and surely you ain't goin' to work 'im
harder than that! He'll live as long as you'll sing your new song any'ow."
He was right—exactly right. Old
Scraggy was sent up to the Pavilion on the Monday night. Tom and I had
thought out some humorous "equipment" for him. He had cricket pads on his
fore feet, a frowsy "moo-poke" (food-bag) was fastened on to his straggly
tail and the saddle consisted of an old piece of Axminster carpet kept in
position by "girths" of string and old rope. He wore blinkers that flapped
from side to side as he walked and generally he was the most comical bit
of live stage property imaginable. There were shrieks of laughter in the
wings as Tom and I put the finishing touches on Old Scraggy's
accoutrements but they were nothing to the tornado of merriment which
greeted the two of us as we "galloped" on to the stage. At the very first
performance "Scraggy" showed some hesitancy about facing the footlights
and one of the stage hands prodded him with the sharp end of a pencil. The
result was that he made one jump forward clear of the wings, stopped dead,
and sent me shooting over his head as if I had been discharged from a
catapult. Luckily I was not hurt and scrambled to my feet amid terrific
yells of laughter from the audience who thought that the whole episode had
been carefully arranged. "Scraggy" stayed put in the position he assumed
after his initial jump and never moved a muscle for the rest of the
performance. Or rather I should say his body and legs were absolutely
immovable but his head sank lower and lower as the song went on. The
audience never stopped laughing at him all the time; indeed, "The Man They
Left Behind" was a very funny song but it didn't have anything in this
respect on my steed who was easily the most humorous "silent performer" on
the London stage during his "run."
The papers were full of "Scraggy" stories, where I got
him, what I was paying for his services, what I fed him on. One journal
even had a column interview with the horse on "What I think of Harry
Lauder—By Scraggy." So famous did this extraordinary quadruped become that
crowds assembled every night at the Pavilion stage-door to see his arrival
and departure. His journey to the theatre was a nightly West-end sensation
and 'Arry Laudah's 'Oss became notorious. One evening he slipped up in
Piccadilly Circus and as he was very tired after his walk from Lambeth he
refused to rise. It required the united efforts of ten police men and as
many civilians to get him on his feet and he had literally to be carried
to the sidepath, where he stood stock-still for fully a quarter of an
hour. After this breathing spell, and entirely of his own volition, his
attendant having mysteriously disappeared in search of some liquid
refreshment, he ambled off in the direction of the Pavilion accompanied by
several policemen and a crowd of highly amused pedestrians. Scraggy was
funnier than ever that night because he was covered with mud which we had
no time to remove. Poor Old Scraggy! Two days after I finished my season
at the Pavilion, and having opened a provincial tour at Edinburgh, I
learned from the papers that the old horse had been found dead in his
Lambeth bed. The excitements of a stage life had been too much for him.
His success had killed him! But he provided me with a vast amount of free
publicity and had I been in London I would have seen that old Scraggy's
mortal remains were saved from the last indignity of the Cats' Meat Man's
barrow!
Even when
I was reading of Scraggy's death I was having another experience of a
different kind with another stage horse. "The Man They Left Behind" had
been so popular in London that I resolved to sing the song, equine partner
and all complete, on my provincial tour. So at Edin- burgh I had to get a
horse for the part. Early on the Monday morning of my Edinburgh week I
went down to the well-known horse emporium of the Messrs. Croall and told
the folks there that I required an animal that would not be frightened at
music and the strange surroundings of the footlights. I was told that they
would send up one of the quietest horses in the stable and one that
wouldn't be upset by all the military or bagpipe bands in Scotland. I was
content to leave the matter in the hands of Croalls, being the more ready
to do this in that I rather prided myself on my knowledge of horses and
ability to manage them. You see I had been a pony-driver in the mines for
some time and you get "gey thrawn wee deevils" among the underground
horses. The horse sent up to the Empire on the Monday night was quiet
enough in the wings and submitted to all the strange trappings we put on
him without a symptom of annoyance. He even carried me on to the stage all
right and began to look around with what I thought was an intelligent
interest. But all of a sudden, as I was doing the "walk round" for my
first chorus he laid his ears back and made to savage me as I passed the
side of the stage nearest to him. I made a very real start away from him.
Again the audience thought this was all in the play and they yelled their
hearty approval. "Peter" as I called this Edinburgh horse, had his
attention thus diverted from me and walked down to the very edge of the
footlights and stared quizzically at the people in front. This was another
bit of "acting" much to the liking of the audience and it certainly made a
hit with me too at the moment. The number finished in fine style, I caught
hold of "Peter," mounted him and rode off the stage. His exit was a trifle
spirited, I must admit, for he "breenged" up against the scenery,
clattered across the prompt side and very nearly came to grief among some
"props" lying there for a later act. I narrowly escaped being precipitated
down a stairway leading to the proscenium. All the same we had made a very
fine start as a double-act and I was quite pleased with Peter's
eccentricities which I put down to mere playfulness. Next night, however,
he was in high fettle and had evidently made up his mind to do things. He
started by prancing about the stage so much that I could not get on with
the song. Sometimes I was running after him; more often he was running
after me —and I didn't half like the look in his eye, either!
Suddenly he started to back in
the direction of the orchestra. I seized hold of the reins and began to
pull. The harder I pulled the more he backed. The people rocked in their
chairs with merriment, thinking that this was some glorious new stunt with
a comic horse that Harry Lauder had invented for their amusement. When,
however, the drummer in the orchestra looked up and found a horse's tail
swishing directly over his head he beat a hasty retreat from his place and
his action was followed by several members of the band nearest to him. Two
or three of the occupants of the first row of stalls likewise hurried away
to safety. Soon the whole house was in an uproar. Those who were out of
reach of all possible danger continued to scream with uncontrollable
laughter but the remainder of the musicians and the people in the front
seats started a general stampede. My wife was a terrified spectator from
the wings and I could hear her shouting to the stage hands to go on and
help me to "pull the brute back before he killed somebody!" Just when it
seemed a certainty that the horse would make a very undignified descent on
to the big drum it occurred to him to look round and see where he was
going, so to speak. After a moment or two of hesitation he sprang forward.
The tension on the reins thus suddenly broken, I went heels over head
up-stage, my steed jumped over my body and went dashing into the wings,
foaming at the mouth. The stage hands flew for their lives but "Peter's"
attendant soon had him under control. That was his last night as my
"assistant." Afterwards I had a horse of a much more docile .disposition,
greatly to the relief of the drummer and his musical associates.
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