MUSE OF ST. MARTIN'S LANE

Rotorua Morning Post, Issue 5295, 7 January 1947, Page 7

MUSE OF ST. MARTIN'S LANE

THE STREET ACT0R WHILE YOU WAIT FOit IPHE bCORS TO OPEN Six o^clock in St. iMartin^s Lane, Londoh roars. The Charihg Cross Road booms and thunders. The chirp and croak of eabs cdunterpoints the groiind hass of iorries and ominibus'es; A . hundred thousand feet beat lik'e artillery ori the glistening paveirieiit-. A hundred thousand voices chorus the sweiling song of the great city-. i3usk. Lig'ht thickening. Shop shiltters going up with a bang and a elattei*, pavement stalls coniing in. Pubs opening up. A smell of cooking in the air. k Street lamps lighting up, raomentarily holding in their sallow glow the fall of the fine-spun golden autumn mist. Clouds ' torn ragged overhead, a hard wind jabbing around corners, a raw night coming . . Six o'clock dusk; and London roars. In the little alley oft' St. Martin's Lane, the wind cuts and stin-gs sharper than ever. ' The light is thieker, the shadow longer. We wait at the end of the long queue which straggles up to the mouth of the alley and wheels round the corner up the street to the theatre entrance, out of sight. The lucky ones sit hunched patiently on their little stools. The rest of us huddle under the eaves and titlt our evening papers to catch the little light, or blow smoke clouds into the bright mist drizzle. Six o'clock. Fifteen minutes before the galery box offive opens, Thirty minutes to curtain rise. 'Ladies . . . and . . . gentlemen!" Three pistol shots above the distant roll of thunder. He is small, 'slightly tubby. His scrubby hair has thinned out back from his high, broad forehead. His clothes are old, his finergnails a little gruhby. His overoat falls, like a domino, ' in^a graceful line from his fine sholulders, hellyting tover a'pa'd. away from his outstretched hands. He holds a stick with a careless air, he tosses his hat to an empty stool, and repeats, with the faintest and most charming of ingratiating modulations: 'Ladies . . . and . . . gentlemen." He looks at us and we look at him. We look expectantly, gladly. He regards us cannily, confidently, slightly disdainfully. The prologue is hrief. "Richard the Second, Gaunt's speech — (he clears his throat, and the ghosts pop in and out of alleyways and doorways) — Act One, Scene Three." A quick pace forward, a sudden gleam in the eye, a hand flung to the heavens . . . He has us. This royal throng of kings, this sceptred isle . . The voice is rich with the slightest of brog*ues The cadences fall like organ arpeggios There is a little spatter of applause when he ends. He ajeknowledges the clapping gTavely. "I thank you haimbly." He bows. But with such an air. He is an actor, this quain scarecrow, gesturing under the lamplight in the dark alley. We are deeply impressed. The recital continues. ... I have no spur To prick the sides of my intent; but only Vaulting ambition, which o'erleaps itseK And falls on the other. (Applause.) I thank you. He stills the clapping with a slight authoritative motion of his hand. "If you have enjoyed my recital I am repaid (Paase.) I am doing this not hecause I wish to — ^(pause) — but because I am an artist." (Whatever that may mean.) He limps down the queue, interspersiug grave thanks with little snippets of poetry. "I thank you. Poor and content is rich, and rich enoug'h. T thank you. If music he the food of love, play on. Thaiflc you madam. Give me excess of.it." The hat floats in the air as he listens intoxicated for a moment to his own 'cello solo, then dips smartly to receive a proffered threepence. "0, who can hold a fire in his hand by thinking on the frosty Caucasus? Thank you, sir. Or cloy the hungry edge of appetite by bare imagination of a feast? Nothing, sir? As you wish. I'm no beggar. How sharper than a serpent's tooth . . ." He comes to the end of the line and to me. "Thank you, sir. And thank you one and all." For the first time he smiles. He grins to me. "Cheero, cock," and he hurries off down the alley.