Ada Read online

  I’ve never worked so hard in my life – it was Baldwin’s Butterflying all year and then back to the North of England every Christmas time for panto season and to see the Under-the-Table Boys. Every day during 1893 Professor Baldwin made me recite several words and meanings a day from Webster’s Dictionary of the English Language across three continents. And every day I was quizzed after breakfast.

  Professor Baldwin showed us how to keep a proper Press cuttings and a photographic album in order to make our own history and reputation, and there you are, Horrie, holding the result. Baldwin’s own puffery would be placed as news stories or reviews by his advance men, and then they’d be pasted into the album and shown to a reporter in the next town as proof of our universal triumphs. Once printed and pasted into the scrapbook they were gospel evidence. For instance, that’s how I invented the Serpentine dance in India one morning after breakfast.

  A lie, Horace, is only as true as you need it to be. If a lie impressed people and made them happy, was it not a beautiful truth, to them? And who were we to deny a fellow world citizen’s beautiful truth?

  Professor Baldwin never met a syllable he didn’t like or abandoned a phrase that could go on a poster. Why ride a bicycle when you can be a Velocipeding Venus? Why say magic when you could say legerdemain, and why say dancer when you could claim to be ‘The Terpsichorean Marvel of the Age?’ Why own to buying cut crystal on the docks during a steamer stopover in Colombo, when you could say it was a ruby given to you by Indian Royalty? ‘Amusing’ weren’t a patch on ‘the funniosities caused audience members to pop their buttons’. He could butter an audience on both sides and flatter a newspaperman half to death. In the end we spoke fluent Baldwinage, too. He’s what rubbed off our rough edges – or most of them, anyway. I’d still be talking like a mill girl if it wasn’t for him. Weren’t for him? I shall have to write and ask.

  I always shrunk in the advertisements: I was promised as dainty, petite, fairy-like, little, slight, piquant, delicate, lively and a pretty spectacle. I thought ‘fairy-like’ was pushing it but Jim said it was better than ‘moth-like’, which sounded like I should be swatted with a rolled-up copy of The Age.

  ‘Dainty’ was a way of saying ‘young’ and not yet thick around the middle. You could have a success in the music halls as a galumpher and a belter – you just ask Florrie Forde, a Fitzroy girl who ended up queen of the London music halls. But for every would-be Florrie, three hundred big girls would be sent clumping back to their laundry- service mangle. Florrie had the Special Something. Her upper arms would keep waving long after her handkerchief had stopped and she had a figure like a rocky outcrop but the House always screamed for her. Dame Nellie Melba has followers and accolytes, but you’d be too frightened to ask her over for tea. Florrie, on the other hand, would probably ask you, and put the tea leaves down the gully trap herself.

  Let’s put our cards face up. I was called ‘piquant’ because I weren’t beautiful. Wrong kind of chin. Some girls drew the eye of everyone in the room. I did all right as a smiler who could match a gentleman for jaunty remarks. Everyone in the business knows comedy is harder to do than drama, but it doesn’t make the boys moony over you. Take one hundred people. Eighty of them could make you believe a made-up story, ten could tell you something to make you cry. Perhaps four or five in the hundred could make you laugh. But only one person in that room can make the other ninety-nine people laugh at once. And that person is the comedian, Horrie. And if anyone says comedy’s easy, stand back and watch ’em have a go at it. Bring a pineapple, you’ll have time to peel it.

  We had something different: ‘Baldwin’s Butterflies’ was a travelling show full of successful acts. It was also a way to get back to see the boys in England, and make money in lots of exotic colonial ports on the way: India, South Africa, and then America, which could mean the big time. I wrote to Bob Bell and told him I’d have to marry him when I got back and I might be away up to forty years or so. He sent me a postcard of a group of sailors and a one-line message, ‘I’ll try to stay busy’.

  By the time we left in 1890 and sailed up the globe poking our head into lots of British colonies along the way, we had a dazzler of a show. Bert Phillips would play the piano overture to get the audience to park their behinds. Gawd, some of those pianos in the small halls. May as well have hit a bucket with a hammer to keep time. Often there were not enough chairs for the hall, and the lights went out when they felt like it. We’d open with Kitty in front of the curtain. In Australia, she’d sing Professor Baldwin’s attempt at a patriotic national anthem, ‘Australia by the Sea’ (where else was I going to put it? he asked), so the children could sell copies of the sheet music at interval and after the show. Jim and I would do the musical mélange with bells on, with topical jokes and snatches of songs. The curtain behind us would be yanked up, or across, and we’d scarper as it revealed Professor Baldwin and Kitty centre stage with a replica of the Davenport Brothers’ Spiritual Materialising Cabinet up on sawhorse legs like a floating wardrobe.

  Mr Baldwin would introduce himself, ‘I was born at a very early age. So long ago that I cannot swear if it was I who was born, or someone else.’ Then would come the witty dissertation about why materialising spirits was balderdash. ‘Why do folk in the afterlife never throw footballs, or armchairs, or indeed members of the clergy? Why is it always tambourines?’

  Professor Baldwin then invited to the stage a committee of local grandees. Committee members tied him to a chair, then one of their compatriots to another chair, opposite. All the while, Professor Baldwin would insult them under the guise of flattery. ‘Good Judge Skelling,’ he’d say, ‘you’re no jaded voluptuary, no dribbling dodderer with a secret library of questionable literature who steals down to the pantry and chants vulgar songs to himself, that’s plain.’ The audience would hoot with laughter.

  After that there was various farcical openings and closings of the spirit cabinet doors, and dreadful sounds and hurled tambourines and when the doors were opened again the grandee would have a tambourine over his head but both men would still be ‘securely’ tied.

  Next, he’d set his fingers aflame, change water into red wine in clear jugs, put Kitty in the pillory for her to escape, do some spiritualist table rapping. Then he’d explain how he did it all. No wonder the spiritualists hated him. He kept the mystery for his own clairvoyant act in the second half: not explaining it meant non-believers could imagine they might work out the trick, and believers could just keep believing.

  Then it was off with Baldwins and on with the Bells: Jim would stagger out with the burnt cork on and do a funny turn playing the banjo and the bones; Alice would get through the Skiptomania dance, I might do a spot of Tyrolean clog dancing or a song, and we’d have some quick-change Kittying.

  All right, keep your hair on. We’re getting to the Mahatma-ing.

  Baldwin would then reappear on stage alone, to explain the White Mahatma act. He invited the audience to each submit a secret question to the White Mahatma, his wife, who he would put into a mesmeric trance during interval. The children and I would troop out with a handful of pencils, some small pieces of paper and, for those who needed a hard surface to write against, some helpful pasteboards about the size and appearance of a novel cover.

  ‘Feel free to write your name on the paper,’ we’d say. ‘But don’t let me see a word!’ There was always much muttering and fun in the audience as people wrote their questions and then folded them carefully and tucked them into a pocket or their hatband.

  We’d carefully collect the backing boards and pencils and any unused papers (you’d be surprised how many swells in the dress circle try to nick a pencil). Then came interval, ten or fifteen minutes, for us to arrange a few matters backstage and the children to sell Baldwin pamphlets, sheet music or postcard pictures of us.

  Professor Baldwin would open the second half explaining that he had already mesmerised Mrs Baldwin backstage for convenience. If he was feeling energetic, he’d do a few eeri
e finger gestures at Kitty, who’d go all slack and swoony, and sit down in her chair in a blindfold or covered in muslin like a beekeeper.

  When we first saw Kitty do the Mahatma-ing in Perth, the legal Mrs Baldwin, originator and purveyor of the clairvoyant act, was dying of gin and morphia in Sydney. Clara Baldwin, Harry told us later, ended her life as Madam Hope, of the penny-a-line advertisements in the sporting papers. She traipsed between a series of nasty Paddington and Surry Hills addresses to dispense clairvoyant advice on the subject of love-lives, business prospects and pigeon wagers. It’s a sad and lonely end to somebody who used to have eight hundred people applauding her nightly. Not something to dwell on, I wouldn’t have thought.

  All right, Horace. I can’t tell you how the White Mahatma did it but I’ll describe the act for you, and you can see if you can spot it. It was the same, whether the Mahatma was Clara, or Kitty, or Alice, or even Lizzie more lately. But picture Kitty, putting on sonorous tone. ‘There’s a gentleman in a yellow coat . . . I think somewhere at the right of the stalls, who wants to know if Ireland shall have Home Rule?’ A kerfuffle at the end of row E and an astonished shout, ‘Yes, that was me!’ No, not a plant. A payer. He takes his question, still folded, from his breast pocket and shows it to those around him. Kitty would sway, ‘I can see the ceremony, it is swirling about me . . . Ireland shall have Home Rule in four years time,’ she’d say. (Oopsy daisy. Never mind.)

  And then more – one after the other, sometimes for two hours, the rest of the audience avid and staring as if mesmerised themselves. Their secret questions repeated from the stage, and answered. They gasp, and put their hands to their breast. We’d be almost cross-eyed with boredom backstage, squeezing dripping up through the holes in sandwiched biscuits like little worms, and keeping the tea warm.

  ‘A man up in the gallery in a blue hat wants to know, “Where is my brother?”

  ‘Your brother is in Newtown, Sydney.’ Or South Africa, or Niagara Falls, or en route to the Americas.

  ‘“Will my wife live longer than I?” I think this question’s energy emanates from a man in the left of the dress circle, I think his name might be George.’

  ‘Yes, I’m George! It was my question exactly!’

  ‘Your wife shall outlive you, sir. And she will be a very merry widow.’ (Much laughter.)

  ‘How long shall I be here in Hay/Kalgoorlie/Ladysmith/Leeds/Vancouver?’

  ‘We don’t care,’ Lizzie would whisper backstage. The Mahatma would quaver: ‘Two years or so.’

  A smirking dandy masher in a high collar could always be relied upon to stand up in the stalls and shout, ‘When shall I be rich?’ Kitty would sway and clutch her blindfold and burst out: ‘You will become very wealthy, but then – oh no, no! I see you! You are on the deck of a ship. A terrible storm, a crashing wave.’ At this point, the Mahatma would let out a piercing scream. ‘You are in the grasp of a giant thrashing octopus with one evil eye the size of a dinner plate looking at you all the while! It squeezes you hard in its grip and you are dashed violently into the icy sea! Oh dear. You are quite dead. It is eleven a.m., Tuesday, February 15th, 1899.’ By the time we played Vancouver Kitty was telling a man the octopus was eating him and spitting his waistcoat into the rigging.

  ‘I’d stay off boats,’ Baldwin would finish.

  ‘Will I marry?’ Any young lady asking this would be treated nicely.

  ‘Yes, to the girl in row four of the stalls in the lemon-coloured dress, who wonders if she will marry. You shall marry, my dear, but you must choose carefully between two young men. One is your true sweetheart and one a bounder who ought to be whipped.’

  ‘How can I tell the difference?’ the young lady might call out.

  ‘Wouldn’t we all like to know that, ducks,’ the Mahatma would say, to knowing chuckles.

  Any cocky man who asked, ‘When will I marry?’ got the same answer, which made the audience fall about. He would soon marry a widow with five children to support. Then it became seven children. Or nine.

  I never asked the Mahatma, ‘Shall I be married?’ I thought I’d missed that steamer. I was forty-four when I married Jim, just a year or so ago. An ossified spinster so over the hill I was going off a cliff into the valley on the other side. I knew I’d never lure Bob Bell away from a midshipman, and Henry from the Bellringers was usually on the other side of the world and quite unfussed by the fact. There’s probably little point pretending I’m thirty-six when I look one hundred and eight. As I’ve tried to impress upon you, Horrie, romance isn’t all beating eyelashes and swishing tin-silk skirts. Sometimes it’s just comfort and a fortification against being all alone in the world. Not to be sneezed at – not when you’ve got bad lungs, anyway.

  Jimmy and Harry agreed that if you were to do a clairvoyant act, it had to be entertainment and not fraud. None of us had a skerrick of respect for the spiritual materialists of the world who took money from bereaved mothers and widows and arranged for children in nighties to pop out of the wainscoting with preposterous messages. They said they did it for comfort, but the comfort didn’t come without forking over a few guineas.

  For years Harry sent us clippings from the paper of the exploits of a sharp little Welshman called Mr George Spriggs who came to Melbourne and started materialising spirits hither and yon for bereaved and widowers. He did it in the upstairs drawing room of Mr Terry’s in Russell Street, who had a downstairs full of a machine for printing the spiritualism magazine The Harbinger of Light, and an apothecary shop. Harry pointed out that Mr Terry’s children were quite the right size to pop out of the nearest skirting boards in low gaslight and pretend to be dear departeds. Spriggs went so far as to have them eat biscuits and weigh themselves in front of the poor fleeced payers who would be pressed into buying quarts of some ludicrous nostrum made of water and colouring, on their way out.

  Pure nasty flim-flam. Sucker money, we called it. Such antics are an insult to us professionals. We’d no time for that sort of horror. I’ll tell you something freely: if George Spriggs had offered to put Alice in touch with her poor dead Amy, Alice would have dispatched him to glory with her umbrella. She’d rather have her melancholy reflection than be hornswoggled by a nasty little forger of feelings like Spriggs.

  The Baldwins and Bells were united on the point that if an audience insisted on believing in clairvoyance, even after being shown how magic spiritualist tricks was done, then it was only polite to relieve them of a shilling apiece.

  We always offered a hundred-pound reward for anyone who could prove trickery, which nobody ever claimed. Unless there was a crank in the audience, as there was one night at the Bijou in Adelaide, when Alice was doing the Mahatma. A bombastic egg with silly whiskers shouted that his name was Mr Kirkham Evans (what of it, for Heaven’s sake) and that our performance was a fraud ‘like other spiritists’ involving hidden plumbago impressions of the questions and he must inspect the boards and we ought to cough up the one hundred pounds.

  Jim told the audience the man had been over-refreshed at the bar during interval and promised to speak with him afterwards if he would kindly take his seat. There was a horrible pause, and then the fiend Evans threw himself at our Cissie, a tiny thing about twelve years old she was then, and began wrestling with her to get hold of the boards, which she held onto for dear life. She screamed, ‘Murders!’ and tried to bite him, bless, and the brute raised his hand to her.

  Pandemonium.

  Jim flew down off the stage, and Bert Phillips came off his piano stool like an owl after a mouse and even the ring-in elderly cello player hobbled down the side aisle with a face like fury, and Tom, who was only nine, raced down and put his dukies up while Lizzie and I were stuck in the dress circle shrieking for a policeman and the theatre manager. There was a lot of shouting and push-and-pullery, during which Evans biffed the ancient cello player before being dragged out by his coat collar and emphatically shown the stairs, with his two young, weedy companions in tears.

  It’s always the
moral shouters you have to keep yer eye on, isn’t it? There’s something not right about Mr Kirkham Evans. If you ever go into the theatre, and you see him in the audience, it would be safest to get somebody to cosh him in advance.

  Did you bring a scone, Horace? It seems a long time since we et anything. We’ve had rather a straitened week after paying for my medicine. Beg your pardon, you’re right. Mixed sweets. There might be a Columbine left at the bottom of the bag.

  So, here we are stuck still and living like Shakers. The Mahatma didn’t see that coming. Funny to think of all those speeding trains trailing sparks and invisible coal smoke in the dark, and we’re not on ’em. But it’s bliss not meeting anyone on the way to the privy except Lizzie and Jim. Allez oop. More tea? Shall I tell you a joke? Right, pay attention. I say, ‘I had a moment the other night.’ Now you say, ‘What ’appened?’ And then I say, ‘Well, it was a dark night, it was, with no moon. I was walking home and it gave me such a start, I saw a man in the shadows! I took to my heels and ran!’ And then you say, ‘Did yer catch ’im, duck?’

  Part of the reason we threw in our lot with the Baldwins was it meant we went back to the North of England for panto season, so the Baldwins had a Christmas rest, and Jim and I worked while Alice stayed with the boys. I suppose it was the only thing we could do, but it meant the boys became accustomed to all the comings and goings. But it was wonderful to come back to the North a success. We even played Halifax, the town where I was born, to a tumultuous capacity audience, while hundreds were locked out of the theatre. What I’d have given for my Da and Ma to see me there.