ONE NIGHT ON THE STAGE.
BY HELEN DOWNES.
[See page 299.]
CHAPTER I. THE IMPRESARIO.
Mr. Rossi sat in his study (his “studio” he always called it), a large, comfortable, but not over-tidy room in Charles Street. The walls were covered with portraits of theatrical celebrities. John Kemble with his solemn face and mourning-dress, skull in hand, Grisi as Norma, Malibran as Desdemona; whilst, above these noble tragic countenances, Taglioni, as La Sylphide, balanced herself buoyantly, amidst scenic shrubs and rosebushes, on the extreme point of her small white satin shoe. Letter-boxes and card-racks were filled to overflowing; a bouquet of exotics, fading for want of fresh water, exhaled its dying sweetness amidst rolls of music, printed or copied, a large receptacle for cigars and a smaller one for their ashes. Each article was costly, yet the ensemble was dirty and disorderly. Several musical instruments scattered about might have led to the belief that the owner was an artist, had not something in the man himself contradicted this first impression. He was a short barrel of a man, with a face struggling between its native John Bullishness and its assumed foreign decorations; a round bald head with the hair brushed up very much at the sides, prominent grey eyes, a large full month displaying a row of the most regular white teeth (in fact, a set of “Rogers’s new patent without metal fastenings”), and a splendid crop of whiskers and moustachios dyed to the darkest brown which could be supposed to belong to the owner of the light eyes. Jack Ross—or as he signed himself Giacomo Rossi—was the son of a country grocer who, coming up to London, to spend his patrimony, and having succeeded by the help of various theatrical tastes, had ended by engaging a provincial theatre, and managing it very satisfactorily, until step by step he had worked his way back to London to speculate grandly as a manager there.
As Rossi sat buried in his cushioned chair, slowly puffing his Havannah, he also studied a sample advertisement just offered to him by a pale, thin, poverty-stricken youth, who stood humbly before him listening to his employer, as he read aloud to judge of its effect:—
“‘Giacomo Rossi having, we understand, realised a snug little fortune abroad by his very successful administration of theatrical domains—’
“Not bad that, Crowe”—[puff from cigar.]—
“‘is enabled to undertake what less successful managers have in vain attempted.’”—[Puff.]—“‘He has taken the Regent Theatre for the purpose of establishing a genuine English opera company—English in every sense—singers, scene painters, decorators, all are to be natives of our own isle, and Britons may learn that they are no more to be conquered in the field of art than in that of war. The company—’
“No, Crowe; I don’t like company, it’s vulgar; put corps dramatique.”
