Sherlock Holmes: The American Years (11 page)

We hadn’t spoken of the rift between us in months, Father and I. I had resigned from my troupe, come back to Hartford to be with him, and that seemed to suffice. Whether I would again pursue acting at the first opportunity—“first opportunity” meaning, of course, upon his death—he did not ask. Perhaps, I thought, he was afraid to hear my answer. Perhaps, I thought, he lacked the strength to debate it. Perhaps, I thought (incorrectly, I now know), he simply no longer cared.

If Father had asked about my plans, my reply might have surprised him, for I had no plans upon leaving Louisville, beyond being at his side. After I’d spent years fruitlessly trying to convince our parents that my future was in The Theater, The Theater seemed to be telling me I was quite mistaken: The only “future” I had with it, it appeared, was as an obscure utility player in stock companies in the hinterlands. Whether I would ever act again, I did not know.

The evening of the performance, Jason drove us to the theater in the rockaway. It would’ve warmed your heart to see the Old Senator come down the front steps, dressed again in a fresh-pressed black suit and not a wrinkled and stained nightgown. His movements were slow and stiff but steady, and his head stayed high even in those few moments he did stumble. Though Eliza and I hovered beside him, he even managed to pull himself up into the coach unaided.

Once I was settled in next to him, Father gave the roof two raps with his walking stick, and off we went. I looked out to see Eliza smiling at us as the rockaway rolled off—while Mother was wearing an expression so dour you’d have thought Father and I had just boarded the ferry across the River Styx.

We said little on the way to the theater. There was idle talk of the grandchildren; of the Rands and the Turnbulls and the other neighbors whose homes we were passing; of this or that triviality of the day (the bacon at breakfast had been terribly salty, etc.). But nothing was said of where we were going. I almost came to think Father had forgotten our plans for the evening entirely.

“Is it autumn so soon?” he said at one point, staring out at the fading leaves upon the trees lining the road.

“Yes,” I said. “Hard to believe summer’s over already.”

Father sank back into his seat looking strangely uneasy, and in my heart I had to wonder: If he doesn’t know the season, does he even know the year?

Yet it was a different man who stepped from the coach a quarter hour later. Father’s back was straighter, his eyes clearer, his step livelier than in months. In the course of the twelve-step climb up the steps to the theater doors, we were hailed at least two dozen times, and Governor Andrews himself seemed to speak for all when he boomed out, “By gad—it’s a pleasure to see the Old Senator among us!”

The reactions to me, of course, were more muted, where a reaction was visible at all. The huzzahs were reserved for Father. I was acknowledged only with the occasional nod . . . or smirk.

Ahhh
,
the wayward son returns with his tail between his legs
, I could almost hear the Skeffingtons and the Wests and the rest of
them thinking.
And still he struggles to warm the Old Senator to the theater.

Of course, one of the friendliest receptions I could have expected would have been from the Clemenses, yet I was relieved not to see them there. As you know so well, it was Mr. Clemens who secured my first professional engagement in Boston and later underwrote my apprenticeship with Mr. DeBar’s company in New Orleans. Relations have been strained between him and the Old Senator ever since.

What’s more, I had my own selfish, cowardly reason for avoiding “Mr. Twain”: I didn’t want to admit what little success his money seemed to have bought. If not for
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
, I fear I would have bankrupted the man.

All in all, it was a relief when we were safely settled in our seats (in one of the boxes, naturally—Mother would have it no other way). The theater was at its most radiant that night, every gaslight shining like a star, the proscenium aglow with promise, and for a moment I managed to lose myself in that keen excitement that reaches its crescendo just before the curtain rises and a new world opens up.

“So,” Father said, “the stages you play out west . . . they’re as impressive as our National?”

“No,” I admitted. “Not nearly.”

The Old Senator grunted, and just then—as if in sympathy with my spirits—the lights dimmed.

I wish I could say the play brightened my mood. Unfortunately, it embodied everything I find embarrassing about my calling. Mr. Sasanoff’s Orsino was purely porcine—ham sliced thick and served with a generous side portion of tripe. The Great Thespian
was not merely heavy-handed but heavy-booted, stomping around the stage with such an exaggerated swagger he trampled not just the floorboards but any trace of the Bard’s nimble wit. His company, predictably, followed suit, turning in performances so broad it’s a wonder they could all fit upon the same stage.

There was one notable exception, however, and it is here—with the entrance of the sour, glowering Malvolio—that things took an unexpected turn that continued on not just through the remainder of the play but through the remainder of the night and beyond. As Malvolios go, he was young—my own age, I would guess. Yet there was about his performance a striking combination of mesmerizing intensity and masterful restraint that would have seemed more fitting in a seasoned old campaigner like Mr. Sasanoff. If he played a few moments with a tad too much hand wringing and eye rolling, I placed the blame on his manager/star, not him, for a completely understated turn would’ve seemed as out of place as Edwin Booth in a Punch and Judy show.

I wasn’t the only one who found the rest of the company’s muggings unamusing. Father didn’t so much as chuckle the once, and between acts, I asked him what he made of the proceedings.

“A bit juvenile, isn’t it?” he said. “I mean . . . ‘Sir Toby Belch’?”

I nodded glumly, knowing there was much more such juvenilia to come in the following acts.

“I like the villain, though,” Father went on. “Malvolio.” And here he reminded me that our dignified old
Père
has a droll humor of his own he’s doled out far too infrequently in recent years. “A good Puritan, like our ancestors.”

“Yes. The actor who’s playing him—I think he’s the best in the cast by far.”

“Of course, you’d think so,” Father said. “He’s your mirror image.”

The comment jolted me. Not because I perceived it to be a jab at my actorly egoism—though I suppose it was. In truth, though, I simply hadn’t noticed the resemblance.

When Malvolio returned to the stage a few minutes later, I saw it. He was taller than I yet slighter of build, with a jaw that was more a pointed V than my blocky U. But in all other regards—gray eyes, hawkish nose, dark hair, long limbs—we were what the rubber-stamping bureaucrats in Washington would call carbon copies.

We even shared a name: The program listed him as
William
Escott. I spent the remainder of the play marveling that a talent such as his should bloom in so infertile a field as Mr. Sasanoff’s troupe, and I couldn’t hold back a “Bravo!” as he took his bows. The rest of the audience, however, saved their cheers for the star—Sasanoff, who was favored with such a wildly overenthusiastic ovation one would have thought Shakespeare himself had just taken the stage. It roiled in me a deep bitterness, I’ll admit, that so many in that hall who judged me a fool for pursuing a career in theater couldn’t see, when actually in one, the difference between brilliance and bluster.

The Old Senator’s applause was half-hearted, to say the least. Not because he was so wearied by the evening’s (supposed) entertainment. As the curtain fell for the final time, he was much refreshed . . . having slept through the entirety of the last act. Still, I thought it best not to subject him to the jostling hordes pouring toward the exits, and he and I remained in our seats waiting for the crowd to thin.

This would have been the perfect moment to act on the opportunity
Eliza had provided, broaching our old quarrel—my career (or lack of same)—and putting the matter to rest somehow. Yet I didn’t have the nerve. How could anyone justify a life on the stage when a travesty like Sasanoff’s
Twelfth Night
had just unfolded upon it?

So we just sat there in silence until there was a rap upon the door, and who should come barging in like a herd of buffalo in evening clothes but Horace and Eleanor Turnbull! And, no—they hadn’t wandered into the theater by mistake thinking it was hosting a debutante ball or a Presbyterian worship service or a witch burning or some other function they might find socially acceptable. The self-same Turnbulls who once had been so scandalized that I—a notorious and unrepentant
performer
—should take an interest in their daughter were now inside a theater, and the team of wild horses that had dragged them there was nowhere in sight.

Believe it or not, they were there willingly. And what’s more, they were hosting a reception for Sasanoff and his actors at their home . . . and they were asking us to come!

“We would’ve sent an invitation,” Mr. Turnbull said to Father, “but frankly . . .”

Frank he was not ready to be, though—he stopped himself with an awkward cough. But it was easy enough to follow his train of thought.

We assumed you were at death’s door
,
Senator . . . and your disreputable son may as well have passed through it long ago
,
as far as we’re concerned.

“I’m so sorry,” I said, employing all my acting skill to conceal the gritting of my teeth. “But the hour is so late, and my father—”

“Accepts the invitation,” the Old Senator rumbled. “I would very much like to meet this Sasanoff, and I’m sure my son would as well.”

“Splendid!” Mrs. Turnbull brayed. “Why, having you there will make the affair seem almost respectable!”

The Turnbulls laughed—Mr. Turnbull rather sheepishly, I thought—then said hurried farewells and scurried off to see that all was in readiness for the reception.

“There was a time,” Father mused, “when people like Horace and Eleanor Turnbull wouldn’t set foot in a theater, let alone invite theater folk into their home.”

I nodded, silent, not stating the obvious: There was a time—not so long ago—when
our
family had been like that as well.

The Old Senator gave his head a weary shake.

“Things change, I suppose,” he said. “
People
change.”

“Father . . . ,” I began, not sure what words were about to follow.

I don’t think he heard me.

“Well, we mustn’t dawdle,” he said, and he pushed himself to his feet with a tremulous grunt. “The Turnbulls are depending on us to provide the illusion of decorum.”

“Counting on
you
,” I said.

This he surely heard—and merely chose to ignore.

Not half an hour later, we were in that overstuffed museum of porcelain and crystal and Quality, the Turnbulls’ manor. As you might imagine, it was bittersweet being there: The last time I’d been allowed inside, it was to see Miss Mary Turnbull (now Mrs. David Crowell of Boston, I understand).

Yet I didn’t linger over old slights. There was Father to think
of, of course, with his shuffling gait and watery eyes ever searching for the next available chair. And what’s more, wherever in the house we went, whoever might be stopping the Old Senator to pay homage, nearby I could pick out that most intoxicating of sounds: the vainglorious yet endearing chatter of actors talking about acting.

There were perhaps fifty guests milling about the foyer and dining and sitting rooms, and the ten members of Sasanoff’s company were spread evenly among them. I’m sure you can imagine my acid amusement upon seeing the young scions of the Adams and Asbury families crowding around the ingénue who’d played Viola or the Fosters and Miltons chuckling at some bon mot tossed off by the portly player who’d embodied “Belch” not long before.

Actors, it seemed, were no longer the lepers they once were . . . provided they have English accents and patrons like the Turnbulls. Or perhaps, I thought to myself, it wasn’t so much a matter of certain low-borns rising as the high-born falling. How many of the families represented at the reception had seen their fortunes go up in smoke, along with that of the Hartford Fire Insurance Company, which had supplied their once-massive wealth, in the great Chicago inferno eight years ago? How many were simply keeping up appearances after being wiped out in the latest financial panic, now only a few months behind us?

For all I knew, even the Turnbulls themselves might be but a step away from the poorhouse. Certainly, the reception lacked the panache of social events of old. There were no ice sculptures, no imported caviars or live lobsters, no musicians playing tasteful, sedate chamber pieces.

Still, second-hand or not, the red carpet had been rolled out for Sasanoff and his troupe, and I couldn’t begrudge them their social acceptance. Being “theater folk,” they were, in a way,
my
folk, and no matter how poor I’d found their production, I was pleased for them as comrades now.

Which exponentially compounds the irony of the fact that it was I, of all those present, who managed to grievously insult them.

It began when Mr. Turnbull lumbered up with Sasanoff to make introductions. In marked contrast to his doughy host, the actor was a small, slender man—no more than five and a quarter feet tall and whippet-lean. Perhaps to make up for his diminutive stature, however, Sasanoff was oversized in every other regard. He crossed one foot before the other, fluttered a hand over his head, and bowed so low he practically doubled himself up like a folded straight razor.

“At your service, Senator,” Sasanoff intoned into the carpet. “I trust you enjoyed our humble fumblings upon the stage this evening?”

The Old Senator cocked a bushy gray eyebrow at me, probably wondering if such obsequiousness was the norm among the theater crowd. I had to wonder if this was the real reason Father had accepted the Turnbulls’ invitation in the first place—so he could see for himself the sort of people I’d chosen to associate myself with. If so, he couldn’t but be disappointed.