A Minstrel In France by Harry Lauder

H >> Harry Lauder >> A Minstrel In France

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18

"You're too young a man to retire, Harry," they said. "What would you
do? How could you pass away your time if you had no work to do? Men
who retire at your age are always sorry: They wither away and die of
dry rot."

"There'll be plenty for me to be doing," I told them. "I'll not be
idle."

But still they argued. I was not greatly moved. They were thinking of
me, and their arguments appealed to my selfish interests and needs,
and just then I was not thinking very much about myself.

And then another sort of argument came to me. People wrote to me, men
and women, who, like me, had lost their sons. Their letters brought
the tears to my eyes anew. They were tender letters, and beautiful
letters, most of them, and letters to make proud and glad, as well as
sad, the heart of the man to whom they were written. I will not copy
those letters down here, for they were written for my eyes, and for
no others. But I can tell you the message that they all bore.

"Don't desert us now, Harry!" It was so that they put it, one after
another, in those letters. "Ah, Harry--there is so much woe and grief
and pain in the world that you, who can, must do all that is in your
power to make them easier to bear! There are few forces enough in the
world to-day to make us happy, even for a little space. Come back to
us, Harry--make us laugh again!"

It was when those letters came that, for the first time, I saw that I
had others to consider beside myself, and that it was not only my own
wishes that I might take into account. I talked to my wife, and I told
her of those letters, and there were tears in both our eyes as we
thought about those folks who knew the sorrow that was in our hearts.

"You must think about them, Harry," she said.

And so I did think about them. And then I began to find that there
were others still about whom I must think. There were three hundred
people in the cast of "Three Cheers," at the Shaftesbury Theatre, in
London. And I began to hear now that unless I went back the show
would be closed, and all of them would be out of work. At that season
of the year, in the theatrical world, it would be hard for them to
find other engagements, and they were not, most of them, like me,
able to live without the salaries from the show. They wrote to me,
many of them, and begged me to come back. And I knew that it was a
desperate time for anyone to be without employment. I had to think
about those poor souls. And I could not bear the thought that I might
be the means, however innocent, of bringing hardship and suffering
upon others. It might not be my fault, and yet it would lie always
upon my conscience.

Yet, even with all such thoughts and prayers to move me, I did not
see how I could yield to them and go back. Even after I had come to
the point of being willing to go back if I could, I did not think I
could go through with it. I was afraid I would break down if I tried
to play my part. I talked to Tom Valiance, my brother-in-law.

"It's very well to talk, Tom," I said. "But they'd ring the curtain
down on me! I can never do it!"

"You must!" he said. "Harry, you must go back! It's your duty! What
would the boy be saying and having you do? Don't you remember, Harry?
John's last words to his men were--'Carry On!' That's what it is
they're asking you to do, too, Harry, and it's what John would have
wanted. It would be his wish."

And I knew that he was right. Tom had found the one argument that
could really move me and make me see my duty as the others did. So I
gave in. I wired to the management that I would rejoin the cast of
"Three Cheers," and I took the train to London. And as I rode in the
train it seemed to me that the roar of the wheels made a refrain, and
I could hear them pounding out those two words, in my boy's voice:
"Carry On!"

But how hard it was to face the thought of going before an audience
again! And especially in such circumstances. There were to be gayety
and life and light and sparkle all about me. There were to be
lassies, in their gay dresses, and the merriest music in London. And
my part was to be merry, too, and to make the great audience laugh
that I would see beyond the footlights. And I thought of the Merryman
in The Yeomen of the Guard, and that I must be a little like him,
though my cause for grief was different.

But I had given my word, and though I longed, again and again, as I
rode toward London, and as the time drew near for my performance, to
back out, there was no way that I could do so. And Tom Valiance did
his best to cheer me and hearten me, and relieve my nervousness. I
have never been so nervous before. Not since I made my first
appearance before an audience have I been so near to stage fright.

I would not see anyone that night, when I reached the theatre. I
stayed in my dressing-room, and Tom Valiance stayed with me, and kept
everyone who tried to speak with me away. There were good folk, and
kindly folk, friends of mine in the company, who wanted to shake my
hand and tell me how they felt for me, but he knew that it was better
for them not to see me yet, and he was my bodyguard.

"It's no use, Tom," I said to him, again and again, after I was dressed
and in my make up. I was cold first, and then hot. And I trembled in
every limb. "They'll have to ring the curtain down on me."

"You'll be all right, Harry," he said. "So soon as you're out there!
Remember, they're all your friends!"

But he could not comfort me. I felt sure that it was a foolish thing
for me to try to do; that I could not go through with it. And I was
sorry, for the thousandth time, that I had let them persuade me to
make the effort.

A call boy came at last to warn me that it was nearly time for my
first entrance. I went with Tom into the wings, and stood there,
waiting. I was pale under my make up, and I was shaking and trembling
like a baby. And even then I wanted to cry off. But I remembered my
boy, and those last words of his--"Carry On!" I must not fail him
without at least trying to do what he would have wanted me to do!

My entrance was with a lilting little song called "I Love My Jean."
And I knew that in a moment my cue would be given, and I would hear
the music of that song beginning. I was as cold as if I had been in
an icy street, although it was hot. I thought of the two thousand
people who were waiting for me beyond the footlights--the house was a
big one, and it was packed full that night.

"I can't, Tom--I can't!" I cried.

But he only smiled, and gave me a little push as my cue came and the
music began. I could scarcely hear it; it was like music a great
distance off, coming very faintly to my ears. And I said a prayer,
inside. I asked God to be good to me once more, and to give me
strength, and to bear me through this ordeal that I was facing, as he
had borne me through before. And then I had to step into the full
glare of the great lights.

I felt as if I were in a dream. The people were unreal--stretching
away from me in long, sloping rows, their white faces staring at me
from the darkness beyond the great lights. And there was a little
ripple that ran through them as I went out, as if a great many
people, all at the same moment, had caught their breath.

I stood and faced them, and the music sounded in my ears. For just a
moment they were still. And then they were shaken by a mighty roar.
They cheered and cheered and cheered. They stood up and waved to me.
I could hear their voices rising, and cries coming to me, with my own
name among them.

"Bravo, Harry!" I heard them call. And then there were more cheers,
and a great clapping of hands. And I have been told that everywhere
in that great audience men and women were crying, and that the tears
were rolling down their cheeks without ever an attempt by any of them
to hide them or to check them. It was the most wonderful and the most
beautiful demonstration I have ever seen, in all the years that I
have been upon the stage. Many and many a time audiences have been
good to me. They have clapped me and they have cheered me, but never
has an audience treated me as that one did. I had to use every bit of
strength and courage that I had to keep from breaking down.

To this day I do not know how I got through with that first song that
night. I do not even know whether I really sang it. But I think that,
somehow, blindly, without knowing what I was doing, I did get
through; I did sing it to the end. Habit, the way that I was used to
it, I suppose, helped me to carry on. And when I left the stage the
whole company, it seemed to me, was waiting for me. They were crying
and laughing, hysterically, and they crowded around me, and kissed
me, and hugged me, and wrung my hand.

It seemed that the worst of my ordeal was over. But in the last act I
had to face another test.

There was a song for me in that last act that was the great song in
London that season. I have sung it all over America since then "The
Laddies Who Fought and Won." It has been successful everywhere--that
song has been one of the most popular I have ever sung. But it was a
cruel song for me to sing that night!

It was the climax of the last act and of the whole piece. In "Three
Cheers" soldiers were brought on each night to be on the stage behind
me when I sang that song. They were from the battalion of the Scots
Guards in London, and they were real soldiers, in uniform. Different
men were used each night, and the money that was paid to the Tommies
for their work went into the company fund of the men who appeared,
and helped to provide them with comforts and luxuries. And the war
office was glad of the arrangement, too, for it was a great song to
stimulate recruiting.

There were two lines in the refrain that I shall never forget. And it
was when I came to those two lines that night that I did, indeed,
break down. Here they are:

"When we all gather round the old fireside
And the fond mother kisses her son--"

Were they not cruel words for me to have to sing, who knew that his
mother could never kiss my son again? They brought it all back to me!
My son was gone--he would never come back with the laddies who had
fought and won!

For a moment I could not go on. I was choking. The tears were in my
Eyes, and my throat was choked with sobs. But the music went on, and
the chorus took up the song, and between the singers and the orchestra
they covered the break my emotion had made. And in a little space I was
able to go on with the next verse, and to carry on until my part in the
show was done for the night. But I still wondered how it was that they
had not had to ring down the curtain upon me, and that Tom Valiance and
the others had been right and I the one that was wrong!

Ah, weel, I learned that night what many and many another Briton had
learned, both at home and in France--that you can never know what you
can do until you have to find it out! Yon was the hardest task ever I
had to undertake, but for my boy's sake, and because they had made me
understand that it was what he would have wanted me to do, I got
through with it.

They rose to me again, and cheered and cheered, after I had finished
singing "The Laddies Who Fought and Won." And there were those who
called to me for a speech, but so much I had to deny them, good
though they had been to me, and much as I loved them for the way they
had received me. I had no words that night to thank them, and I could
not have spoken from that stage had my life depended upon it. I could
only get through, after my poor fashion, with my part in the show.

But the next night I did pull myself together, and I was able to say
a few words to the audience--thanks that were simply and badly put,
it may be, but that came from the bottom of my overflowing heart.

CHAPTER X

I had not believed it possible. But there I was, not only back at
work, back upon the stage to which I thought I had said good-by
forever, but successful as I had thought I could never be again. And
so I decided that I would remain until the engagement of "Three
Cheers" closed. But my mind was made up to retire after that
engagement. I felt that I had done all I could, and that it was time
for me to retire, and to cease trying to make others laugh. There was
no laughter in my heart, and often and often, that season, as I
cracked my merriest jokes, my heart was sore and heavy and the tears
were in my eyes.

But slowly a new sort of courage came to me. I was able to meet my
friends again, and to talk to them, of myself and of my boy. I met
brother officers of his, and I heard tales of him that gave me a new
and even greater pride in him than I had known before. And my friends
begged me to carry on in every way.

"You were doing a great work and a good work, Harry," they said. "The
boy would want you to carry on. Do not drop all the good you were doing."

I knew that they were right. To sit alone and give way to my grief
was a selfish thing to do at such a time. If there was work for me to
do, still, it was my duty to try to do it, no matter how greatly I
would have preferred to rest quiet. At this time there was great need
of making the people of Britain understand the need of food
conservation, and so I began to go about London, making speeches on
that subject wherever people could be gathered together to listen to
me. They told me I did some good. And at least, I tried.

And before long I was glad, indeed, that I had listened to the
counsel of my friends and had not given way to my selfish desire to
nurse my grief in solitude and silence. For I realized that there was
a real work for me to do. Those folk who had begged me to do my part
in lightening the gloom of Britain had been right. There was so much
sorrow and grief in the land that it was the duty of all who could
dispel it, if even for a little space, to do what they could. I
remembered that poem of Ella Wheeler Wilcox--"Laugh and the World
Laughs With You!" And so I tried to laugh, and to make the part of
the world that I chanced to be in laugh with me. For I knew there was
weeping and sorrowing enough.

And all the time I felt that the spirit of my boy was with me, and
that he knew what I was doing, and why, and was glad, and that he
understood that if I laughed it was not because I thought less often
of him, or missed him less keenly and bitterly than I had done from
the very beginning.

There was much praise for my work from high officials, and it made me
proud and glad to know that the men who were at the head of Britain's
effort in the war thought I was being of use. One time I spoke with
Mr. Balfour, the former Prime Minister, at Drury Lane Theatre to one
of the greatest war gatherings that was ever held in London.

And always and everywhere there were the hospitals, full of the
laddies who had been brought home from France. Ah, but they were
pitiful, those laddies who had fought, and won, and been brought back
to be nursed back to the life they had been so bravely willing to lay
down for their country! But it was hard to look at them, and know how
they were suffering, and to go through with the task I had set myself
of cheering them and comforting them in my own way! There were times
when it was all I could do to get through with my program.

They never complained. They were always bright and cheerful, no
matter how terrible their wounds might be; no matter what sacrifices
they had made of eyes and limbs. There were men in those hospitals
who knew that they were going out no more than half the men they had
been. And yet they were as brave and careless of themselves as if
their wounds had been but trifles. I think the greatest exhibition of
courage and nerve the world has ever seen was to be found in those
hospitals in London and, indeed, all over Britain, where those
wonderful lads kept up their spirits always, though they knew they
could never again be sound in body.

Many and many of them there were who knew that they could never walk
again the shady lanes of their hameland or the little streets of
their hame towns! Many and many more there were who knew that, even
after the bandages were taken from about their eyes, they would never
gaze again upon the trees and the grass and the flowers growing upon
their native hillsides; that never again could they look upon the
faces of their loved ones. They knew that everlasting darkness was
their portion upon this earth.

But one and all they talked and laughed and sang! And it was there
among the hospitals, that I came to find true courage and good cheer.
It was not there that I found talk of discouragement, and longing for
any early peace, even though the final victory that could alone bring
a real peace and a worthy peace had not been won. No--not in the
hospitals could I find and hear such talk as that! For that I had to
listen to those who had not gone--who had not had the courage and the
nerve to offer all they had and all they were and go through that
hell of hells that is modern war!

I saw other hospitals besides the ones in London. After a time, when
I was very tired, and far from well, I went to Scotland for a space
to build myself up and get some rest. And in the far north I went
fishing on the River Dee, which runs through the Durrie estate. And
while I was there the Laird heard of it. And he sent word to tell me
of a tiny hospital hard by where a guid lady named Mrs. Baird was
helping to nurse disabled men back to health and strength. He asked
me would I no call upon the men and try to give them a little cheer.
And I was glad to hear of the chance to help.

I laid down my rod forthwith, for here was better work than fishing--
and in my ain country. They told me the way that I should go, and
that this Mrs. Baird had turned a little school house into a
convalescent home, and was doing a fine and wonderful work for the
laddies she had taken in. So I set out to find it, and I walked along
a country road to come to it.

Soon I saw a man, strong and hale, as it seemed, pushing a wheel
chair along the road toward me. And in the chair sat a man, and I
could see at once that he had lost the use of his legs--that he was
paralyzed from the waist down. It was the way he called to him who
was pushing him that made me tak notice.

"Go to the right, mon!" he would call. Or, a moment later, "To the
left now."

And then they came near to the disaster. The one who was pushing was
heading straight for the side of the road, and the one in the chair
bellowed out to him:

"Whoa there!" he called. "Mon--ye're taking me into the ditch! Where
would ye be going with me, anyway?"

And then I understood. The man who was pushing was blind! They had
but the one pair of eyes and the one pair of legs between the two of
them, and it was so that they contrived to go out together without
taking help from anyone else! And they were both as cheerful as wee
laddies out for a lark. It was great sport for them. And it was they
who gave me my directions to get to Mrs. Baird's.

They disputed a little about the way. The blind man, puir laddie,
thought he knew. And he did not--not quite. But he corrected the man
who could see but could not walk.

"It's the wrong road you're giving the gentleman," he said. "It's the
second turn he should be taking, not the first."

And the other would not argue with him. It was a kindly thing, the
way he kept quiet, and did but wink at me, that I might know the
truth. He trusted me to understand and to know why he was acting as
he was, and I blessed him in my heart for his thoughtfulness. And so
I thanked them, and passed on, and reached Mrs. Baird's, and found a
royal welcome there, and when they asked me if I would sing for the
soldiers, and I said it was for that that I had come, there were
tears in Mrs. Baird's eyes. And so I gave a wee concert there, and
sang my songs, and did my best to cheer up those boys.

Ah, my puir, brave Scotland--my bonnie little Scotland!

No part of all the United Kingdom, and, for that matter, no part of
the world, has played a greater part, in proportion to its size and
its ability, than has Scotland in this war for humanity against the
black force that has attacked it. Nearly a million men has Scotland
sent to the army--out of a total population of five million! One in
five of all her people have gone. No country in the world has ever
matched that record. Ah, there were no slackers in Scotland! And they
are still going--they are still going! As fast as they are old
enough, as fast as restrictions are removed, so that men are taken
who were turned back at first by the recruiting officers, as fast as
men see to it that some provision is made for those they must leave
behind them, they are putting on the King's uniform and going out
against the Hun. My country, my ain Scotland, is not great in area.
It is not a rich country in worldly goods or money. But it is big
with a bigness beyond measurement, it is rich beyond the wildest
dreams of avarice, in patriotism, in love of country, and in bravery.

We have few young men left in Scotland. It is rarely indeed that in a
Scottish village, in a glen, even in a city, you see a young man in
these days. Only the very old are left, and the men of middle age.
And you know why the young men you see are there. They cannot go,
because, although their spirit is willing their flesh is too weak to
let them go, for one reason or another. Factory and field and forge--
all have been stripped to fill the Scottish regiments and keep them
at their full strength. And in Scotland, as in England, women have
stepped in to fill the places their men have left vacant. This war is
not to be fought by men alone. Women have their part to play, and
they are playing it nobly, day after day. The women of Scotland have
seen their duty; they have heard their country's call, and they have
answered it.

You will find it hard to discover anyone in domestic service to-day
in Scotland. The folk who used to keep servants sent them packing
long since, to work where they would be of more use to their country.
The women of each household are doing the work about the house,
little though they may have been accustomed to such tasks in the days
of peace. And they glory and take pride in the knowledge that they
are helping to fill a place in the munitions factories or in some
other necessary war work.

[ILLUSTRATION: "Bang! went sixpence." HARRY LAUDER BUYING HIS BIT OF
WHITE HEATHER (See Lauder04.jpg)]

Do not look along the Scottish roads for folk riding in motor cars
for pleasure. Indeed, you will waste your time if you look for
pleasure-making of any sort in Scotland to-day. Scotland has gone
back to her ancient business of war, and she is carrying it on in the
most businesslike way, sternly and relentlessly. But that is true all
over the United Kingdom; I do not claim that Scotland takes the war
more seriously than the rest of Britain. But I do think that she has
set an example by the way she has flung herself, tooth and nail, into
the mighty task that confronts us all--all of us allies who are
leagued against the Hun and his plan to conquer the world and make it
bow its neck in submission under his iron heel.

Let me tell you how Scotland takes this war. Let me show you the
homecoming of a Scottish soldier, back from the trenches on leave.
Why, he is received with no more ceremony than if he were coming home
from his day's work!

Donald--or Jock might be his name, or Andy!--steps from the train at
his old hame town. He is fresh from the mud of the Flanders trenches,
and all his possessions and his kit are on his back, so that he is
more like a beast of burden than the natty creature old tradition
taught us to think a soldier must always be. On his boots there are
still dried blobs of mud from some hole in France that is like a
crater in hell. His uniform will be pretty sure to be dirty, too, and
torn, and perhaps, if you looked closely at it, you would see stains
upon it that you might not be far wrong in guessing to be blood.

Leave long enough to let him come home to Scotland--a long road it is
from France to Scotland these days!--has been a rare thing for Jock.
He will have been campaigning a long time to earn it--months
certainly, and maybe even years. Perhaps he was one of these who went
out first. He may have been mentioned in dispatches: there may be a
distinguished conduct medal hidden about him somewhere--worth all the
iron crosses the Kaiser ever gave! He has seen many a bloody field,
be sure of that. He has heard the sounding of the gas alarm, and
maybe got a whiff of the dirty poison gas the Huns turned loose
against our boys. He has looked Death in the face so often that he
has grown used to him. But now he is back in Scotland, safe and
sound, free from battle and the work of the trenches for a space,
home to gain new strength for his next bout with Fritz across the
water.

When he gets off the train Jock looks about him, from force of habit.
But no one has come to the station to meet him, and he looks as if
that gave him neither surprise nor concern. For a minute, perhaps, he
will look around him, wondering, I think, that things are so much as
they were, fixing in his mind the old familiar scenes that have
brought him cheer so often in black, deadly nights in the trenches or
in lonely billets out there in France. And then, quietly, and as if
he were indeed just home from some short trip, he shifts his pack, so
that it lies comfortably across his back, and trudges off. There
would be cabs around the station, but it would not come into Jock's
mind to hail one of the drivers. He has been used to using Shank's
Mare in France when he wanted to go anywhere, and so now he sets off
quietly, with his long, swinging soldier's stride.

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18