Part 9 (2/2)
Ye'll see that when yer audience is singing wi' ye ye get a rare idea of hoo they tak' yer song. Sometimes, o' coorse, a song will be richt frae the first time I sing it on the stage; whiles it'll be a week or a month or mair before it suits me. There's nae end to the work if ye'd keep friends wi' those who come oot to hear ye, and it's just that some singers ha' never learned, so that they wonder why it is ithers are successfu' while they canna get an engagement to save them.
They blame the managers, and say a man can't get a start unless he have friends at coort. But it's no so, and I can prove it by the way I won my way.
I had done most of my work in Scotland when Mac and I and the wife began first really to dream aloud aboot my gae'in to London. Oh, aye, I'd been on tours that had crossed the border; I'd been to Sunderland, and Newcastle on Tyne, but everywhere I'd been there was plenty Soots folk, and they knew the Scots talk and were used to the flutter o' ma kilts. Not that they were no sae in England, further south, too--'deed, and the trouble was they were used too well to Scotch comedians there.
There'd been a time when it was enow for a man to put on a kilt and a bit o' plaid and sing his song in anything he thocht was Scottish.
There'd been a fair wave o' such false Scottish comics in the English halls, until everyone was sick and tired o' 'em. Sae it was the managers all laughed at the idea of anither, and the one or twa faint tries I made to get an engagement in or near London took me nowheres at a'.
Still and a' I was set upon goin' to the big village on the Thames before I deed, and I'm an awfu' determined wee man when ma mind's well made up. Times I'd whisper a word to a friend in the profession, but they all laughed at me.
”Stick to where they know ye and like ye, Harry,” they said, one and a'. ”Why tempt fortune when you're doin' so well here?”
It did seem foolish. I was successful now beyond any dreams I had had in the beginning. The days when a salary of thirty five s.h.i.+llings a week had looked enormous made me smile as I looked back upon them. And it would ha' been a bold manager the noo who'd dared to offer Harry Lauder a guinea to sing twa-three songs of a nicht at a concert.
Had the wife been like maist women, timid and sair afraid that things wad gang wrang, I'd be singing in Scotland yet, I do believe. But she was as bad as me. She was as sure as I was that I couldna fail if ever I got the chance to sing in London.
”There's the same sort of folks there as here, Harry,” she said.
”Folks are the same, here and there, the wide world ower. Tak' your chance if it comes--ye'll no be losin' owt ye've got the noo if ye fail. But ye'll not fail, laddie--I ken that weel.”
Still, resolving to tak' a chance if it came was not ma way. It's no man's way who gets anywheres in this world, I've found. There are men who canna e'en do so much--to whom chances come they ha' neither the wit to see nor the energy to seize upon. Such men one can but pity; they are born wi' somethin' lacking in them that a man needs. But there is anither sort, that I do not pity--I despise. They are the men who are always waiting for a chance. They point to this man or to that, and how he seized a chance--or how, perhaps, he failed to do so.
”If ever an opportunity like that comes tae me,” ye'll hear them say, ”just watch me tak' it! Opportunity'll ne'er ha' to knock twice upon my door.”
All well and good. But opportunity is no always oot seekin doors to knock upon. Whiles she'll be sittin' hame, snug as a bug in a rug, waitin' fer callers, her ear c.o.c.ked for the sound o' the knock on _her_ door. Whiles the knock comes she'll lep' up and open, and that man's fortune is made frae that day forth. Ye maun e'en go seekin'
opportunity yersel, if so be she's slow in coming to ye. It's so at any rate, I've always felt. I've waited for my chance to come, whiles, but whiles I've made the chance mysel', as well.
It was after the most successful of the tours Mac and I got up together, one of those in Galloway, that I got a week in Birkenhead.
Anither artist was ill, and they just wired wad I come? I was free at the time, and glad o' the siller to be made, for the offer was a gude one, so I just went. That was firther south than I'd been yet; the audiences were English to the backbone wi' no Scots to speak of amang them.
No Scots, I say! But what audience ha' I e'er seen that didna hae its sprinklin' o' gude Scots? I've sang in 'most every part o' the world, and always, frae somewhere i' the hoose, I'll hear a Scots voice callin' me by name. Scots ha' made their way to every part o' the world, I'm knowin' the noo, and I'm sure of at least ane friend in any audience, hoo'ever new it be to me.
So, o' coorse, there were some Scots in that audience at Birkenhead.
But because in that Mersey town most of the crowd was sure to be English, wi' a sprinkling o' Irish, the management had suggested that I should leave out my Scottish favorites when I made up my list o'
songs. So I began wi' a sentimental ballad, went on wi' an English comic song, and finished with ”Calligan-Call-Again,” the very successful Irish song I had just added to my list.
Ye'Il ken, mebbe, if ye've heard me, that I can sing in English as good as the King's own when I've the mind to do it. I love my native land. I love Scots talk, Scots food, Scots--aweel, I was aboot to say something that would only sadden many of my friends in America. Hoots, though mebbe they'll no put me in jail if I say I liked a wee drappie o' Scottish liquor noo and again!
But it was no a hard thing for me not to use my Scottish tongue when I was singing there in Birkenhead, though it went sair against ma judgment. And one nicht, at the start of ma engagement, they were clamorous as I'd ne'er seen them sae far south.
”Gi'es more, Harry,” I heard a Scottish voice roar. I'd sung my three songs; I'd given encores; I was bowing acknowledgment of the continuing applause. But I couldna stop the applauding. In America they say an artist ”stops” the show when the audience applauds him so hard that it will not let the next turn go on, and that was what had happened that nicht in Birkenhead. I didna want to sing any of ma three songs ower again, and I had no main that waur no Scottish.
So I stood there, bowing and sc.r.a.ping, wi' the cries of ”Encore,”
”Sing again, Harry,” ”Give us another,” rising in all directions from a packed house. I raised ma hand, and they were still.
”Wad ye like a little Scotch?” I asked,
There was a roar of laughter, and then one Scottish voice bawled oot an answer.
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