New Albion by Dwayne Brenna Read Free Book Online Page B

Mr. Wilton’s and Mr. Farquhar Pratt’s conversation after they had retired to his office, but I did manage to overhear something of it when Pratty vented to our gentle Properties Master, Mr. Benjamin Granville, shortly afterwards. Mr. Farquhar Pratt was still livid and hardly making sense when he spoke to Mr. Granville; enraged at “the pertinence of that charlatan of a lessee,” Pratty went on at length, speaking so volubly that Mr. Granville was embarrassed lest others might hear his voice, which was usually booming but now more so, through the slender walls of the Properties storage shed. Mr. Granville was correct in his assumption, for it was at that moment that I happened to be passing the Properties Shed, and I could not help but stop and listen to such a muscularly articulated discussion.
    “How dare he impugn my good reputation?” the old man roared. “I once understudied Kean, I was being groomed for management at Covent Garden. I have forgotten more of the Theatre than he will ever know. He wanted me to apologize both to him and to his wife, that slut, for the way in which I had assailed her unblemished virtue. Unblemished virtue! When I was playing leads at the Royal Victoria, she was cocking a leg for every ragtag and bobtailed strolling player who came up to the City to try his luck.”
    “Still,” said Mr. Granville, who is known for his level head and his sage ways, “one should not insult the proprietor’s wife –”
    “But it is the truth!”
    “Yes, it may well be true, for aught I know, but it is nevertheless extremely impolitic to hurl such grievous insults at the wife of one’s employer.” Mr. Granville’s voice was hushed and modulated, as if by sheer will and setting a good example he might alleviate Pratty’s rage.
    The old man was in no mood to listen to sage advice. “And then his upstart apprentice had the audacity to threaten me. Threaten me! A man of advanced years, as well as a playwright of some notoriety in this City and, yes, outside of it. I addressed Mr. Wilton singularly – ‘You are attempting to place an albatross around my neck, sir. One can tell at a solitary glance that this young hooligan has neither the sensitivity nor the education to bring to the stage the essence of human nature’.”
    After some time, Pratty’s rage had lost its edge, and Mr. Granville was able to counsel him. “Don’t you think,” he asked, “that you should issue an apology to Mrs. Wilton? In the interests of keeping the theatre running smoothly, if not in the interests of keeping your job in these hard times.”
    “I don’t care a pin about my job,” Pratty replied, somewhat weakly.
    Mr. Granville paused and then said, “Where would you go?”
    “I beg your pardon?”
    “Where would you go, Mr. Farquhar Pratt, if you had no job to come to here?”
    Pratty blustered heroically, again, for a moment. “Where would I go? Why, back to the Royal Victoria. They would hire me again in an eye blink.”
    “I think you should apologize,” Mr. Granville replied softly.

* Chapter Four *
    Wednesday, 9 October 1850
    Mr. Holman arrived in the theatre today with a story that left both of us shaken.
    He reported that he had seen August Levy in nautical costume at the Euston railway station, proffering a letter evidently signed by three magistrates and six ministers of religion, which gave credence to his story that he had survived the wreckage of the Albatross somewhere between this island and North America. He had appended a bosun’s pipe around his neck as a sign of his authenticity, and he danced a hornpipe – probably the same hornpipe I had seen him dance with Mr. Bancroft on occasion – if further proof was needed. This stellar performance was good for twopence from any man gullible enough to believe that it was possible to survive in the icy waters of the Atlantic for six days and seven nights, until a passing merchant ship had spotted him and plucked him away from the hands of