My Autobiography

he made me recite it to them and they were thrown into gales of laughter. As a result of this my fame spread, and the following day I was brought before every classroom in the school, both boys and girls, and made to recite it.
Although I had performed and deputized for Mother in front of an audience at the age of five, this was actually my first conscious taste of glamour. School became exciting. From having been an obscure and shy little boy I became the centre of interest of both the teachers and the children. It even improved my studies. But my education was to be interrupted when I left to join a troupe of clog dancers, the Eight Lancashire Lads.

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FATHER knew Mr Jackson, who ran the troupe, and convinced Mother that it would be a good start for me to make a career on the stage and at the same time help her economically: I would get board and lodging and mother would get half a crown a week. She was dubious at first until she met Mr Jackson and his family, then she accepted.
Mr Jackson was in his middle fifties. He had been a schoolteacher in Lancashire and had raised a family of three boys and a girl, who were all a part of the Eight Lancashire Lads. He was a devout Roman Catholic and after his first wife died had consulted his children about marrying again. His second wife was a little older than himself, and he would piously tell us how he came to marry her. He had advertised for a wife in one of the newspapers and had received over three hundred letters. After praying for guidance he had opened only one, and that was from Mrs Jackson. She too had been a school-teacher and, as if in answer to his prayer, was also a Catholic.
Mrs Jackson was not blessed with abundant good looks, nor was she a voluptuary in any sense of the word. As I remember her she had a gaunt, skull-like, pale face with manifold wrinkles – due, perhaps, to having presented Mr Jackson with a baby boy rather late in life. Nevertheless, she was a loyal and dutiful wife and, although still nursing her son at the breast, worked hard at helping with the management of the troupe.
When she told her side of the romance, it varied slightly from that of Mr Jackson. They had exchanged letters, but neither one had seen the other until the day of the wedding. And in their first interview alone in the sitting-room while the family waited in another room, Mr Jackson said: ‘You’re all that I desire,’ and she avowed the same. In concluding the story to us boys, she would primly say: ‘But I didn’t expect to be the immediate mother of eight children.’
The three sons’ ages ranged from twelve to sixteen, and the daughter was nine, with hair cut like a boy in order to pass as one in the troupe.
Each Sunday, everyone attended Catholic church but me. Being the only Protestant, I was lonely, so occasionally I went with them. Had it not been for deference to Mother’s religious scruples, I could easily have been won over to Catholicism, for I liked the mysticism of it and the little home-made altars with plaster Virgin Marys adorned with flowers and lighted candles which the boys put up in a corner of the bedroom, and to which they would genuflect every time they passed.
After practising six weeks I was eligible to dance with the troupe. But now that I was past eight years old I had lost my assurance and confronting the audience for the first time gave me stage fright. I could hardly move my legs. It was weeks before I could solo dance as the rest of them did.
I was not particularly enamoured with being just a clog dancer in a troupe of eight lads. Like the rest of them I was ambitious to do a single act, not only because it meant more money but because I instinctively felt it to be more gratifying than just dancing. I would have liked to be a boy comedian – but that would have required nerve, to stand on the stage alone. Nevertheless, my first impulse to do something other than dance was to be funny. My ideal was a double act, two boys dressed as comedy tramps. I told it to one of the other boys and we decided to become partners. It became our cherished dream. We would call ourselves ‘Bristol and Chaplin, the Millionaire Tramps’, and would wear tramp whiskers and big diamond rings. It embraced every aspect of what we thought would be funny and profitable, but, alas, it never materialized.
Audiences liked the Eight Lancashire Lads because, as Mr Jackson said, we were so unlike theatrical children. It was his boast that we never wore grease-paint and that our rosy cheeks were natural. If some of us looked a little pale before going on, he would tell us to pinch our cheeks. But in London, after working two or three music halls a night, we would occasionally forget and look a little weary and bored as we stood on the stage, until we caught sight of Mr Jackson in the wings, grinning emphatically and pointing to his face, which had an electrifying effect of making us suddenly break into sparkling grins.
When touring the provinces we went to a school for the week in each town, which did little to further my education.
At Christmas time we were engaged to play cats and dogs in a Cinderella pantomime at the London Hippodrome. In those days, it was a new theatre, a combination of vaudeville and circus, elaborately decorated and quite sensational. The floor of the ring sank and flooded with water and elaborate ballets were contrived. Row after row of pretty girls in shining armour would march in and disappear completely under water. As the last line submerged, Marceline,