was looking forward to start rehearsing that day on the first of our native plays, which we had entitled tentatively, The White Goddess of the Wangora; but then I knew nothing at the time of the delays incidental to any kind of work in which natives play a part.
Portrait of the Author
Painted in Togoland, by Ernst Vollbehr of München. The native is a Konkombwa.
Time is of no value whatever to these wild and woolly savages, and as we had of necessity to get together a small army of several hundred "supers," literally weeks elapsed before we were ready. I chafed dreadfully at the delay, but there was no help for it. The requisite number of natives had to be laboriously collected from a score or more of villages scattered over a wide area of country, and then, when we had got them together, everything had to be explained to them over and over again through the medium of three or four different interpreters. In fact, it was nothing but talk, talk, talk, palaver, palaver, palaver, from morning till night.
There was considerable difficulty, too, in getting them to face the camera. Like most savages, these Togo natives have an inherent rooted aversion to being photographed. Luckily, however, Major Schomburgk had taken moving pictures of some of their villages during a previous expedition he had led into these parts, and some of the very natives we had engaged figured in them.
So, as we had brought a projecting machine with us, we made shift to rig up a screen, and showed them themselves, their wives and their little ones, going about their ordinary avocations in their own homes. The effect was instantaneous. They had, of course, seen ordinary photographs before, but none of them had ever beheld any moving pictures. Now they all wanted to come into one; and whereas before the most of them hung back, they were now only too anxious to push themselves in the forefront of every scene.
Only one act they shirked. This was a battle scene in which several of the warriors were supposed to be slain. We had the greatest difficulty in persuading even one native to "act dead." Their objection, they explained, was due to the fact that they believed that if they played at being dead before the white man's mysterious machine, they would most likely be dead in reality before morning.
At length, by the promise of a liberal bonus, one warrior, greatly daring, consented to play the part. The next morning the head interpreter knocked at the door of my hut to inform me that there were "eight dead natives lying in the compound outside."
"What!" I screamed, in great alarm. And, hastily donning my dressing-gown, I ran out.
But I need not have got scared. The eight were not really defunct. They were merely shamming death, and wanted me to see how well they could do it, with a view to being taken on for the part in the forthcoming day's rehearsal.
The one who had played dead the day before had not of course died during the night, as they more than half expected he would have done, and they were consequently now only too willing and anxious to follow the lead he had set them.
At length the long, wearisome series of preliminary rehearsals came to an end. Everybody was supposed to be part perfect, and we made ready to film the play.
Up to this I had, of course, rehearsed in ordinary attire. Now I had to don native dress; and as I am a stickler for realism I insisted—against Major Schomburgk's advice—in playing in bare feet and legs, bare shoulders and arms, and with no head covering.
As the principal scenes were laid out of doors in the middle of the bush, and under a blazing tropical sun, this, as was pointed out to me, was a pretty "big order." Nevertheless, I thought I could "stick it"; and, as a matter of fact, I did, though I suffered for it afterwards.
My part was, of course, that of the "White Goddess." I was supposed to have been cast ashore as a babe on the coast of Togo, and taken up-country by the savages who found me, and who afterwards placed me in charge of their principal ju-ju shrine, paying me, in the course of time, almost divine honours.
I had grown to womanhood without ever having seen one of my own colour and race, and when a white hunter (Major Schomburgk) was taken prisoner by the tribe whose high priestess I was, I was naturally attracted to him. Bound hand and foot, he was cast into a hut, preparatory to being put to death. I had to free him from his bonds, and guide him in a wild flight for freedom over rocks and bushes, through foaming streams, and up hill and down dale.
All this I did. It is the great scene of the play, and to film it took one whole day. Major Schomburgk had given strict orders for all our eight hundred or so of supers to muster at 6 A.M. sharp, but with the irritating perverseness of natives they did not put in an appearance until 10 A.M., when, of course, the sun was already high in the heavens.
This added tremendously to my trials and tribulations, and was, in fact, to a great extent the cause of my subsequent breakdown. By noon, when the sun was directly overhead, it was so hot that the operator was unable to bear to touch with his ungloved hand the brass work of his machine.
How I got through the afternoon's work I don't know to this day. I managed it somehow. There is a marvellous sustaining power in the mere nervous tension of acting, and the click, click, click of the camera helps to keep one tuned up as it were. But directly it was all over I fell fainting on my camp bed in my hut, and the doctor had to be called in. My feet were all cut and scarred, and full of thorns and jiggers.1 My legs, too, were pretty badly scratched and torn. And, to crown all, I had got a "touch of the sun."
1 Also known as the chigoes and the sand-flea.
The next day I was in a high fever, and the day after that in a higher one. Malaria had gripped me, and I really thought at one time that my first African photo-play rehearsal was going to be my last one. Even the doctor looked grave after the first week or so. "You have got malarial fever," he explained, "and you have got it pretty badly. Your spleen is about four times larger than it ought to be, and if you cough it will probably burst."
As at that time I was troubled with an almost incessant cough, this was not consoling. However, liberal doses of quinine, repeated at frequent intervals, cured me at last, and in order to celebrate my convalescence, as soon as I felt well enough I prepared a little dinner with my own hands, and invited Baron Codelli and Major Schomburgk to my hut to partake of it.
By permission of
Maj. H. Schomburgk, F.R.G.S.
Rehearsing for the Cinema
Another scene from the moving picture play "The White Goddess of the Wangora." Note the intent look on the little black girl's face, and the pleased expression on that of the authoress. The black lady on the left is the head "super" amongst the native women at Kamina.
By permission of
Maj. H. Schomburgk, F.R.G.S.
Playing an "Interior" Scene in a Native Drama
The authoress is reclining on a leopard-skin rug, and is supposed to be sleeping, while a "slave-girl"—really a native "super"—fans her with a feather fan. Taken at Kamina.
I rather fancy myself as a cook, and I had prepared, as the pièce de résistance, a couple of nice plump fowls. When the dish was uncovered my guests glanced sharply at one another, turned very red, and looked quite uncomfortable.
I could not make out what was the matter, and in my usual impetuous way, I blurted out, plump and plain, the question that was uppermost in my mind.
"Is there anything wrong with the chickens?"
This was too much for their gravity. Both the baron and Schomburgk burst into fits of