HOME LIFE AND DRAMATIC CRITICISM
These latter incidents occurred some time after 1873. When we got
back to England after our Dresden wedding we took up our abode almost
immediately in the old Adams house in Great Russell Street. The two
rooms which Mr. Jameson sub-let to us were all that we could at first
obtain above the Dispensary, but they were large and quite sufficient
for the Bohemian life which was all that we could then afford; anyway
no subsequent home of ours was pleasanter and nothing was ever again so
little burthensome.
At a long table by the door of the one large dwelling-room the old
couple who had been our predecessor’s factotums served our meals; and
around the handsome Adams chimney-piece at the other end, or in the
panelled window-seats looking on the restful façade of the British
Museum, we gathered Joe’s friends--they were all Joe’s friends--for a
“pipe and a chat.”
And what chats they were!
James Sime, the historian, kindliest of men with his Teutonic
philosophies and his deep Scottish sentiment and enthusiasm; Churton
Collins richly capping his host’s poetical quotations and
sometimes boldly challenged for an inaccuracy; W. Minto, afterwards
Professor of Literature at Aberdeen, who was just starting his
Editorship of _The Examiner_, and pressing Joe into the ranks of his
contributors; Camille Barrère, now French Ambassador in Rome, but then
a Communist refugee earning a living by London journalism, and of whose
friendship and instruction in French Joe tells himself; Frederick
Jameson and Beatty Kingston with their friends at piano and violin,
to say nothing of the colleagues with whom my husband had just become
associated in his work on _The Globe_ and of whom he again tells in his
_Eminent Victorians_.
Dare I recall the evening when my husband proudly named me to Minto as
the writer of a little descriptive article which he had read in the
_Pall Mall Gazette_ and the consequent suggestion that I should do the
series of Italian sketches for _The Examiner_ which were afterwards
reprinted in a volume with Randolph Caldecott’s illustrations.
Of course I should never have done even as much without their kindly
encouragement, but to the end of his life I think a good review of any
small effort of mine pleased Joe far more than one on his own serious
work. But I must admit criticism affected him little--never when it was
adverse and, in fact, only when it showed real insight.
In his own merry manner he would say: “People always mean blame when
they talk of criticism. But I can _blame_ myself; all I want from
others is praise--fulsome praise.” And so it was! He had the need of it
which came of the Celtic blend of self-confidence and apprehensiveness.
Often have I heard him say of another of like blood: “He couldn’t
swim across the stream if he hadn’t our native conceit.” And then add
gravely: “Believe me, praise is the only sort of criticism that ever
helped a man on his road.”
And in his own opportunities as critic and editor he always acted up to
this belief.
In these rosy days of our early struggles and joys, the “first
nights” at which Joe was due in his capacity of dramatic critic
were red-letter days to me.
The occasion when Ellen Terry first played Portia under the Bancroft
management of the famous little House in Tottenham Court Road was
one of them; I can see her again in her china-blue and white brocade
dress with one crimson rose at her bosom. Neither the fashion of the
dress or of the coiffure were perhaps as correct to the period as the
costumes which I designed for her later on for the better remembered
run of _The Merchant of Venice_ at the Lyceum; but how lovely she
looked and how emphatically Joe picked her out as the evening’s
star beside Coghlan’s Jew! Our hearts beat with pride at the
laurels often gathered by our friend, even in those early days before
her long list of triumphs with Henry Irving; and Joe, as we made our
way home, took some credit to himself for the vehement advice as to
her resuming her temporarily suspended career, which he had given her
a short while before. There were never any first-nights quite like the
Ellen Terry ones to us; but there were many pleasant and exciting
evenings--notably the nights of Irving’s remarkable performances
at a time when he was playing under the Bateman management in _The
Bells_, _The Two Roses_, and many other of his early successes; also
the famous runs of Robertson comedies at the little _Prince of Wales_
theatre, where the charming Marie Bancroft was at the top of her long
popularity and John Hare’s delicate impersonations vied with his
manager’s carefully studied portraits of the dandy of the day.
Mrs. Kendal was also then at the height of her brilliant career, and
last but not least, the first performances of the Gilbert and Sullivan
operas were nights when the privilege of seats was not easily won.
I can recall the first performance of _Iolanthe_, and the laughter that
shook the house when the wild applause at the close of the chorus:
“_Oh! Captain Shaw, true type of love kept under_,” at last
brought the Head of the Fire Brigade to the front of his box for an
instant.
Yet all our first nights were not “great nights,” when--as a
fellow-critic once remarked to Joe--“Strong men shook hands with
strangers.” Sometimes they were even dull; on one occasion so much so
as to draw from one of the critics an unusually caustic bit of advice:
“We are told that so-and-so is a promising young actor,” he wrote,
“personally I don’t care how much he promises so long as he never again
performs.”
For my part I confess that the theatre was still so new to me that I
looked forward to any first night with pleasant palpitation, though
my best frock was no doubt reserved for the choicest prospects. But
to Joe, possibly the duty of writing the prescribed amount on a
thoroughly poor piece grew irksome; and when, as on the occasion of
the production of F. C. Burnand’s _The Colonel_, his friends and
their serious work were the butt of boisterous hilarity, I know his
loyalty found it difficult not to retort, as he apparently did in the
article alluded to in the following correspondence.
It must have been written at the moment when the campaign against
so-called “high art” was at its zenith, and had amused the
public as it would probably not do to-day; I should not quote it, but
for the urbane humour of Joe’s rejoinder to the (temporarily)
incensed author.
_Feb. 22, 1881._
“DEAR CARR,
I have heard that you do the _Saturday Review_ theatrical criticisms.
Did you do that on _The Colonel_? if so I am anxious to know if
you ever read _Un Mari à la Campagne_; also to ask where the puns
are in my piece? I admit three, put in _carefully_ into the right
peoples’ mouths--the right puns in the right places.
Why is it a farce? Unless _She stoops to Conquer_ is a farce. Where
are the evidences of high animal spirits in my play? I don’t
pretend to quote your article verbatim but this is my impression of
its purport. Had I known at the time that it was your writing I should
have tackled you at once; first because I think you are wrong, second
because if you are not, I am, and I wish to be put right. I should
like to hear your suggestions for the improvement of Act III. where
you think I have bungled ‘into seriousness.’
I shouldn’t have taken the trouble to write if I hadn’t
been told that you were the critic who in a friendly way
pooh-pooh’d the notion of _The Colonel_ being a comedy. I
am aware that Dr. Johnson set down _She stoops, etc._ as a farce,
and farcical to a degree its plot is, but not its characters.
_The Colonel_ I contend is comedy--farcical neither in plot _nor_
characters.
Yours truly,
F. C. BURNAND (anxious to learn).”
19, BLANDFORD SQUARE, N.W.,
_February 24th, 1881_.
“DEAR BURNAND,
I do not as a rule write the Dramatic Criticism for the _Saturday
Review_, only when the regular critic is away; but you are right in
supposing that I am the author of the article on _The Colonel_.
Your letter was a surprise to me. I liked _The Colonel_ and thought I
had said as much: but I liked it in my own way and I am not going to
be bullied out of my admiration by the modesty of the author.
I thought it a brightly written farce with a rather weak last act. You
tell me, and of course you ought to know, that it is not a farce but a
comedy: but if I were to adopt your classification I should not like
it at all, and I want to like it if you will let me--in my own way.
You ask where the puns are and in the same breath you tell me where
they are. There are three of them you say, and they are all in the
right places. But I never hinted, my dear fellow, that they were not
in the right places. On the contrary it was your gravity not your
humour I found to be in the wrong place. You ask me again where are
the evidences of high animal spirits in your play; after your letter I
shall begin to doubt my recollections, but I had certainly thought the
interest of the play was mainly supported by its high spirits. To be
able to keep a wildly extravagant notion alive for the space of three
acts, demands I think an ample supply of animal spirits. But is it a
crime to have high animal spirits? I thought it was only the gloomy
apostle of high art who loathed hilarity.
I haven’t the faintest objection to your tackling me, as you
call it, but you must give me leave to speak freely. When I hear you
say that _The Colonel_ is farcical neither in plot nor characters, I
begin seriously to wonder whether your letter is not altogether a form
of practical joke.
I will not let myself be diverted by your allusions to _She Stoops to
Conquer_. The suggested resemblance had not, I confess, occurred to
me; there seem to me many differences between the two works but this
is rather a question for posterity.
If, however, you insist on taking Goldsmith into your skiff it will
not be thought presumption on my part if I choose my place in Dr.
Johnson’s heavier craft. I would prefer, however, to take
your own account of your work. Not farcical in plot or character!
Surely your career as a humourist has been fed by the rarest and most
delightful experience, if it has brought you into contact with the
kind of man who would be driven to the verge of immorality by a dado!
No, I can’t think you serious!”
Here my copy--the rough one of the letter sent--comes to an end; and I
have not F. C. Burnand’s further reply.
But it is good to remember that there was never any breach between
the friends; I find a scenario by Burnand for a children’s
Christmas play--evidently sent to Joe about the time when he produced
Buchanan’s version of the _Pied Piper of Hamlin_ at the Comedy
Theatre with Lena Ashwell--still a student at the Royal Academy of
Music--acting and singing the girl’s part.
And from a much later period I can quote the following further proof of
unimpaired friendship in a letter written to thank Joe for having been
largely instrumental in getting up the dinner given to Burnand on his
withdrawal from the editorship of _Punch_.
GROSVENOR HOTEL,
LONDON, S.W.,
_June 11th, 1911_.
“MY DEAR CARR,
I cannot thank you sufficiently for all you have done in this matter
which would never have resulted in the great success it undoubtedly
achieved but for the first generous impetus which set the ball in
motion, and for the continued well directed shoves that kept it
rolling.
Without your speech the entertainment would have been comparatively
flat; but your speech opened a fresh bottle and infused a fresh life.
Yours most sincerely,
F. C. BURNAND.”
Apropos of Lena Ashwell, I may say that Joe was then so much struck
with her talent for acting that he persuaded her to leave the musical
profession, for which she was being trained, and gave her the part of
_Elaine_ in his _King Arthur_, shortly afterwards produced by Henry
Irving at the Lyceum Theatre.
I set down these trivial memories as they recur to me, sprinkled over
many a year of work and of anxieties, but of much merriment and many
joys. But, taking up the thread of the first year of our married life,
I recall an amusing incident which bore some pleasant consequences.
Joe, as was often the case, had sat up writing his dramatic criticism
after I, tired with the still thrilling excitement of some “first
night,” had gone to bed.
He had posted his article and was sleeping the sleep of the just, when
our hoary retainer mercilessly awakened him early next morning with the
words: “Gentleman on business, Sir!”
He donned a dressing-gown and went down none too willingly, to find an
unknown little Scot below, who briefly stated that he was empowered by
the proprietors of some Encyclopaedia to offer him a goodly fee for
a short life of--I think it was--Rossetti; but that owing to another
writer having disappointed the Editor at the eleventh hour the copy
must be delivered in three days.
Joe was full of work, but the sum was too princely to be refused by a
man who knew that shortly he would have to feed an extra mouth; the
impossible was achieved, there was not even time to see a proof--and I
well remember Joe, when telling his tale to a friend, confessing his
relief that he had never come across that volume, and could only hope
that no one else ever had either.
The cheque, at all events, he _did_ see, and with a part of it we went
to Derbyshire for our first country holiday. And a wild, happy holiday
it was!
We lodged in the roughest of cottages in a tiny village near the Isaac
Walton Hotel, where Joe had contrived to get some fishing rights. With
what enthusiasm did he show me the haunts of his boyish holidays, the
scenes of fishing adventures and of great walks with early comrades!
But that cheque from the Scottish publishers contributed to other
things besides a holiday. In the November of that year our son, Philip,
was born. Strange now to think that he, who was in France throughout
the Great War, should have had a German for his first nurse, and that
before he could speak he could hum many a Volkslied--an accomplishment
which his proud nurse and mother made him show off to our musical
friend, Mr. Jameson, who indeed even insisted on testing his intonation
on the piano.
Other distinguished folk gathered around his cradle in the big studio.
I can see Ellen Terry nursing him in one of the wainscoted window-seats
and so apparently carelessly in one arm while she made wide gestures
with the other to emphasize some point she was discussing with my
husband--that I, nervous young mother, was forced to cry out at last:
“Oh, Nell! Take care of my baby.”
Upon which she, in a tone of commiserating reproof, replied:
“Now, Alice, do you suppose I need teaching how to hold a
child?”
Anyone who has seen her do it--even on the stage--knows very well that
she did not.
So the discussion went on and I even remember the subject: for it was
just when she was weighing the offer of a fresh engagement on the
stage, upon which she had only then appeared in extreme youth. Joe gave
his advice emphatically, though he had never seen her act then and did
not know upon what a future that door would open.
The opportunity was to be the production of her old friend Charles
Reade’s _Wandering Heir_. The caste was not strong, and it was
not wonderful that “Nell” scored a success; but I think
Joe saw more than most people in that first night at the Queen’s
Theatre when he rushed out between the acts and returned with a rather
damaged bouquet, the only one left in Covent Garden, which he presently
threw at her feet.
It was the first of many a “first night” when he watched
her--critical, as it was his business to be, but sympathetic and
enthusiastic always. There was no limit to his praise, for instance, of
her pathetic portrayal of _Ophelia_: nor of his immediate appreciation
of that moment in her otherwise tender impersonation of _Olivia_
in _The Vicar of Wakefield_ when she strikes the young Squire on
discovering his treachery. But these were only two out of many
thrilling “first nights” of her earlier engagements when
I sat beside him, my perfect enjoyment not even hampered, as in later
years at the Lyceum, by my anxiety respecting the proper finishing and
donning of the dresses which I had designed for her.
But that day in Great Russell Street, even Joe, always nervous about
the children, thought more of our first born. To me her reproof
had been convincing; I never again feared Ellen Terry as the safe
and tender guardian of my children; indeed she first taught me
much delicate observation of infants, but Joe--often terrified
about them--believed in no advice save that of his mother, who had
borne thirteen and reared eleven; yet upon one point my shrewd
Irish mother-in-law, with her always wise but sometimes wittily
caustic advice, and the more indulgent artist were agreed, viz.
that--as our country butcher delighted Joe by saying about his
live “meat”--babies, though disciplined, should be “humoured
not druv.”
Although nervous in moments of crisis Joe was, however, always calm and
competent; but he generally managed to relieve the situation with his
own irrepressible spirits at the earliest possible moment, and many a
comic tale hangs round the strange doings of an incapable old Gamp who
tended me at the birth of my second child.
He would lure her with the seemingly innocent question: “Sweetened or
unsweetened gin, Mrs. Peveril?” knowing well that the spirit was needed
for friction and that “Peveril of the Peak” (otherwise hook-nosed) as
he had named her, would “rise” every time and answer demurely: “I’m
sure _I_ don’t know, Sir. I never tasted neither.”
Luckily the old lady was neither sharp enough to see nor thin-skinned
enough to mind; but who ever minded Joe’s wit? Though it was keen
enough at times, the urbanity behind it shone through too well.
Even his wife was a willing target--and a good one. As Edward
Burne-Jones used kindly to say when they had both tried me on their
favourite theme and taken me in over a Dickens quotation: “There
never was anybody who rose better than the dear lady.” Yet I
maintain that it needs a profound student of the master to know that he
has created an obscure character named “Pip,” other than
the human boy in _Great Expectations_.
Well, many is the _bon mot_ to which I helped my husband.
When I declared myself nervous over my part in private theatricals at
my father’s house in Canterbury, I can hear him say: “You
are surely not bothering your head about two half-pay officers and a
rural dean?”
And one day at a picnic, commenting on a criticism of a sturdy
Irish uncle as to “not wanting these slight figures at all,
at all,” Joe gave me the sound advice not to sit upon a rock
“lest diamond cut diamond.”
We were all young then and things that may seem truly foolish now made
the company laugh; it is more remarkable that the radiant personality,
the inexhaustible animal spirits and rare sense of humour should
have survived years of hard work and still have shone forth after the
prostration of illness.
When scarcely recovered from a serious attack, Joe told me
one morning of a dream that he had had, which--as Mr. W. J.
Locke has remarked--contained such a “lightning flash of
characterization” that it is hard to believe it came to him in
sleep.
“I dreamed,” he said, “that Squire Bancroft brought
me some grapes,” and as he removed the paper from the basket he said,
“White, Joe; when the case is serious I never bring black.”
All through his illness, when increasing weakness and the
inconveniences arising from the Great War forced him to an uncongenial
life at sea-side resorts, his wit still bubbled up unbidden, as the
following letter testifies. The boarding-house in which it was written
did not afford exactly sympathetic society, yet on the Christmas
Day that we spent there he offered to give the company a little
“talk” if they cared to listen; and from his armchair, he
chatted for half an hour to a crowded lounge on the eminent men whom
he had known, interspersed with many a flash of fun appropriate to the
hour and received with bursts of laughter by the simple circle.
“ ... We are comfortable enough here,” he wrote to his
daughter, “and there is entertainment furnished by some of the
types, both in their physique and in their intellectual equipment. Some
of the older females are designed and constructed with “dangerous
salients in their lines,” everything occurring in unexpected
places, and only dimly suggesting the original purpose of the Creator.
One or two are of stupendous girth with hollows and protuberances that
suggest some primeval landscape subjected to volcanic action.”
Thus with the same humorous and kindly eye on the world as when he
had been the welcome entertainer of a more brilliant society, he
lightened the days--very heavy to him--of national anxiety, and with a
contentment rather wonderful in the typical Londoner, alternated the
few possible hours of patient literary labour with a cheerful delight
in the beauties of the place.
“I wonder if the present difficulty in getting out of England
will make us appreciate it better,” he said as we stood one
evening on the pier looking towards old Hastings. “If we were
abroad we should say that medieval castle against the sunset was a
wondrous fine sight.”
So did he still exemplify his life-long belief often expressed in the
words: “How can people be dull when they’re alive?”