DRAMATIC WORK AND MANAGEMENT
It must have been somewhere about this period that the first impetus
was, funnily enough, given to Joe’s dramatic career by a request
from our dear friend, Ellen Terry, that I should make an English
adaptation for her from the famous French play of _Frou-Frou_.
The thing was done, and played in Glasgow and other Northern towns
under the title of _Butterfly_, and great fun we had over our first
initiation into the mysteries of dress-rehearsals--not always perhaps
quite so funny in the more responsible circumstances of later years,
though it is a form of patient work electrified by the gambling spirit,
which never lost its attraction for Joe.
My altered version of the French play was a poor one, but it had, I
suppose, sufficient merit to obtain me a commission from Mme. Modjeska,
the noted Polish actress, for a free translation of the same play,
which she performed first in London with Sir Johnston Forbes-Robertson
and afterwards throughout the United States.
The “youthful conceit” to which Joe was throughout his
life so lenient as even to consider a virtue, led me presently to try
my hand at a bigger task--no less than the dramatisation of Thomas
Hardy’s _Far from the Madding Crowd_. I was quite unequal to
the attempt, and I only mention it because it proved the beginning of
Joe’s dramatic work. He took the play in hand, refashioned the
plot, only keeping portions of the dialogue as I had adapted it to
stage necessity; and it was produced--with Marion Terry as the wilful
and charming Bathsheba--first in the provinces and then in London.
Owing to circumstances needless to recall, the venture was a financial
failure; but it served to start Joe on a new road; and it was not long
before he scored a big success. He came home one night from a railway
journey and gave me a little book which he had bought to read in the
train: it was _Called Back_ by Hugh Conway.
“See if you don’t think that an enthralling story?”
he said.
There could be no doubt of this and the British public gave its verdict
promptly. The book began to sell like “hot cakes” and Joe
went down to Clifton, saw its clever author--until then unknown to
literature--and arranged with him for its dramatisation.
The play was produced on May 20th, 1884, and I think there are still
people who remember its first success and that, in the rôle of the
Italian conspirator--Macari--Sir Herbert Tree scored one of his finest
early triumphs; the piece was revived several times in London and the
provinces and had the questionable compliment of being also pirated.
But I shall not easily forget the dress-rehearsal!
I was comparatively new to such things then and I can well recall the
chill of heart with which we got home to Blandford Square in the early
hours and my inner conviction that the scenery could not possibly be
finished nor, one at least, of the principal actors, know his part
by the next night! But nothing could ever quell Joe’s hopeful
spirit; he plied his somewhat less optimistic colleague with cold
tongue and whisky-and-soda and made merry work of the stupidity of
lime-light men and scene-shifters, to say nothing of others of higher
degree; and then went to sleep at 6 a.m. and got up and returned to the
theatre at 10 a.m. without turning a hair.
I wonder now if he was as strong as he seemed in those days or whether
it was only his gay and excitable Celtic temperament that carried him
through everything. Anyhow he enjoyed his life to the full and there
were never any dull moments, whether he was at work or at play.
The radiant vitality which lasted him so long and so well--and to which
there is such frequent testimony in letters from the various friends
with whom he laboured in his many walks of life--seems to have had the
power of so communicating itself to his fellow-workers that they would
share his optimistic hopes and, if these were disappointed, generally
be ashamed to utter reproach in the face of his urbane acceptance of
failure. But on this occasion there was only rejoicing.
In a letter of his, replying to Hugh Conway’s generous
recognition of help, I find these words:
“I want to tell you how much touched I have been by your letters.
I say ‘letters’ for my wife read me as much of your note as
she thought good for me. Rest assured that I am delighted to have done
what I have done--also that the result has been fortunate for us both.
I don’t think I could have got through so well with any other
man; with you I have never had a shadow of worry or annoyance and I
have been able at all points to do my best--as far as I knew how.”
This happy venture led to a friendship which had no let until the
untimely death of Hugh Conway in the very zenith of his fame; they
were, as dear old Sir Alma Tadema said in his quaint English:
“Very fat together--like two hands on one stomach.”
Yet they did much work together, for not only did Joe collaborate again
with Hugh Conway in the adaptation of _Dark Days_ for the stage, but
he also published that gifted, ghoulish tale _Paul Vargus_ during his
editorship of _The English Illustrated Magazine_, as well as the serial
entitled _A Family Affair_, a humorous and urbane story with a plot
so delicately suggesting possible immorality, however, that it drew
down upon the editor a sharp reproach from Mrs. Grundy, who declared
that, although she believed all would “come right” she could never
again allow the magazine to lie on her drawing-room table lest her
well-brought-up daughters might open its pages.
Does that Mrs. Grundy still live to-day?
_Dark Days_ was Joe’s last bit of work with his poor friend
but by no means the last of his adaptations for the stage, the chief
of which number _Madame Sans Gêne_ for Sir Henry Irving; _My Lady of
Rosedale_ for Sir Charles Wyndham; _Nerves_ which ran with success
for some time at the Comedy Theatre, and last, but not at all least,
his fine play fashioned on Charles Dickens’ _Oliver Twist_ and
followed by one on _Edwin Drood_.
The former, with Sir Herbert Tree as _Fagin_, Constance Collier as
_Nancy_ and Lyn Harding as _Sikes_, held the public for many months
both in London and the United States.
At the height of its London success, a flaw in the architecture of the
central proscenium arch of His Majesty’s Theatre necessitated the
temporary transference of the play to another house. Joe was naturally
in despair, but the untoward incident in no way interfered with the run
of the piece which--in the words of the stage manager--had been kicked
up and down the Strand and only gathered force as it rolled.
But although I have spoken first of his adaptations, it is of his
original plays that I hold the dearest memories; and first and
foremost of _King Arthur_ which contains some of the best of the
lyrics and blank verse for which Theodore Watts Dunton held him to be
a “true poet.” The _May Song_ and _Song of the Grail_ he
placed himself among his best verse and they were well appreciated.
As the book was published by Messrs. Macmillan, it belongs to the
public.
The production of _King Arthur_ was one of the most beautiful of Henry
Irving’s many Lyceum triumphs. Even in those far-removed days
Sir Edward Burne Jones’ exquisite designs for the armour and
dresses, as well as for the scenery, will be remembered by some, and
I am proud to think that I was allowed the privilege of carrying out
some of them in detail. It was a hard six months’ work but it was
well rewarded and I think Joe had no happier hours than those he spent
in the writing and in the producing of his two finest efforts--_King
Arthur_ and _Tristram and Iseult_.
I cannot leave this subject without mention of the tender and lovely
impersonation of _Guinevere_ by Ellen Terry, and the touching tribute
to her which Joe himself gives in the following dedication, written on
the fly-leaf of the copy he presented to her.
“To Guinevere herself from one who, after years of closest
friendship, looks to her now as always, for the vindication of what is
highest and gentlest in womanhood; and who would count this not too
poor a gift for her to take, could he but hope that some part of the
grace and charm of her spirit had found its way into the portrait of
Arthur’s Queen.”
Following on this it would seem incongruous in connection with anyone
else but Joe to quote a funny tale bearing on the above; but Joe loved
the tale himself and often told it merrily and so will I.
On his being presented to a newly-arrived prominent American at a
public dinner, this gentleman opened the conversation by saying that
he had been privileged, on the voyage with Sir Henry Irving and Ellen
Terry, to read _King Arthur_ in the lady’s own copy containing the
author’s charming dedication. A pause ensued, when Joe--thinking
himself on solid ground--said: “Well, sir, I hope you liked the play?”
What was his astonishment at the Yankee’s gentle reply! “Well, not very
much!” said he, “You see I had Lord Tennyson in my mind.”
Silence ensued but I think Joe explained with urbanity that he had
taken an entirely different view of the old legend, founded in a
measure on Sir Thomas Malory’s version.
_A propos_ of this old name, Joe has himself told of the arrival at
the theatre of a batch of press cuttings addressed to that knight of
the days of chivalry, the title tactfully supplemented by the affix of
“Bart.”
Perhaps scarcely less funny and more unpardonable was the question of
the Society lady who asked him, in the case of _Tristram and Iseult_,
how he had obtained Mme. Wagner’s consent to tamper with her
husband’s book.
A play--_The Lonely Queen_--on which he spent much care, still remains
to be performed when a suitable actress shall present herself for the
strong and sympathetic part of the girlish ruler over a wild land.
The piece opens on a hillside overlooking an Eastern city--a scene
shewn again later on in sinister circumstances; and with dance and
laughter, a group of girls crown their wayward young mistress with
a wreath of flowers in merry mimicry of the weightier diadem she
will soon be called to wear. And presently, in a lonely mood of
apprehension, she meets as a stranger, the patriot-poet who is to be
both her bane and her salvation in the future.
He enjoyed writing this play and was pleased with the following lyric,
which he read to me--as I am proud to think, he generally read anything
with which he was satisfied or on which he wanted such criticism as I
could give--on the very morning when he had written it.
THE POET TO A GIRL-QUEEN UNKNOWN.
Oh Lady of the Lily Hand!
Whose face unseen we long to greet,
At whose command this desert land
Springs into flower about thy feet.
Fair maiden whom we know not yet,
Yet know thy heart can know no fear,
Queen, who shalt teach us to forget
The wounds of many a wasted year.
The curtains of the night are drawn,
Its shadows all have fled away,
For in thine eyes there dwells the dawn
And in thy smile the new born day.
A people’s love that waits thee now
Is thine to take and thine to hold,
Till God shall set upon thy brow
A crown that is not forged of gold.
Twixt Right and Wrong He yields thee choice,
Heed not the worship of the weak,
That in a maiden’s fearless voice
The clarion voice of God may speak.
Be swift to strike and strong to save,
Steadfast in all! Till all the land
Shall hail thee ‘Bravest of the Brave’
Oh Lady of the Lily Hand.
It was a fair scene in which it was written--a hill-top under Monte
Rosa overlooking the lovely shores of Lugano--and, though he always
said that actual surroundings were never proper to be described in
the work of the moment but must be digested and crystallized in the
hidden corners of remembrance, I think that the spirit of a place did
influence him, so that the sun shone on the hillside of the first
Act of _The Lonely Queen_ as the lowering brow of the Black Mount,
at Rannoch, seemed to overshadow the halls of Camelot; he even said
himself that he could see the barge with Elaine’s body float
down the Hertfordshire stream where he was wont to fish after his
day’s labour.
His poetical work was always that which lay nearest his heart, though
his friends often deplored that he did not devote himself more to
comedy; but strange to say, his humour, which was so inexhaustible
in colloquial intercourse, did not strike home so surely in his
stage dialogue: he needed the stimulus of conversation. Possibly he
felt this, which made him shyer of comedy-writing than he would have
been; in _Nerves_ he was witty enough and there is a very deft comedy
scene for two old ladies in _Forgiveness_, produced at the “St.
James’” Theatre by Sir George Alexander. His first attempts
at dramatic work, made on the tiny stage of German Reed’s, were
entirely in quaint comedy.
I think a free rendering of a fancy of Hugh Conway’s on the
Blue-and-White China Craze was one of the first things he did for the
stage and it contained some charming lyrics after the Elizabethan
manner which won instant recognition.
I quote three of them, for they were never printed for the public.
From _The United Pair_.
DUET: SONG OF THE TWO CHINA-COLLECTORS.
SEXTUS.
A love like mine is far above
The thing that we are told is love,
In Shakespeare or in Chaucer.
For while they are content to praise
The famous forms of classic days,
I revel in the form and glaze,
Of one unrivalled saucer.
VIRGINIA.
Ah sir, I know the thought is vain,
Yet if a man were porcelain,
Then love would be the master;
If only in a single night
Your face could change to blue and white,
I think at such a glorious sight
My heart would beat the faster.
VIRGINIA AND SEXTUS.
And such a love were far above
The thing that we are told is love,
In Shakespeare or in Chaucer;
For while they are content to praise
The famous forms of classic days,
We revel in the form and glaze,
Of every cup and saucer.
SEXTUS.
Ah madam, if that dream were true,
How easy would it be to woo,
And never fear the winning;
If woman also could be graced
With all the silent charms of paste,
Then love could never be misplaced,
And hate have no beginning.
VIRGINIA.
Then every vase would find its mate,
Each dish would woo a neighbouring plate,
Each bowl would wed a beaker;
And if perchance, through pride or pique,
Some youth or maid should fail to speak,
Each bachelor would be unique,
And each old maid uniquer.
VIRGINIA AND SEXTUS.
And such a love were far above
The thing that we are told is love,
In Shakespeare or in Chaucer;
For while they are content to praise
The famous forms of classic days,
We revel in the form and glaze,
Of every cup and saucer.
The following duet bore a charming promise of the maturer work that was
to follow in wider spheres.
From _The United Pair_.
Played at Mr. and Mrs. German Reed’s about 1880.
I.
ADA.
What Love was yesterday, we both could tell;
JACK.
What Love may be to-morrow, who can guess?
ADA.
What Love is now both Jack and I know well;
JACK.
But that’s a secret lovers ne’er confess.
JACK AND ADA.
But this we know, that Love is much maligned
By those who call him deaf, and dumb, and blind.
II.
ADA.
Yet Love was dumb: ’tis but an hour ago
I spied him ’mid the daisies as I passed,
Like a pale rose-leaf on new fallen snow
He lay with drooping lids and lips shut fast.
And though the birds sang, Love made no reply,
He had no message for the whispering stream,
He sent no echoing answer to the sky,
That laughed with dancing shadows o’er his dream.
Then kneeling down beside him where he lay,
I wept aloud for grief that Love was dead;
But when Jack came and kissed my tears away,
Love spoke one word: we both heard what he said.
JACK AND ADA.
Therefore we say that Love is much maligned,
For he is neither deaf, nor dumb, nor blind.
III.
JACK.
Yet Love was deaf: ’twas only yesterday
I found him fishing down beside the brook,
His rod a snowy branch of flowering may,
Whose spiny thorn he fashioned for a hook.
Small heed had he of any lover’s pain,
Who would not hear the cuckoo’s ringing note,
I cried to him, but cried alas in vain,
He only laughed to watch the dancing float;
And while I wept to see him laughing so,
I heard a voice that whispered one sweet word
Ah Ada, tell me was it “yes” or “no”?
She answered “yes” and then I knew Love heard.
JACK AND ADA.
Therefore we say that Love is much maligned,
For he is neither deaf, nor dumb, nor blind.
IV.
JACK AND ADA.
Yet Love was blind: for so he lost his way,
And so we found him when the day was done,
Within a wood where happy lovers stray,
There he had wandered weeping and alone.
Then wondering much, we thought to ask his name,
But Love replied: “Ah, surely ye should know!”
And as he spake, beneath his wings of flame
We saw Love’s arrows and his glittering bow,
“For you,” he cried, “the way is strewn with flowers,
You’ve found the path that I shall never find.”
Then looking up we saw Love’s eyes in ours,
And then we knew why men do call him blind.
Therefore we know that Love is much maligned,
By all who call him deaf, and dumb, and blind.
From _The Naturalist_.
A SONG OF PROVERBS.
I know that truth’s stranger than fiction,
And I fancy I don’t stand alone,
If I cling to an old predilection,
For killing two birds with one stone;
I never shed tears that are bitter
Over milk that I know to be spilt,
And whenever gold happens to glitter
I make up my mind that its gilt;
Yet the riddle of life grows no clearer,
And still broken-hearted I yearn
For the season that never draws nearer--
When a worm may take courage and turn.
And if for a moment I wander
Into themes more profound and abstruse,
To note that the sauce for a gander
Is also the sauce for the goose;
That one man is free to steal horses,
While another is punished by fate,
Who shuns all such virtuous courses,
And dares to look over a gate,--
It is but for the sake of forgetting
What gives me far greater concern,
It is but with a view of abetting
A worm in its efforts to turn.
I could live and not care in the slightest
To know when a dog had his day,
And though the sun shone at its brightest,
I could let other people make hay.
I could perish without ascertaining
Why pearls should be cast before swine,
I could die without ever complaining
That one stitch will never save nine;
And though I once had the ambition
A candle at both ends to burn,
The old craving might go to perdition
If I knew that a worm had its turn.
These little pieces were admirably rendered by Mr. Alfred Reed and his
company, and they won instant success.
I can see Mr. Clement Scott’s delighted face just under my box on
the first night of _The United Pair_ and hear his burst of laughter at
the concluding line of the “Song of the China Collectors.”
But the one of the three comediettas upon which Joe spent the most
pleasant care was _The Friar_--a little thirteenth century fancy of
his own invention and for which he wrote the following verses, giving
charming expression to the pique of a high-born damsel towards her
proud lover and the sorrow of the shepherd swain who becomes the
favourite of an hour.
THE LADY ISOBEL’S SONG.
Oh, if I be a lady fair,
I’ll weep for no lord’s frown,
And if my lord should ride away,
I’ll put aside my silk array
And take a russet gown.
I’ll wear a gown of russet brown,
And sleep on the grassy sward,
And when I meet a shepherd swain,
If he should sigh, I’ll sigh again,
And choose him for my lord.
I’ll choose a shepherd for my lord,
Though I be a lady fair,
And when the woods are golden brown,
Of yellow leaves I’ll weave a crown,
And bind his golden hair.
Then my false lord shall cry and weep,
And call his lady fair,
But though for love his heart should bleed,
His sighs and tears I will not heed,
Nor hearken to his prayer.
THE SHEPHERD AND THE LADY.
ISOBEL.
Shepherd, if thou wouldst learn to woo a maid
In Love’s own way,
Follow young Cupid to the hawthorn shade
Some day in May,
And bid him tell thee true
What way were best to woo;
What a poor swain should do
When maids say nay.
HUBERT.
Ah! could I find the bower where Love doth dwell
Beneath the May,
And could I plead to him, I know full well
What Love would say.
For he would bid me sigh,
And weep, and moan and cry,
And he would bid me die,
For that’s Love’s way.
ISOBEL.
Hast thou forgotten how in shepherd’s guise
One day in May,
Love taught a cruel maid with laughing eyes
To feel Love’s sway,
And when she thought to scorn
This lover lowly born
Love did not weep or mourn,
But laughed and turned away,
And singing when she sighed,
Love wept not when she cried
He cared not if she died
For that’s Love’s way!
BOTH.
O Love that came but yester eve,
If thou wilt go before to-morrow,
Then prithee go, but do not leave
My saddened heart to die of sorrow.
If thou wilt hide Love’s laughing eyes,
If we must lose Love’s magic spell,
Then take the burthen of our sighs,
And we will say Farewell! Farewell!
THE SHEPHERD’S SONG.
Ah wherefore should I try to sing
Of Love that’s dead?
Of Love that came before the Spring
And ere Spring came had fled.
’Tis vain to seek in winter snows
The fallen petals of the rose
’Tis vain to ask the year to bring
The Love that went before the Spring.
Our little world was fair to see
Ere Love had come,
Of earth and sky and flower and tree
I sang while Love was dumb.
But now the strings have all one tone,
Love claims all beauty for his own.
In vain! in vain! I can but sing
The Love that went before the Spring.
And as I sing, Love lives again;
Where’er I go,
His voice is in the summer rain,
His footprints on the snow.
And while October turns to gold,
I dream that April buds unfold,
Ah tell me will the Spring-time bring
The Love that went before the Spring?
_The Shepherd’s Song_ I have heard him say he was as well pleased with
as with any of his later and more ambitious verse; but it is curious
to note that, quite unconsciously, he repeated the line “But now the
strings have all one tone” in the _Lute Song_, written nearly thirty
years after, for _The Beauty Stone_, an opera done in conjunction with
Sir Arthur Pinero to Sir Arthur Sullivan’s music.
* * * * *
The book of _The Beauty Stone_ was published, but I quote the _Lute
Song_ for those who did not know it.
THE LUTE’S SONG.
I.
Ah, why dost sigh and moan?
Ah, why? ah, why?
Queen of the laughing May
Who wears thy crown to-day?
Good-bye! good-bye!
Yea, for all mirth hath flown;
The strings have all one tone--
Ah, why? ah, why?
II.
It is the lute that sings,
Not I! not I!
Methinks some sleeping heart
That once had felt Love’s smart
Doth wake and cry!
Nay, hark! ’tis love’s own wings
That fan the trembling strings--
Not I! Not I!
But dainty as is this little song, it does not to my mind equal in
charm the duet of the two old lovers in the same opera.
THE OLD LOVERS OFFERING ONE ANOTHER THE BEAUTY STONE.
SIMON.
I would see a maid who dwells in Zolden--
Her eyes are soft as moonlight on the mere;
The spring hath fled, the ripened year turns golden--
Shall I win her ere the waning of the year?
The reaping-folk pass homeward by the fountain;
What is it then that calls me from the dell,
What bids me climb the path beside the mountain
To the down beyond the sheepfold? Who can tell?
Then take it, for this magic stone hath power
To change thee to the fairest; yet to me
Thou wert fairest as I knew thee in that hour
When a maiden dwelt in Zolden! Ah, take it, ’tis for thee!
JOAN.
I would see a youth who comes from Freyden--
He is straighter than the mountain pine-trees grow;
Gossips say he comes to woo a maiden,
So the gossips say--but can they know?
Three laughing maids are in the hollow,
Yet none will set him straight upon his way;
Nay! soft! for he hath found the path to follow--
He is coming! little heart, what will he say?
Then take it, for this magic stone hath power
To change thee to the fairest, yet to me
Thou wert fairest as I knew thee in that hour
When a youth came up from Freyden! Ah, take it, ’tis for thee!
In the Beauty-Stone Joe was only responsible for the lyrics and parts of
the plot. But I know that his idea of the man’s true love being
first awakened after he became blind was dear to him, and he used it
again in his adaptation of Jekyll and Hyde for H. B. Irving; but there
it is the wife whose blindness hides from her all but the beautiful
side of her husband.
Such were the chief of Joe’s plays. Tireless energy was given to
the production of them all, for I think it was universally admitted
that no one bore the strain of rehearsals as cheerily and patiently
as Joe. But these attributes shone equally in his work upon the plays
of others produced during his many years of management at the Comedy
Theatre, at the Lyceum, after it was taken over by a company, at His
Majesty’s when producing plays for Sir Herbert Tree, and lastly
at Covent Garden, where he arranged the _mise en scène_ for _Parsifal_
at a time when he was already stricken by failing health.
Many strenuous hours were spent over each of these ventures in the
most arduous of professions; but what I prefer to recall are the gay
ones--the merry moments--the unfailing good humour, wit and pleasant
jest by which my husband lightened the weary waits with which all who
have laboured for the stage are familiar.
“Rome wasn’t built in a day,” I can hear him
retort cheerfully to some impatient spectator who was grumbling at
the long waits during the last rehearsal of _Julius Cæsar_ at His
Majesty’s Theatre; and none was so ready as his friend the
actor-manager, with the appreciative laugh.
Lady Tree--Maud, to us--reminds me of his favourite attitude as he
would stand watching the effects of the lighting of his scenes from
the empty stalls with his stick passed through his arms behind his
back, and his cheery tones uttering the most fearful anathemas against
lime-light men and scene-shifters.
One day I said to him: “Don’t get so angry, Joe, it must
tire you out.”
To which he replied with his usual promptness, “Angry, my dear!
Why, I’m only using the language proper to lime-light men: they
understand no other.”
Once at a Christmas rehearsal, when the stage-hands were all rather
more tipsy than was generally allowable, he came from the stage, and
as he sat down beside me in the stalls he said with a whimsical smile:
“Poor old Burnaby! He keeps muttering, ‘Buried a wife o’ Toosday and
now, s’elp me, can’t lay my ’and on a hammer.’”
He was held in firm affection by his stage-hands just as he was by
his New Gallery staff, not forgetting the decorators, and those
superior frame-gilders who were only induced by regard for “the
boss” to work together in completing the balustrade of the
balcony during the strenuous last days before the opening of that
“Aladdin’s palace.”
I recollect one of the scene-shifters at His Majesty’s Theatre
putting his shoulder out at a rehearsal and Joe taking him to hospital
himself; I should never have known of it but that the man’s
quaint expression of gratitude--“Your gentlemanly conduct, sir,
I never shall forget”--so pleased Joe that he had to repeat it to
me.
The humours of these people always delighted him, and I can see his
mock-grave face as he told me of the head stage-carpenter’s refusal
to carry out an order because it was the day upon which: “We’re all
subservient to Mr. Telbin”--an excuse which Joe, knowing that irascible
scene-painter’s peculiarities--found sufficient.
No memories are pleasanter to me than those of presentations to us
by these working folk. I have a little Old English silver waiter, an
inscribed gift from the employés at the Comedy Theatre for our silver
wedding; and a ponderous marble clock, also touchingly inscribed, which
the foreman of the stage-hands in the Lyceum Company presented to Joe
in the library of our Kensington house. The man stood in the centre of
the room making a speech, but before it was ended nature prevailed and
he concluded hastily: “If I don’t set it down somewhere I
shall let it drop.”
Joe had given instructions to our maid to pay the donor’s cab,
and when he retired and found it gone, we were all in dismay upon
learning that he had left his overcoat in it.
Anecdotes of entertainments in the higher circles of the stage Joe
has told himself in his two books of Reminiscences, the most notable
of them being Henry Irving’s splendid reception to the Rajahs,
when the stage and stalls of the Lyceum were transformed into one vast
flower-garden in half an hour after the fall of the curtain. But I can
add my testimony as to memorable evenings spent at His Majesty’s
Theatre and at Sir Henry Irving’s supper-table in the “Old
Beefsteak Room” of the Lyceum Theatre, when I listened proudly to
Joe’s brilliant talk or speeches, and was sometimes privileged
to act as interpreter between the host and the many distinguished
foreigners who graced that board. Liszt, Joachim, Sarasate are names
which recur to me among them as musicians; but, of course, the guests
were chiefly actors and actresses, flattered, I think, at the fine
welcome from the foremost English Manager.
Booth, Mary Anderson, Mansfield were the foremost Americans, to
the latter of whom I remember Irving’s grim advice _à propos_ of
the fatigue of a ventriloquist-voice in a gruesome part: “If it’s
unwholesome I should do it some other way.” Jane Hading, Coquelin,
Réjane and, of course, the incomparable Sarah Bernhardt represented the
French; and I think Salvini was the only one from the stage of Italy.
Sarah and our dear Ellen Terry were always great friends, and I call
to mind a pretty little passage when they were sitting opposite to one
another and Sarah, leaning forward, cried, in response to some gracious
word of Nell’s: “My dearling, there are two peoples who
shall never be old--you and me.”
The words are still, happily, true at the hour when I write.
Relating to members of the German stage entertained by Sir Henry, the
most amusing incident is that related by Joe himself in detail: of
the great actor’s grim humour in calling upon him suddenly to
speak in praise of the Sax-Meiningen Company, when Joe had innocently
told him an hour before that he had been unable to go to any of their
performances. Ladies were not present on that occasion, but I was told
that Joe’s speech was one of the wittiest he ever delivered:
there was nothing that so sharpened his rapier as being apparently put
at a disadvantage.
I find no mention by himself of a similar occurrence on a different
issue. This time Irving had invited the Oxford and Cambridge crews to
supper and, being suddenly indisposed, was unable to propose their
health. Without even waiting to be asked Joe rose to his feet and,
anxious to divert the young men’s attention from their host,
surpassed himself in exuberant fun, keeping them in a roar of laughter
for a quarter of an hour over his alleged uncertainty as to which of
the two ’Varsities had secured the honours of the boat-race.
I am told that Joe again acquitted himself well at a dinner given to
Arthur Balfour, when Anthony Hope called upon him without notice from
the chair to return thanks for his proposed health. I don’t know why or
how the inspiration came, but “Love” was Joe’s topic, and it is easy to
imagine what a gracious and merry time he made with the various aspects
of this subject.
Of his meetings with Italian actors and actresses Joe does not speak
save in the instance of Madame Ristori, for whose genius he had an
unsurpassed veneration.
His _Eminent Victorians_ contains the tale of an afternoon at her house
when she had invited him and one or two of the dramatic critics to hear
her speak _Lady Macbeth’s_ sleep-walking scene in English with a
view to doing it before a British audience.
Her large and sonorous rendering of the line “All the perfumes
of Arâbia” delighted him, though he tried to teach her our
own insular pronunciation; he was loudly in favour of the public
performance in English, which she finally gave, and I shall never
forget the awe-inspiring effect of the slow and gentle snoring which
she kept running through the whole of the speech.
Joe never admired even Salvini as much, though he revelled in his great
voice on the resounding Roman tongue. He made us all laugh one day by
mimicking the mincing tones of a Cockney interpreter translating the
Italian tragedian’s sonorous language when returning thanks for
his London welcome at a public dinner.
Eleonora Duse, for whom our Nell had the most ardent admiration, was
rarely able, by reason of her frail health, to grace festive occasions
after her work; but Joe had one or two interesting meetings with her
during the season that she rented one of the theatres that he managed
and we were all present together at her pathetic performance of the
_Dame aux Camelias_; the next night we witnessed Sarah Bernhardt in the
same rôle, and Joe gives an able comparison of the two performances in
_Coasting Bohemia_. On the latter occasion a note came round to Nell
from the stage saying: “To-night I play for you.” And the
promise was well kept.
Speaking of Sarah Bernhardt, I recall a happening of the days before
Joe was entitled to the consideration due to a theatrical manager;
he had obtained a promise from the famous lady that she would lunch
with us in our quiet home and we bade to meet her not by any means our
“second-best” friends--to quote a huffed English actor regarding the
guests of another evening. We waited an hour with a patient party and
then Joe hastened with a cab to fetch the lady, only to be told that
she had forgotten the engagement and was in her bath preparing to keep
another. I need not perhaps record that Joe’s wit was equal to the
occasion in pacifying our outraged guests.
He and Sarah became firm friends later, and she had Joe’s _King
Arthur_ translated into French with a view to playing the part of
_Lancelot_; but this intention was never carried out.
So many and various are the memories which crowd upon me connected with
the stage that it is quite impossible for me to sift and record them
without undue risk of boring any readers I may have. Suffice it to say
that I think, of his many occupations, the theatre, whether in writing
for it or in labouring at productions upon it, was the one which most
entranced and held Joe. Not only did he love every detail of the work,
but it brought him in daily contact with all sorts and conditions of
men and women, taxed his powers as a leader of them and gave him hourly
opportunity for the exercise of his humanizing and inspiring gift:
that highest kind of humour which needs no preparation, but is evoked
by every little passing incident and has its real might in the love of
mankind.
Perhaps I may here quote a portion of an American interviewer’s
account of a talk with Henry Irving, sent to Joe by J. L. Toole during
one of his old friend’s long tours in the United States.
“THE WITTIEST MAN IN ENGLAND.”
“Whom do you consider the wittiest man in England to-day?”
“Well, in my opinion, the greatest of our wits is a man of whom
very little is known out here. He is Comyns Carr, who wrote _King
Arthur_ for me.”
“He is a theatrical manager in London, is he not?”
“Yes, at the present he is, but he is a distinguished man in
literature as well. A polished essayist and the most sparkling man I
have ever met. As an extemporaneous speaker he is delightful.”
“Is he an Irishman?”
“Perhaps he is, originally. Now you speak of it. Do you know
if Carr is an Irish name? Comyns is at any rate and then most of
our celebrated wits have been Irishmen--our Sheridans and our
Goldsmiths?”
With this pleasing tribute to my husband I may fitly close these
theatrical reminiscences, though I like to recall that Joe and Henry
Irving had appreciations of one another on a graver side to which
some pages in _Eminent Victorians_ testify, and many are the pleasant
holiday hours we spent as his guests both abroad and at home. He used
to visit the old-world village of Winchelsea by Rye, where we had a
cottage close to the ancient gateway of the town--afterwards sold to
Ellen Terry.
But the most notable of our joint trips was that to Nuremberg in search
of material for the production of _Faust_. This was the first occasion
on which I made a hit with my designing of Ellen Terry’s dresses,
which I afterwards did for nearly twenty years. Being the only one
of the party speaking German, I made many bargains in the shops and
on the old market-place chiefly under Joe’s direction but also
by request of Henry or Nell. She bought me a solid housewife’s
copper jug in the market, and Joe and I secured an old ivory casket
which she accepted from us and in which she kept the gew-gaws in the
“Jewel Scene.”
She and I had a delightful evening in the old Castle, I having
persuaded a little girl-custodian to let us in after hours so that we
saw the place in solemn loneliness with the sunset glow reddening the
red roofs of the city far below us.
I won the admission by a highly coloured description of the actress in
Shakespeare, which the child actually had seen in her own town; and
Nell promised her a signed photograph--punctually posted on our return.
This excursion was made while Joe and Henry were away at Rothenburg,
which my husband had insisted that Irving must see on account of its
unique preservation of untouched city-wall and battlements.
It was a memorable tour, of which Joe tells some interesting anecdotes
in _Coasting Bohemia_.
In speaking of the long drives which his host loved and so greatly
preferred to any kind of exercise, Joe does not confess, however, how
impossible he found it to keep himself awake. “We sit side by
side and sleep for hours!” he would tell me regretfully when he
came home. And I don’t suppose it occurred to any of us then that
it was the best rest that tired theatrical managers could have.