had I not soon after come in touch with Timothy Rallish, who reported
upon Wray in the manner I have stated. I was amused to hear Timothy
say that he didn’t know why he liked Wray. I knew the reason. It was
because Timothy couldn’t help liking every one. He was that kind of
boy--rather short and stocky, with ingenuous blue eyes which sparkled
at you through enormous gold-rimmed glasses. He found life absorbing.
He had scrambled through Oxford, accomplishing nothing of note beyond
making himself popular. His people were poor, and on coming down from
Oxford he had plunged into the vagaries of journalism.
He was full of enthusiasms, and was always doing the donkey-work
for some quack. He had a genius for compiling and card-indexing. He
edited and subedited various treatises and anthologies. I remember
that he once wrote a book with the impressive title, “Concentrate,”
for a South African pseudo-medical gentleman, who lived in
Westminster and charged three guineas a visit for the treatment of
concentration. Timothy wrote every word of the book, but when it
was published the author was announced as Mr. Hambro MacManus, and
this red-haired South African Scot who arranged his rooms in such
a theatrical way in Ashley Gardens, and made mysterious passes and
grunts over the back of people’s heads, claimed the credit for it,
and also the royalties. Timothy thought the whole episode extremely
amusing.
“I never mind paying for experience,” he said. “Poor old Mac! He was
quite wrong in most of his theories, but somehow I liked him.”
When I told Timothy about my interview with Mrs. Wray he was wildly
enthusiastic at the idea of my visiting Jimmy Wray when I next went
to London.
“It’s no good going to him as a medical man, or letting him know
that his mother sent you. You must just meet him socially. He is
just possible on occasions. I could easily work it for you. I could
introduce you when you are up in town. You could meet him casually at
the Albatross Club or the Café Royale. I should love to know what
you think of him.”
The whole matter passed out of my mind till five months later when I
had occasion to visit London for a few days in connection with the
idea of purchasing a half-practice from an old medical friend of mine
in West Kensington.
Timothy immediately looked me up and reminded me about Wray. His
method was characteristic. He came into my bedroom at the little
hotel at Paddington, and, striking a sentimental attitude, began
humming a well-known popular song. When I asked him what his
particular ailment was he laughed and said:
“Don’t you know that tune?”
“I’ve heard it, I believe.”
“That’s ‘The Sheen of thy Golden Tresses,’ the most popular song of
the day, words by Francis Vallery, music by James Wray. How are the
mighty fallen!”
I met Wray that same evening at the Albatross Club. Either Timothy’s
estimate of him was distorted, or he had altered considerably, or
else we had struck him on a good night. He was quite charming to me.
His dress was certainly a little affected, but he was still very
good looking, and he had a quiet sense of fun, and was prepared to
listen and to be entertained. I observed that he was appreciably
more friendly to me than he was to Timothy. He had a curious high,
rather squeaky voice as though it had never cracked, and a laugh
that corresponded. I could understand that this characteristic of
him might easily get on one’s nerves after a time. But on the whole
I could find little to criticize about the man or his behaviour. He
even invited me to visit him in his rooms at Chelsea. And there two
nights later I met the great Francis Vallery.
In looking back after all these years, and trying to analyze
the character of James Wray, it is impossible to do so without
associating it with that of Francis Vallery. Their lives and
characters dove-tailed and reacted upon one another in a bewildering
degree. Physically, they were a strange contrast. Vallery was a
heavy, masterful-looking man, with a wide loose mouth, sloping
forehead, and cynical, watchful eyes. He was normally taciturn,
unresponsive, and curiously brusque in his manners. By comparison
Wray seemed slim, debonair, almost unsubstantial. I do not think they
really liked each other from the first. On that evening when I saw
them together in the Chelsea flat, I could tell by the expression of
Vallery’s face that Wray’s high reedy voice and laughter irritated
him. I also came to the conclusion before the evening was over that
Vallery had a beast of a temper.
Once an argumentative young student made a remark contradicting a
statement of Vallery’s, and I saw the latter’s eyes blaze with anger
and saliva ooze to the corners of his large mouth. He said nothing,
however. When we were leaving, the man in the hall handed him his
overcoat the wrong way round. Vallery snatched it angrily from his
grasp and growled. I knew that Wray was also capable of murdering
a cat in a fit of passion, so I said to myself that the happy
association which produced “The Sheen of thy Golden Tresses” was not
very likely to last.
And then comes the strange aspect of the case. The association
between Wray and Vallery lasted for twenty-seven years, and became a
by-word amongst English-speaking peoples.
In justice to the memory of them both I would like to hasten to add
that they never again did anything quite so bad as “The Sheen of thy
Golden Tresses.” This song was a little difficult to account for. It
was in a way their meeting ground, the plank from which they sprang.
It was quite understandable Vallery writing the words, but quite
incomprehensible Wray composing the music. It is not known and never
will be known by what method or means Vallery influenced Wray to
suddenly forsake his precious muse and write this appalling song. For
a man who up to that time had considered Chopin “sentimental tripe”
to turn suddenly round and write this ballad, which was devoid of any
subtlety or distinction, is one of those things one can only state
and leave to the imagination of the reader to account for. Vallery
had certainly written a good deal of sentimental prose tripe at that
time, but nothing quite so bad as that. I think they were both a
little ashamed of the song, and never mentioned it. It was nearly a
year before anything else sprang from their united efforts, and then
was produced the musical play, “The Oasis.”
“The Oasis” was a great success and ran at the Lyric for over a
year. It was an astonishingly clever work, notable for its complete
unity. The words appeared to inspire the music; the music was a vivid
expression of the words. You could not think of one without the
other. If Vallery’s libretto appeared ingenious and suggestive of
melody, Wray’s music had a literary and whimsical flavour of its own
which helped the context enormously. It appeared as though from two
extreme poles both men had gone half way to meet the other. Vallery
had had little education. He was the son of an unsuccessful bookmaker
from Nottingham.
Up to that time he had been known as a writer of jingles and sporting
articles, but in “The Oasis” he displayed a considerable ingenuity
of construction and a really mordant sense of fun. Wray came halfway
down from his pinnacle of involved and atmospheric experiment to
write simple melodic airs. It was rather amusing to observe in this
work, and in others that followed, how he cunningly employed some of
the lesser known themes of the despised Schumann and Chopin, adapted
them, elaborated them and converted them into “songs of the day!”
Timothy and I, and some of the others who knew them both, were
naturally intrigued to see how the personal side of the association
worked. Timothy offered to bet me five pounds that they would quarrel
and separate within six months. It certainly seemed remarkable that
they did not. It may have been a fortunate factor that two men
working together on these lines do not necessarily work in the same
room. Vallery brought Wray the libretto, and probably discussed it a
little. He was profoundly ignorant of the technical side of music.
Wray wrote the music and the lyrics; his partner was clever enough to
see that these were good and there was little for him to criticize.
They may have discussed joins, and turns and intervals, but there
were no great points of cleavage over which they would be likely to
fall foul.
During the succeeding five years, four Wray-Vallery productions were
staged in London and New York, and companies went on the road with
them. By that time they had established their reputation as a unique
combination. They were beginning to make money and to be big people
in the theatrical world. And Timothy and I were still awaiting the
great quarrel. I had by that time joined my friend Doctor Brill
in West Kensington, so that I was able to indulge occasionally in
the society of Timothy’s friends and to visit the theatre. The
Wray-Vallery plays were a constant delight to me. I really believe
that Timothy was more interested in the men than in their plays. But
then he was like that. He would come and report to me the latest
scandal concerning them, and indeed their behaviour was always open
to criticism of some sort.
One evening Vallery was arrested for assaulting the head waiter at
the Amalfi restaurant because he moved his walking-stick from the
corner of the room to an umbrella-stand. He escaped with a fine and a
little gentle bantering from the Press. The more successful he became
the more overbearing became his manners. He hardly troubled to speak
to anyone, unless it was a pretty woman, or someone to whom it paid
him to be polite. Upon Wray the effect was almost as disastrous,
although it touched him in a different way. His manners in some ways
improved, that is to say, he was more sociable and amenable. On the
other hand he became more shallow and insincere, more of a _poseur_.
He adopted the garb of the eccentric genius. He was wildly
extravagant, and took parties of girls to the Café Royale, and
to an ornate bungalow he had hired at Maidenhead. He became less
self-opinionated, but it was done as though opinion--no one’s
opinion--was of any consequence. It was as though he had lost
something and the knowledge of it made him desperate. It was a known
fact that during those early years of their association Wray and
Vallery sometimes quarrelled, but the quarrel never reached an open
rupture. Once Wray appeared in my consulting-room. He was looking
haggard and ill. When I asked him the trouble he said:
“I’m not sleeping, Parsons.”
I advised the usual remedies, recommended a complete rest and change,
but as I watched the restless movements of his features I realized
how inadequate is the authority of a medical man. We may sometimes
make a shrewd guess at the basic cause of a disaster, but no medicine
or advice will cure a megalomaniac. Just as he was about to go he
turned to me and with one of his quick appealing looks he gasped:
“I hate that man, Vallery!”
So you see the old faith in the fetish does not die. What did Wray
expect me to do? Possibly he would have been better advised to
have gone to a priest. That is, if he could have found a really
nice impressive priest, any one would have done, if they had only
had sufficient strength of character to change Wray. I thought of
his rather futile old mother and I felt sorry for him. I said what
I could. I tried to persuade him to give up his association with
Vallery. I pointed out that his health was more important than his
material success. It wasn’t that, he tried to explain, not just the
material success. He had quite a decent private income (inherited
from his father in the accordion-pleated line). Then what was it?
Wray was quite incoherent. He went off late in the evening, and I
noticed after he had gone that he had left the prescription I had
given him on the table in the hall!
On discussing the matter afterward with Timothy I said:
“What is it that keeps these men together?”
And for all it may be worth I will quote just what Timothy replied.
For Timothy at that time had just married a charming girl, a former
typist to a dental surgeon in Kilburn, and he was becoming something
of a philosopher. This is what Timothy said:
“It is the angel of accomplishment, old man. When people are working,
doing things together, especially if they are doing them in the face
of difficulties, there is always some queer genie which presides over
their affections. Comrades in battle, however opposed they may be
temperamentally.... Chaps who row in the same boat, play in the same
team at cricket or football, or are up against things together. The
angel of accomplishment presides over their fate. It’s afterward,
or when they lose that united sense of conflict, that the trouble
sometimes comes.”
In the light of what followed I found Timothy’s remarks interesting.
It was during the production of their sixth success, “The Apple-pie
Bed,” that the biggest cloud that had so far gathered over the
Wray-Vallery combination made its appearance. And, as one might
expect, it came in the form of a woman. Lydia Looe played the part
of the _ingènue_, Myra, in “The Apple-pie Bed.” She was a pretty
girl, not quite so ingenuous as she appeared on the stage, but in
any case too good for either James Wray or Francis Vallery, who were
both approaching a rather dilapidated middle-age. How their rivalry
over the charms of this new discovery never reached a crisis is a
mystery to me. I spent a Sunday evening at Wray’s flat when all
concerned were present, and the look of venom that passed between the
two men at the slightest success of either upon the lady’s favour
was positively frightening. The competition lasted eight months and
Vallery appeared to be winning.
“If the matter is really settled,” I thought, “I shall dread to pick
up my newspaper.”
Let me add that all this time the two men were working on a new
play, “The Island in Arabia.” Timothy said he had seen the figure
of Wray all muffled up, hanging about outside Vallery’s house in
Knightsbridge late at night “looking like an apache.” The crash was
surely about to come, but in July the Gordian knot was severed by
Lydia Looe running away with the business manager of a jam and pickle
factory. “The Island in Arabia” was produced the following month
and became one of the biggest successes of the series. We all hoped
that the episode of Lydia Looe would tend to reconcile the two men,
and so apparently it did. But the following year Vallery publicly
accused Wray of swindling him. There was a fearful dispute between
principals and their lawyers and the matter came into court. I forget
the details of the case but it principally concerned the royalties on
the songs published separately from the score. I know that Wray lost
the case and that it cost him thousands of pounds.
He went on the continent and married a wealthy Hungarian widow,
and we all believed that England had seen the last of him. But as
though not to be outdone in this, Vallery also married. His marriage
was about as disastrous an affair as ever disgraced the records of
a divorce court. It lasted eighteen months, and when Mrs. Vallery
was eventually persuaded to appeal to the courts she had a most
pitiable story to disclose. Not only had she no difficulty in proving
Vallery’s guilt of faithlessness, but she recorded a distressing
series of cruelties. He had struck her on innumerable occasions. He
had thrashed her with a belt, locked her in a cupboard, thrown her
out into the garden on a wet night, and many times threatened her
with a revolver.
A few months after the divorce, news came that Wray’s wife had died
suddenly under rather mysterious circumstances, in Buda-Pesth. He
returned to London, and three years after this law case Wray and
Vallery were again at work together on a play which was called,
“Wine, Woman, and Mr. Binns.” It was one of the most amusing, most
lyrical plays seen in London for a decade, and ran for four hundred
and fifty odd nights. The Wray-Vallery combination then seemed to
make a most surprising spurt. They both settled down and worked
hard. Wray’s experience in Hungary, whatever it had been, quieted
him. He became less eccentric, less depraved, in his appetites. On
the other hand, he was rapidly becoming more self-centred, shrewd,
and commercial. He appeared to be obsessed with the idea of making
a huge fortune. Vallery was also not without ambitions in this
direction. And between them they undoubtedly succeeded in grinding
the commercial axe to good purpose.
There is no question but that the series of plays that they composed
during this latter phase were artistically inferior to the earlier
ones, but on the other hand their sureness of touch was more
apparent. To use a hackneyed phrase they knew just what the public
wanted and how to give it to them.
At that time Timothy and I had quite lost touch with them.
Timothy was the proud father of three girls. He had written
several successful novels and stories, and was a reader to an
eminent firm of publishers. I myself had a son and daughter and
an increasing practice. We met frequently and indulged in little
social distractions, but we felt no great desire to seek further the
companionship of these two notorieties.
“They’re getting a bit too thick,” was Timothy’s comment after
reading the details of Vallery’s divorce. Nevertheless we still
followed their careers with considerable interest, and there often
came to us stories of their violent differences, of scenes at
rehearsals, ugly threats, and recriminations. On one occasion Wray
wanted to have the whole of their interests put in the hands of a
well-known agent, but Vallery objected. The dispute went on for
months and as usual Vallery had his way. It is said that they wrote
“The Girl at Sea” when they were not on speaking terms, and all the
score and libretto were passed backward and forward through a lawyer.
Still they went on from success to success. Together they wrote some
twenty odd variably successful plays. In one new year’s honour list
we found the name of James Wray, the eminent composer, under the
knighthoods. The forces which control the distribution of honours are
as mysterious as the forces which control the stars, and rather more
inexplicable. How Sir James Wray managed to obtain his title over the
heads of many distinguished artists it is impossible to say. These
things are usually accepted with a smile and a shrug, and a man’s
rivals are not often perturbed by them.
But in the case of Vallery the affair reacted disastrously. He was
furious. He took the whole thing as a royal affront to himself. If
Sir James Wray why not Sir Francis Vallery? It is said that the
powers that be have a prejudice against people who have shown up
badly in the divorce court. This was true, but on the other hand was
Wray’s private life above reproach?
His colleague’s title broke Vallery up, and it certainly did no
good to Wray. They were both now prematurely old men, worn out, and
embittered. They never wrote another play together.
* * * * *
Nestling in a hollow among the gentler slopes of the Pyrenees is a
little village called Cambo-les-Bains. No harsh winds ever come to
Cambo. Even in the few months of winter the air is soft and tender.
In February the hedges are aglow with primroses and violets. In March
rhododendrons and magnolias raise their insolent heads. Thither
Rostand, the famous French poet, laid out a dreamy garden on the
proceeds of the success which was to come to “Chanticler.” Alas, poor
Chanticler! Some things survive more readily in a sturdier clime.
Thither come people whose lungs are not quite the thing--“just for a
month or two, old boy.” And they lie there in camp beds out in the
open under the trees ... waiting. It is a good place to die.
Thither one day came Francis Vallery, old and broken in health. He
took the ground floor of the Miramar Hotel, with his own valet, and
cook and secretary. And thither one day--strangely enough--came Sir
James Wray. It seems curious that after a life’s enmity they should
have been drawn together in the end. It was Vallery who invited Wray.
It appears to me less remarkable that Vallery should have invited
Wray, than that Wray should have accepted. Vallery was completely
friendless. The vicious associations of his youth were snapped.
People of interest had deserted him. Friends had betrayed him.
Wray--no, Wray was not his friend, but in any case they had worked
together. They knew each other’s frailties. There were a thousand
things they could talk about, discuss ... memories. Ah! perhaps the
old inspiration might once more spring forth--just one more play. It
was seven years now since the curtain had rung down on “The Picador.”
But why did Wray go to Cambo? He had friends of a sort, society
people, artists. He was still a figure at dinner parties, first
nights. _His_ lungs were still all right. His hatred of Vallery was
not assuaged. Perhaps he went because he feared him. All through
their association he had been under the spell of the stronger party.
At every great crisis he knew he had given way. Vallery had him under
his thumb from the first. Wray had sworn never to write again, “not a
phrase, not a bar.” And yet one day he took the train from Biarritz
and drove up to the little village in the hills, and there he stayed
for seven months.
For the account of the tragic _dénouement_ of this visit Timothy and
I are indebted to an American gentleman named Scobie. Scobie had
been to Cambo to visit his sister, who was herself suffering from
pulmonary trouble.
On his way back through London he had dined at Timothy’s one evening
at Chelsea, and I was the only other guest. Mr. Scobie was a
lean-faced New Englander, with small keen gray eyes beneath shaggy
brows. He had long thin hands, the first fingers of which he had the
habit of shaking at us alternately as he spoke. He was not anxious to
talk about the Wray-Vallery affair. He said he would rather forget
all about it, but as Timothy had inveigled him there with the express
purpose of pumping in the matter, we were cruel enough to insist. Mr.
Scobie had certainly had enough of it. He had had to give evidence in
a French court through an interpreter, and he had no great opinion
either of French courts, their dilatory methods, or their sanitary
arrangements. You see, he was the sole witness of the actual tragedy.
It appeared that his sister’s suite of rooms was in the Hotel Miramar
annex. From her balcony he had a complete view of the South Veranda,
where Vallery spent most of the day. He had spoken to Vallery once or
twice, but finding that he was a “bear with a sore neck” he desisted
and devoted his attention to other hotel guests.
Then he explained: “The other old boy with the squeaky voice turned
up.”
“Sir James Wray?”
“Sure. I didn’t take much stock of him at first, I used to hear him
piping away below, and the other occasionally barking back an answer
which I couldn’t hear.
“But at last that voice began to get on my nerves. You see I could
hear just what he said, but I couldn’t hear the reply. It was like
listening to a man on the ’phone. My! it was a voice. I was almost on
the point of wanting to call out to him to quit. But you know how it
is. If you listen to anyone you kind of can’t help wanting to hear
what they are going to say next.”
“What sort of things did he talk about?”
“Most every kind of dither, like old men will--the colour of a girl’s
frock in some show put across when he was a young man; the best place
to buy over-shoes; the retail price of whisky. He was a pretty good
hand at whisky, too. He arrived with two cases. The other man sat
watching him. I didn’t like them. I tried to get my sister moved, but
the hotel was full. I was away in Paris during the fall and didn’t
return for some months. I got back to Cambo three days before--the
thing happened.”
I don’t think Mrs. Timothy took the interest in this incident that
we did. In any case she made some excuse about packing up Christmas
presents for the children, and left the room.
Mr. Scobie, Timothy and I, drew our chairs up round the fire.
“How did you find things when you got back, Mr. Scobie?”
“Identically the same, sir. There were those two old boys still on
the veranda below, sitting some way apart, squeaky voice with the
whisky bottle in front of him letting on about the difference between
merino and linsey-woolsey, or the rise in home rails, or the name of
the girl who used to sell programmes at some God-forsaken theatre.
There was the other man, kind of vague in the background, growling
‘yes’ and ‘no’ or be damned if he knew or cared. It was November
and the weather was heavy and overcast for those parts. It’s a dandy
place, except for the sick people.”
“What happened on the actual day?”