The Adelphi again.--Authors and others.--Haddon Chambers.--George
Edwardes.--Seymour Hicks.--A villainous heroine.--The latest
fashion.--The “actressocracy.”--Edwardes at rehearsal.--Getting
his way.--Marie Tempest and trousers.--Medical advice.--George
Edwardes’ philosophy.--Jimmy Davis.--Pottinger Stephens appoints a
dramatic critic.--John Corlett and “The Bat.”--The responsibilities
of an editor.--An ideal butler.--Cecil Raleigh.--A sporting
education.--Blistering criticisms.--George R. Sims.--The kindly
Dagonet.--Brandon Thomas and “Charley’s Aunt.”--Comyns Carr.--The
Gattis.--A veteran Garibaldian.--A military melodrama that never
matured.--Colonel Newnham Davis and Willie Goldberg.--Terriss’s
borrowed plumes.--“Black-eyed Susan.”--William Gillette and the
Duchess.--“Secret Service.”
In the year 1894 I returned to the Adelphi, to act with Mr. Terriss in
a series of plays beginning with “The Fatal Card” and ending with the
suspension of the run of “Secret Service” on the murder of my comrade.
The playgoer of to-day, I fancy, hardly realises the abilities of the
playwrights who by no means considered it beneath their dignity to
write what had become known as “Adelphi drama,” and in the list of
plays produced from 1894 to 1897 I find as authors or part authors such
names as David Belasco, Brandon Thomas, Clement Scott, George Edwardes
and Seymour Hicks, Haddon Chambers, Comyns Carr and William Gillette,
and the owners of those names were men of no mean ability, who, one and
all, have made their mark in theatrical history.
Of all the authors I have met Haddon Chambers, who will perhaps be
best remembered by his “Captain Swift” and that brilliant comedy “The
Tyranny of Tears,” was the least conventional, the most Bohemian, in
the best meaning of that much abused word. One of the kindest and
most considerate men who ever lived, time and place had absolutely
no meaning for Haddon; he was entirely above such limitations--which
occasionally made him rather incomprehensible to Philistines and
strangers.
The last time I spoke to him was in New York, and the meeting was
typical of his methods. I had not the faintest idea that he was in
America until one afternoon Charles Frohman, who was one of his
greatest friends, happened to remark that Haddon had just left him.
That night when I arrived at my hotel from the theatre I found a card
with a pencilled note containing an address, and signed “H. C.” The
hall porter told me that “the gentleman” had called at half-past ten,
and as he told me he seemed mildly surprised at “the gentleman’s”
visiting hours. I explained that my visitor was a famous English
author, and that all geniuses were erratic, and he condescended to
accept the explanation in the spirit in which it was offered.
The next morning I rang up Haddon.
“Why on earth did you call on me at half-past ten at night?” I asked
him. “You knew I would be at the theatre.”
“I really don’t know,” he replied. “It must have been a sudden impulse.
I felt I’d like to see where you lived.”
To “The Fatal Card” succeeded “The Girl I Left Behind Me”--someone
suggested that its title should have been “The Girl I Took Around with
Me”--by David Belasco and Franklin Fyles.
A line which invariably brought rounds of enthusiastic applause was
that of the old General: “Forty years in the army have taught me that
a loyal lover is bound to be a good soldier.”
That was the moral of the play, and how the Adelphi “gods” cheered it!
The famous remark of Sir Joseph Porter in “H.M.S. Pinafore”--“It is a
standing rule at the Admiralty that love levels all ranks”--never got
one-half the reception.
During the run of “The Girl I Left Behind Me” came the news of Henry
Irving’s knighthood, and, wild with joy and enthusiasm, I dashed off
to the nearest telegraph office and wired him congratulations on his
baronetcy!
Back came the reply--so like him: “Thousand thanks for kind
congratulations--but only a nightly knight.”
It was during Lord Rosebery’s brief premiership that Henry Irving
received his knighthood, and Lord Rosebery was a frequent visitor at
the Lyceum.
During the run of “Much Ado about Nothing” I remember that one evening
there was to be a big supper party after the play, in the Beefsteak
Room, and one had heard that amongst the guests was to be the future
Premier. So with, I am afraid, deplorable levity, no sooner had I
changed into my “going home” clothes after the play than I ran down the
passage to the stage door, singing loudly, for the benefit of a girl
friend, whose dressing-room I had to pass:
“I’m going to supper with Lord Rose-beree! Lord Rose-beree! Lord
Rose-beree!”
As I turned a corner, I almost bumped into a slim, young-looking
gentleman, who glanced at me with some amusement, but I ran on,
chanting my song.
The next day my friend met me as I arrived at the theatre.
“Do you know whom you nearly knocked down last night?” she asked. I
shook my head.
“Lord Rosebery,” she replied, primly, “and everyone in the theatre is
absolutely horrified!”
But I don’t think that the future Prime Minister was really very upset,
for Irving told me drily, with an amused smile, that Lord Rosebery, in
commenting on the play, had observed that he had never realized that
Hero possessed such high spirits.
Perhaps the most successful of the plays produced during this period
at the Adelphi was “One of the Best,” by George Edwardes and Seymour
Hicks. For one thing, it had a topical interest, and though the
“wrongly accused hero” is as old as the hills, the excitement and
feeling produced in this country by the proceedings in the Dreyfus
case gave an added point to the big scene in which the innocent young
officer was publicly degraded for betraying his country’s secrets.
Never had Mr. Terriss acted better, but as for me, I had a perfectly
villainous part as the heroine.
Heroine as she was, she did the most contemptible, not to say criminal,
things. She betrayed her father and her country to her villain lover,
perjured herself through thick and thin, allowed an innocent man to be
publicly degraded, and then turned round and betrayed her lover because
he would not marry her. One critic wrote that the latest Adelphi
heroine ought to be handed over to Professor Lombroso to adorn his
gallery of female criminals, and perhaps the most flattering criticism
I ever received was from the pen of Mr. Archer, who, in those days,
was supposed to devote himself entirely to the gloom of Ibsen and to
despise the more popular forms of drama.
“A character of more unredeemed turpitude has never been presented to
the execrations of a British gallery,” he wrote. “Yet such is Miss
Millward’s empire over the affections of the Adelphi ‘gods’ that they
positively applaud her! This Esther Coventry is the pivot of the whole
action, and in designing her the authors have simplified their task
with a happy audacity on which I beg to congratulate them.”
From all of which you will gather that the part was not exactly a
sympathetic one, and over it I had very nearly quarrelled with Seymour
Hicks at rehearsal.
Those were the days of the hideous and exaggerated “leg-of-mutton”
sleeves, and to be in the fashion one wore gigantic starched
protrusions which elevated one’s shoulders to one’s ears. The effect
was appalling, but we thought it very “chic” in those days, and
everyone who wished to be in the movement vied with her friends in the
height and “ballooniness” of her sleeves.
But my costumier had given me the quiet hint that the vogue of the
monstrosities was drawing to a close, and when I anticipated the swing
of the pendulum of fashion and appeared at dress rehearsal with tightly
fitting sleeves and “natural” shoulders Seymour nearly fainted.
After the first act he came rushing round to my dressing-room.
“I call it a beastly shame, Jessie!” he stormed. “I know you’ve never
liked the part, and now you’re trying to damn the play! The audience
will yell their heads off when they see you in that absurd dress!”
“My dear Seymour,” I said coldly, “you may be a very clever author and
a very brilliant young man, but you know nothing whatever about the
coming fashions. Ask my costumier, if you like; he’s in the theatre.”
Still Seymour refused to be comforted, and he was not even pacified
when George Edwardes, who had been appealed to as brother author,
merely replied: “Let her wear what she likes. I’m sure she’s right.”
So the “absurd” dress won the day, and in a few weeks was the height
of fashion. And George Edwardes had smoothed over another situation
successfully.
If ever there was a man used to smoothing over situations, it was
George Edwardes, and truth to tell, with so many situations to smooth
over, it is no wonder that he became an expert. But the task was not
always an easy one, and in the days when the Gaiety began to become
a marriage market for the youthful scions of noble houses, and what
someone called the “actressocracy” became a feature of the peerage,
poor Edwardes was compelled in self-defence to insert a clause in his
contracts that no lady who joined his company should marry for at least
two years. The beautiful “show-girls” and “small part ladies” signed
the clause with alacrity, but I fear the effect, from George Edwardes’
point of view, was exactly nil.
Which was perhaps as well from the point of view of the race, for has
not Sir Arthur Pinero made one of his characters observe: “The musical
comedy girls will be the salvation of the aristocracy in the country.
Just think of them--keen-witted young women, full of the joy of life,
with strong frames, beautiful hair, and healthy pink gums and big white
teeth!” According to which, of course, marriage with a Gaiety girl
meant a eugenic triumph and no small service to the State, no matter
what shipwreck it caused to the plans of the Gaiety chief.
Personally, in my small experience of him, I always found George
Edwardes amiability itself at rehearsals, but if a tenth of what one
heard was true he had his own little methods of getting his way.
For example, a certain singer rather fancied himself in a certain
song which had little or nothing to do with the piece in which it was
interpolated. Hints had proved useless, and appeals worse than useless,
so at last, in despair, the stage manager brought Edwardes down to
rehearsal.
The singer threw himself into the song, and felt that he must have
surpassed himself, to say nothing of having scored off his enemy, the
stage manager, when at the conclusion the great man observed:
“Capital, dear boy, capital! Now, just sing it again, will you?”
Immensely flattered at being encored by Edwardes himself at rehearsal,
the singer sang it again, with, if possible, more artistic endeavour
than before.
“Splendid, dear boy, splendid!” came the verdict. “And now, if you
don’t mind, just _speak_ it.”
Slightly wondering, the singer spoke the lines.
“Now, speak it just once more.”
He spoke it just once more.
“And now--cut the damn thing out!”
And it was cut out.
But even if he got his own way with his productions it was not always
to his advantage, for is it not a matter of stage history that a
dispute over the length of the trousers she was to wear in the title
rôle of “San Toy” drove Miss Marie Tempest from the realms of musical
comedy to those of pure comedy?
The lady wanted the trousers short, and Edwardes insisted that they
should be long. So the lady left the cast and the lighter stage at one
and the same time, and developed into the brilliant comedienne we all
know.
A kind-hearted soul, George Edwardes was prodigal of advice and
sympathy to fellow sufferers when the rheumatic affection which
afterwards afflicted him so severely first began to pain him, and a
typical story used to be told of him in this respect.
He was motoring near Winkfield when he overtook an old countryman
hobbling along, almost doubled up with “the rheumatics.”
Kind-hearted Edwardes stopped his car, and after making enquiries into
his fellow sufferer’s bad case, was full of good advice.
“Now take my tip, old man,” he pleaded. “Whatever you do don’t go
chucking away your money on visits to Kissingen and Aix and those other
rotten places. They’re all frauds, and it’s throwing good coin away.
What you want to do is to get your specialist to order you that violet
ray treatment--that and a course of Malvern waters will make a new man
of you! Take my advice, old chap, and give it a trial.”
And off dashed the car with a beaming George, leaving a bewildered and
slightly dazed agricultural labourer clutching a golden coin in one
horny hand--those were pre-war days--and scratching his head with the
other.
But at times George Edwardes had very vague ideas about financial
assistance. A certain playwright had read over a scenario to him, and
Edwardes had been much impressed by its novelty and possibilities--so
much so that there and then he had commissioned the author to go
straight away to his favourite seaside resort and finish the play with
all possible speed. Whereupon the author promptly asked for something
on account.
“Something on account?” echoed Edwardes. “Very well. Go to my secretary
and tell him you are to have fifty.”
“Fifty isn’t enough,” protested the author. “I can’t possibly go away
on fifty. You see, it means shutting up the flat in town, and what with
my wife, the three children, my wife’s maid, the nurse--what about two
hundred on account?”
“Very well, very well,” growled Edwardes. Then, turning to his faithful
friend and adviser: “Arthur,” he said, “see that in future all my
librettists are bachelors!”
A philosopher in his way, George Edwardes classed all men as
“positives” or “negatives,” and one of his theories of life was that
two positives or two negatives were bound to disagree, whereas a
negative and a positive worked well together. He, of course, counted
himself a positive.
And what a personality amongst authors was Edwardes’ friend and
favourite playwright, Jimmy Davis, or “Owen Hall” as he punningly
named himself, for the simple reason that he was for long in a chronic
financial state of owing all.
Jimmy Davis’s ideas of finance were all his own. He once went to a
famous financier of his acquaintance with a view to obtaining expert
advice on a position which was at the moment (as at so many other
moments in his early career) apparently hopeless.
Said the financier: “Meet your creditors, Jimmy.”
“My dear good man,” replied Jimmy, sadly, “my sole object in life is to
avoid them.”
Dramatic critic, editor, solicitor, librettist, and, above all,
optimist, Jimmy Davis was a man of many parts, and was for long a
prominent figure in Bohemian and theatrical London.
He succeeded Bill Yardley and Pottinger Stephens as dramatic critic of
the old “Pink ’Un,” and as Jimmy’s puckish humour was all his own, and
as, above all, he delighted in “pitching into play-actors,” as he put
it, his proprietor and editor, old John Corlett, returned from one of
his annual holidays abroad to find that, owing to the vagaries of his
critic, he was not on speaking terms with many of his old theatrical
friends, including the Bancrofts and Beerbohm Tree.
And Jimmy Davis had become dramatic critic to the “Sporting Times” in
quite an original way. “Pot” Stephens, as he was called, the properly
accredited critic, had dabbled in play-writing, and a comic opera,
“Billee Taylor,” in which he had collaborated with the much married
Teddy Solomons, proving a big success, was sold to America. Stephens
wanted to go over to New York for the production and borrowed fifty
pounds from his editor for the passage, without, however, telling him
what the money was wanted for. From Queenstown he posted a letter
informing John Corlett that he was on his way to New York, and that he
had appointed Jimmy Davis dramatic critic in his absence. In the same
letter he also arranged for repayment of the fifty on somewhat original
lines.
“You have always paid me a fiver a week,” he wrote; “I have arranged
for you to pay Davis three pounds, and to credit me with the other two
pounds, so that at the end of six months you will have paid yourself
back your fifty pounds.”
But when Stephens returned he found Cecil Raleigh installed as dramatic
critic, under the pseudonym of “Sir Walter,” and Davis running a paper
of his own called “The Bat.”
“I don’t want to quarrel with all my friends,” John Corlett had told
Davis; “why not run a hell of your own if you want to criticize
everybody?” And the upshot of it was that “The Bat” was founded,
Corlett contributing a loan of six hundred pounds to the financing of
the new paper.
At the end of some months, the proprietor of the “Pink ’Un” received a
bound volume of “The Bat,” on the flyleaf of which was inscribed:
“All that was left of them
Left of six hundred!”
Another financier was found, Alfred Gibbons of “The Lady’s Pictorial,”
but “The Bat” ended in a welter of libel actions, and a suit for
criminal libel brought by the Earl of Durham finished its career and
drove its editor to France for a prolonged holiday.
The “making-up” of “The Bat” was a quaint proceeding. On the sideboard
of the little dining-room which served as an editorial room stood a
large spirit-stand, many bottles of soda-water and glasses. At the
dining-room table sat the brilliant Shirley Brooks and that wilful
genius Willie Goldberg--the “Shifter”--each with a glass at his elbow,
writing for dear life, and from a tiny room, no bigger than a cupboard,
leading out of the main “office,” Jimmy Davis used to appear at
intervals, a cigarette half in his mouth, half hanging to a corner of
his lower lip.
Jimmy Davis’s ideas of the responsibilities of an editor were
erratic, to say the least of it, and he frightened the life out of
one well-known journalist and playwright by publishing some perfectly
harmless verses by that journalist and playwright in a way that made
the writer’s hair stand on end.
Happening to lunch with Davis one day, the journalist mentioned that
the previous evening he had seen Mrs. Langtry in a new play.
A sudden idea clutched Davis.
“I wish you’d write me some verses in praise of her,” he said. “Write
me something graceful, and don’t be afraid to praise her--lay it on
with a trowel, if you like.”
The verses were accordingly written and posted, and to the horror of
the author he saw them in “The Bat,” with the following little note as
preface:
“Prince Henry of Battenberg is a bit of a poet. After his visit to the
Prince’s Theatre on Tuesday evening he sent the following verses to
Mrs. Langtry. I wonder how Princess Beatrice likes them.”
And the only explanation the editor gave the outraged poet was that he
believed in attracting attention!
But as the successful playwright “Owen Hall,” Jimmy Davis entered upon
a new incarnation; and his journalistic eccentricities were forgotten
in the successes of “The Gaiety Girl,” “The Geisha,” “The Greek Slave,”
and “Florodora”; his little suppers in Mayfair became famous, and his
butler, Downs--known to the initiated as “Upsand”--was a Curzon Street
institution.
And Downs was, in his way, as much of a personality as his erratic
master.
Much more than a mere butler, he was an expert in placing small
“starting price” commissions, and Davis often declared: “I verily
believe that he could get you a small cheque changed in the middle of
the Sahara!”
Jimmy Davis’s supper parties at the house in Curzon Street were famous,
and were usually interesting because they were a salad of all that was
piquant in London life. No guest knew whether he or she was likely to
sit next to the operatic star of the moment or to Bessie Bellwood; and
the heir to a dukedom and a music-hall comedian, if prepared to make
themselves agreeable and amusing, were equally welcome guests. And in
the early hours of the morning Tosti would improvise wonderful melodies
in the drawing-room upstairs, and if there was a new song going into
musical comedy or opera it would be first heard in Curzon Street, with
the composer himself at the piano.
It used to be said that the only man who slept at a Curzon Street
supper was Augustus Harris, who, unwilling to miss the fun, but dead
tired, had come on from a long rehearsal. Sheer physical fatigue
overcame him, and, putting his arms on the table, his head sank on to
them and he slept peacefully for the rest of the evening.
It was at a Curzon Street supper in the early spring that a well-known
gourmet made an unsuccessful assault on some choice plovers’ eggs.
His weakness was well known, and some china salt and pepper castors,
shaped and coloured like plovers’ eggs, had been put in a moss nest and
placed within his reach. Everyone pretended to ignore him and them,
but the manœuvres of the victim to bring the nest up to his plate and
his furtive attempts to crack an egg were eagerly watched by the whole
table.
The butler’s casual conversation with his master would have made
excellent dialogue for comedy--or farce--for Downs never hesitated to
express his private and personal opinions. Of one frequent guest whose
girth was enormous he complained that he impeded the waiting, as it was
impossible to get past him at the table.
“Nonsense,” said Davis. “He doesn’t take up all that amount of room.”
“Oh, doesn’t he?” replied the servant ironically. “Why I could lay
supper for ten on his back!”
Another Curzon Street habitué was a very serious gentleman, who did not
write plays, or articles for newspapers, who did not race, and did not
seem to be a wit.
“I can’t make out why he comes here so often,” confided Downs to his
master. “He seems much too respectable for our set.”
Just before Davis launched one of his journalistic ventures on the
world he invited Arthur Binstead, known to thousands of readers under
his _nom de plume_ of “The Pitcher,” to contribute to the new paper,
adding that he had a sum of almost three hundred pounds behind him.
“Three hundred pounds,” repeated Pitcher. “My dear James, your very
first printing bill will exhaust that!”
With a look of ineffable pity for his friend’s commercial ineptitude,
Jimmy replied:
“How absolutely infantile are your notions of journalistic finance,
Arthur! To begin with, I NEVER pay _printers_; then again----”
And the possible contributor hurriedly congratulated the future
editor on his methods, and pleaded press of work as an excuse for not
contributing!
Of the thousands of neat things Jimmy used to say, a description of
Monte Carlo as the place “where all the vices are virtues, and all the
virtues are vices” was one of the neatest.
One evening at a bachelors’ dinner party, the name of a well-known
character in Bohemia cropped up in conversation, and one who had
seen him lately revealed the fact that he was in a state of practical
destitution, and suggested a subscription.
“He’s far too ill to do anything,” pleaded the good Samaritan, “and his
clothes are almost in rags. Though he has a greatcoat of sorts it’s
awful to see him with nowhere to go, dragging from street to street and
bar to bar. Now, a little bit of gold all round and we could give him
somewhere to sit down--that’s what he wants, somewhere to sit down.”
And although the popularity of the victim of misfortune had waned of
late--for various excellent reasons--hands instantly went into pockets,
when Jimmy Davis observed:
“Seeing that he can sit on a chair in one of the parks all day for a
penny, he ought to be able to keep a seat now till a little after next
year’s St. Leger!”
But all the same, Davis’s sovereign was forthcoming.
As one who knew him well wrote of him on his death:
“The opening lines of ‘The Bat’ were: ‘We live in a damned wicked
world, and the fewer we praise the better,’ taken from ‘The School
for Scandal.’ It was the misfortune of Davis to be the possessor of a
Gladstonian mind. Anything that he wanted to believe he could always
argue himself into. The fatal point in his character was his casuistry.
His sarcasms were biting, and for choice he would inflict them on his
best friends, who, however, knowing him well, only laughed, as he
intended them to do. What people chose to say about him concerned him
not at all, and he made the mistake of thinking it was the same with
others. Many who say spiteful things of others are the first to shout
when anything of the kind is said of themselves, but it was not so with
him. He could always take a story against himself. On one occasion
when George Edwardes was rehearsing one of his plays he struck out
line after line of risky dialogue. Presently he struck out another, on
which Jimmy remarked: ‘There goes the last line of Owen Hall’s work.’
At one time he had parliamentary aspirations, and contested Dundalk
against the late Lord Russell of Killowen and Peter Callan. ‘I think
my billstickers voted for me, but I am not sure of all of them! No one
else did!’ was the cynical view he took of the election.... He was a
man who stood by himself and we never knew another who was exactly like
him. In these days of dullness his loss is one that will be felt, and
the stage, at any rate, will be the poorer for it.”
Few men knew Jimmy Davis better than John Corlett, the writer of those
lines.
I first met Cecil Raleigh at Drury Lane.
It used to be said of him that he was the first playwright to put the
racing world on the stage without making absurd technical mistakes and
every racing character a villain. As Raleigh had been brought up in a
racing stable, and had, indeed, been first intended for a jockey, his
sporting dramas, such as “The Whip” and “Sporting Life,” had the great
merit of being technically correct, for their author knew what he was
writing about. His father, Dr. Fothergill Rowlands, known to the racing
world as “Fog,” or “Fogo,” after being one of the best gentlemen riders
of his day, had started a training stable at Pitt Place, Epsom, and
from his childhood Cecil Raleigh was intimate with all the mysteries of
racing.
Some of his friends always wondered why Cecil Raleigh did not write a
play and bring Pitt Place into it for the sake of the characters alone.
There was one Irish gentleman who was a constant visitor who would
have made the fortune of any racing comedy if properly “translated.”
One of his favourite axioms was that there were only twenty thousand
pounds invested in racing in the whole of Ireland, and the money was
continually being passed from hand to hand.
“But how do they get on for ready cash to keep things going?” he was
asked.
“Oh, sure, an’ it’s the bit they manage to snatch as the money’s being
passed that keeps things going,” was the reply.
Pitt Place, besides being a meeting place for such racing celebrities
as Lord Marcus Beresford, Sir John Astley, Mr. Richard Thorold, the
Duke of Hamilton, Captain Sadleir, and other prominent followers of
the turf, was also a rendezvous for many theatrical folk, and from the
latter young Raleigh first acquired his taste for the stage. Beginning
as an actor, he became an acting manager, dabbled in journalism,
and finally settled into play-writing, and it is as a writer of
plays that he won fame. Cecil Raleigh was one of the most brilliant
conversationalists I have ever known, and, cleverly as he wrote, it
used to be said of him: “If Raleigh only wrote as he talks, what a
wonderful writer he would be!”
It was his boast--and he made it with some justice--that he understood
the huge stage of Drury Lane better than anyone else, and that an
author needed a special education to understand how to use his
characters upon it.
The very last time I met and talked with him I found him enthusiastic
about the films, and predicting airily that as the films developed so
would the theatre die.
I remember that I made a horrified protest but--I wonder.
As a dramatic critic Cecil Raleigh had a way of saying exactly what
he thought; a form of dramatic criticism which might excite no small
sensation nowadays. For instance, what would the modern young actress
say if on picking up her morning paper she were to read:
“It would be a mistaken kindness to let Miss ---- labour under the
delusion that she is at present fitted in the least possible degree for
the stage. She is not a pretty woman, she is tall and spare, her accent
is not agreeable, and her actions are awkward. Her carriage and figure
are admirably adapted to the requirements of the mantle department at
Swan and Edgar’s or Jay’s, and while such a career of modest usefulness
is open to her it is regrettable that she should waste her time and
that of other persons by embarking in uncongenial dramatic enterprises.”
Yet that is what Cecil Raleigh actually wrote of a certain lady in a
certain play!
And how, I wonder, would the modern _matinée_ idol endure friendly
advice which took this form:
“He should guard, however, against a bad trick he has recently acquired
of letting a sort of hissing sound accompany his speech. Reserve force
is all very well, but we don’t want saliva, and on Thursday much that
he said took the form of: ‘The man who laysh hish handsh on a woman,
shave in the way of kinenesh, ish not worthy of the namesh of English
shailor!’”
The caustic Raleigh wrote this of a brilliant actor of the day, and of
a lady in the same play the daring critic was bold enough to declare:
“That she should have elected to appear in such a part as Pauline is
regrettable from yet another point of view. Illusion, after all, is
always fondly cherished, and I venture to think that those who have
gazed with admiration on the buxom proportions of the lady cannot have
experienced anything other than dismay when, released from corsets, the
rather tubby natural outline of her figure was abundantly revealed by
the clinging draperies of her directoire costume.”
And this was considered legitimate dramatic criticism!
_Autres temps, autres critiques._
Another author who did not consider popular drama beneath his dignity
was Henry Hamilton.
Hamilton’s wit was at times inclined to be caustic, and Sir Charles
Wyndham, who, unlike so many smaller folk, was never loth to tell a
tale against himself, was fond of giving a typical instance of it.
Sir Charles sat one day in the Garrick Club, in Garrick’s chair beneath
Garrick’s portrait, and to him came Henry Hamilton who looked first at
the portrait and then at Wyndham.
“Charles,” said Hamilton, “you’re growing more like Garrick every day.”
“Do you think so?” returned Wyndham. “I’m very glad.”
“It’s true,” said Hamilton. “And less like him every night,” he added
thoughtfully.
But Sir Charles Wyndham could afford to smile and tell a story against
himself, for he was the source of many stories for others. A lawyer
friend once told me that the witness whom counsel dreads of all others
is the average actor or actress, who almost invariably proves hopeless
in the witness box. In fact, he assured me, the only exception to this
rule he had ever come across was Sir Charles, whom he once examined as
an expert in a case concerning the terms of a theatrical contract. Sir
Charles had expressed his opinion that any actor entrusted with the
creation of a part was engaged for the run of the play.
“Then, in effect,” suggested opposing counsel, “if he proves
inefficient the only way to get rid of him from the cast is to shoot
him?”
“I didn’t say that,” replied Sir Charles drily. “If you are the manager
you can, as an alternative, shoot yourself for including him in the
cast.”
An author and critic of a widely different nature was the kindly,
ever-youthful “Dagonet.” Bitterness--to say nothing of acidity--and Mr.
George R. Sims were as poles apart, and only the other day I heard a
writer say: “I’ve read ‘Mustard and Cress’ ever since I can remember; I
think I’ve read pretty nearly all that Sims has written, and, with the
possible exceptions of Charles Peace and Deeming, I don’t think I’ve
ever read an unkind word by him on any man, woman or child. He even had
a good word for ‘Jack the Ripper.’”
Which strikes me as rather a splendid criticism on a long and arduous
public career. Invincible good humour and kindliness are all too rare
in this post-war world.
And here is a recent personal reminiscence, typical of the man.
Before I started this chapter I wrote to George R. Sims, telling him of
my intention to perpetrate a book, and concluding: “Somewhere or other
you must have a photograph of yourself and Pettitt as you were at the
time of ‘The Harbour Lights’; I want you to find it and let me have it
as an illustration. If not, I shall have to fall back on the ‘Tatcho’
picture.” I did not know it, but actually at that moment he had taken
to his bed, and no one knew better than he that never would he rise
from it, except to sit, day and night, propped in his chair in vain
hope of relief, but week by week his cheery article appeared in “The
Referee,” and no one could have guessed from his gay and kindly reply
to me that he and death were at grips.
“Don’t carry out your threat about the ‘Tatcho’ picture,” he wrote. “I
don’t know whether I have a photograph of myself and Pettitt, but the
archives are being searched, and you shall hear the result. I have a
very tender place in my heart for those brave old Adelphi days, and
often look back upon them with a sigh of pleasure and regret. You can
count upon one deeply interested reader.”
Some weeks afterwards--little did I know or even guess his
sufferings--another little note arrived:
“I enclose the drawing of Henry Pettitt and myself. Best wishes.”
And then followed the familiar, characteristic signature, with the
brave little flourish as firmly optimistic as ever.
This was at the close of June; yet a few weeks, and the pen that had
cheered and delighted so many hundreds of thousands was to write no
more.
At rehearsals, I remember, “Dagonet” was content to leave much of the
actual conduct of the work to Pettitt, but he was always present, and,
if all that one heard was true, the collaborators had more than one
stormy little scene in private before all details were settled to their
mutual satisfaction.
[Illustration: MESSRS. G. R. SIMS AND H. PETTITT. “UP TO DATA.”]
“Is one of the conditions of collaboration with George R. Sims a
willingness to black George R. Sims’ boots?” Pettitt was reported to
have asked bitterly after one little argument. But whatever happened
behind the collaborators’ scenes in private, Sims interfered very
little with the actual rehearsals, although, as he once told me, he had
determined to have a hand in every production of his ever since poor
Charles Warner ruined the success of “The Last Chance” at the Adelphi,
when as the starving hero, he exclaimed, despairingly: “Our last
farthing gone! Starvation stares us in the face!” and raised a hand to
heaven--a hand on which glittered a superb diamond ring.
“Why don’t ye pawn yer ring, Charlie?” bawled a critical “god,” and it
was then that Sims made his resolve.
The nervous, highly-strung and irritable Pettitt--who died, worn
out, in his early forties--cannot have been easy to work with in
collaboration, and perhaps of all his collaborators Arthur Shirley got
on the best with “Dagonet.” When writing “The Two Little Vagabonds”
they were said to have worked in all sorts of odd places, and the
play was concocted in railway carriages, outside a Parisian café,
in the inevitable Adelaide Gallery, at Sims’ Regent’s Park house,
“Opposite-the-Ducks,” in the small hours, and lying on the grass in the
country.
Quite naturally, Sims was a tremendous believer in the school of drama
with which his name had been associated at the Adelphi and the Lane,
and it is curious that his very last business transaction, which took
place a day or two before his death, was in connection with the film
rights of the old Adelphi “Harbour Lights,” to be played for the
“pictures” under the direction of Tom Terriss, the clever son of the
original “David Kingsley.”
As journalist, dramatist, social reformer, good friend, and smiling,
kindly philosopher, George R. Sims will live long in the memory of
those whose privilege it was to be associated with him in his work or
in his play.
Of Brandon Thomas, part author with Clement Scott of the English
version of “The Swordsman’s Daughter,” I have already spoken.
He was one of those rare souls whom early hardships and subsequent
success fail to embitter, and to the end was the same courtly,
sweet-hearted gentleman. And Brandon Thomas’s early struggles were
severe. He started as an entertainer at the piano, singing his own
songs in his own very distinctive manner, and one of those songs:
“I lub a lubbly gal, I do,
And I have lubbed a gal or two,
And I know how a gal should be lubbed, you bet I do”
became quite famous in the hands of that brilliant “coon” comedian,
Eugene Stratton, to whom Thomas sold the rights.
It was, of course, “Charley’s Aunt” that at last brought Brandon
Thomas fame and fortune, and I have been told that when the evergreen
farce was first produced on tour, the author and Penley had been so
frightened by a friend, who declared that a man playing a woman’s part
would never be accepted by any audience, that the author played one
of the characters himself in order to save a salary in case of a dire
failure.
Many years afterwards, as the story-books say, a man went into a bank
at a popular French seaside resort to cash a cheque.
“How long will it take you to get this cheque changed?” he asked the
clerk.
“Four days is the usual time,” said the clerk, “but M’sieu can have the
money now if he likes.”
The man with the cheque expressed his surprise and thanks.
“M’sieu will understand that we do not as a rule cash cheques
on sight,” observed the clerk, “but it so happens that I have a
discretion, and I know the name on this. How is ‘Charley’s Aunt’?
And”--he dropped into English--“is the dear lady ‘still running’?”
Comyns Carr, part author with Haddon Chambers of “Boys Together” and
“In the Days of the Duke,” was yet another brilliant man who did not
disdain to write popular drama.
Art critic, editor, playwright, poet, theatrical manager, and bosom
friend of Irving and Tree, “Joe” Carr, as everyone called him, occupied
a unique position in literary and artistic London, and was one of the
most popular figures in club and theatre life. The only time I ever
saw him look sad was at a luncheon given to celebrate the turning
of the New Gallery in Regent Street into a restaurant--it is now a
cinema. Even an excellent lunch failed to remove his gloom, and at
last the cause of it was explained. He pointed to a row of hooks which
still remained in the newly decorated walls near to the ceiling, and
embarked upon a flood of memories of the great pictures, the Watts, the
Burne-Joneses, the Rossettis and the Millais that those very hooks had
supported in the days when the New Gallery was a centre of the London
art world, and “Joe” Carr its prophet, priest and king.
Of the Gattis, Agostino and Stefano--“Angostura” and “Stephanotis” as
some wag re-christened them--there is little new to be said at this
time of day, and their innumerable ventures in the restaurant and
theatre worlds still keep their names fresh.
In the palmy days of the Adelphi drama the Adelaide Gallery had a
strong theatrical clientele, and amongst the authors regularly to be
seen there were Henry Pettitt, George R. Sims, Robert Buchanan, Dion
Boucicault, Brandon Thomas and many others. Salvini always took his
meals at Gatti’s when he was in London, and on one occasion when I
was lunching there I remember that a fine white-haired old gentleman
in a slouch hat and a very shabby cloak was pointed out to me as a
regular customer. He was, it was said, very poor, and one dish was his
invariable meal, but he was an old Garibaldian, and because he had
fought under Garibaldi the waiters at Gatti’s treated him with more
reverence, and pocketed his tip of a few coppers with more gratitude,
than they would have shown a millionaire and his gold.
In those days, Agostino and Stefano Gatti--who of course were of Swiss,
not Italian, descent--used to lunch and dine together at a table near
the entrance to the kitchen, and after their meal would adjourn to a
big desk when they took the counters from the waiters, as had been
their custom from the earliest days of the restaurant.
And at the Gatti’s luncheon and dinner table many affairs other than
merely restaurant matters were discussed.
The late Colonel Newnham-Davis was fond of telling a good story of how
a fine military melodrama never was produced at the Adelphi.
Early one morning he received a telegram from his confrère on the staff
of the “Sporting Times,” the brilliant but erratic “Willie” Goldberg,
known to most of the English-speaking world of that day as “The
Shifter,” making an appointment for lunch at Gatti’s. When the pair met
at the door, The Shifter informed his colleague that the Gattis wanted
a military melodrama for the Adelphi; that he, The Shifter, had just
thought of a splendid title; that he and the “Dwarf of Blood”--as the
Colonel was called--should write it together, and, finally, that the
Gattis had asked them to lunch to talk it over. The pair then hurried
into the restaurant. They lunched with the Gattis, and when, after
lunch, the brothers very gently said they were ready to hear anything
about the play the co-authors cared to tell them, The Shifter disclosed
the title, which pleased them vastly, and then leant back in his chair
as if the matter were settled.
The cautious Gattis asked for some slight outline of the play, but The
Shifter, taking a lofty attitude, put it to them that an advance on
authors’ fees was obviously the next step in the business. This, the
Gattis said, was not the way in which they were accustomed to transact
their theatrical ventures, whereupon The Shifter brought the discussion
to an abrupt close by saying farewell.
Out in the street again his collaborator suggested that, after all, it
might be as well to work out a scenario to submit to the Gattis, but
The Shifter was in high dudgeon.
Wrinkling his long nose in haughty scorn: “These foreigners don’t
understand our English ways of doing business!” he snorted.
And what was the end of the great military melodrama, which--who
knows?--might have rivalled “One of the Best.”
Another story of the Gattis’ theatrical ventures is of their purchase
of the Vaudeville Theatre. Amongst the brothers’ many enterprises had
been the installation of an electric light distributing plant in a
building just behind the Vaudeville Theatre, where Tom Thorne was then
running a far from successful season.
The actor complained that his ill success was largely owing to the
noise the engines made behind the stage, whereupon the Gattis promptly
bought the theatre--or as much of it as was freehold.
There were always interesting people to be seen at the Adelaide
Gallery, and I well remember seeing the great Lord Salisbury, who was
supposed to have a passion for a solitary chop and chipped potatoes,
taking his lunch at a corner table in solitary state.
When the old order passed away, John (ex-Mayor of Westminster) and
Rocco Gatti succeeded the father and uncle, and still took their meals
at the same round table where their predecessors had sat, though they
no longer took the counters from the waiters.
Amongst connoisseurs the Adelaide Gallery was for long famous for some
wonderful old cognac which had been bought by its astute proprietors at
the time of the Franco-German War, when stocks of old brandy were sold
at very low prices. It was marked on the wine list so as to show a very
small profit on its purchase price--and no more--and the Franco-German
War was in a sense responsible for attracting a great number of
fastidious clients to Gatti’s.
During the run of “Black-Eyed Susan” Agostino Gatti died, and for
the first and only time his friends saw Terriss off the stage in the
conventional frock-coat and top-hat.
The theatre had closed and he had announced his intention of attending
the funeral, to discover at the last moment that he had no clothes
other than his invariable grey tweeds. There was nothing for it but
to call his friends to the rescue, and they responded nobly. Seymour
Hicks sent an exquisitely glossy top-hat; Arthur Cohen, who had the
reputation of being one of the best-dressed men in London, supplied a
beautifully cut frock-coat in the height of the fashion in those days,
and someone else contributed a gold-headed ebony cane. But still the
mourner was short of one or two indispensable articles. A very shabby
old pair of evening-dress trousers was hurriedly pressed, and all that
was then wanting was the waistcoat.
Now in the last scene of “Black-Eyed Susan” William puts his black
silk scarf round his Susan’s neck. The black silk scarf was sent for,
carefully pinned over the tweed waistcoat, and the borrowed frock-coat
was tightly buttoned, and the costume was complete.
After the funeral I met the mourner at Paddington with a suit-case
containing the old grey suit--a party of us were going down to stay
with George Edwardes at Winkfield Lodge--and mounted guard outside
the carriage while he hurriedly resumed his own clothes. In a very
few minutes he handed me through the window a parcel containing the
borrowed plumes, and asked me to give them to the stationmaster with
the message that they would be called for next day.
It had, I think, been Terriss’s idea that Douglas Jerrold’s famous old
play should be played exactly as it was written, and in the traditional
manner, and the success verified his judgment.
And great fun it was; Terriss sang a song, danced a hornpipe, and
“avasted” and “belayed” in the fine old fashion; as Susan, I wept and
made love and was “faithful and true,” and the rest of the company
entered thoroughly into the spirit of the thing, to our own enormous
enjoyment and to that of the audience.
“In the Days of the Duke,” a beautifully produced play by Haddon
Chambers and Comyns Carr, which followed “Black-Eyed Susan,” had not
altogether the success it deserved, and in its turn was replaced by
William Gillette’s play “Secret Service,” which had previously been
played in London by an American company.
A brilliant and interesting personality, both as actor and author, was
William Gillette, who will perhaps be best remembered by present London
playgoers for his wonderful impersonation of Sherlock Holmes.
“I should have had that play,” sighed Beerbohm Tree, when his faithful
friend Henry Dana entered his dressing-room to “report progress” on the
success of Gillette’s production, which was taking place that evening,
but it is hard to imagine a more ideal representative of Conan Doyle’s
super-detective than the fine American actor.
Hating fuss and social functions, somewhat to his discontent Gillette
found himself a social lion, and his polite attempts to avoid being
lionized caused his friends much amusement. Daniel Frohman used to
chuckle as he told of one such attempt which failed hopelessly.
A certain duchess had invited him to spend the Sunday at her country
place some little distance from town, and Gillette had pleaded as an
excuse that the only Sunday train was a very early one and that his
doctor had insisted on a Sunday morning’s rest.
“But there is an express later in the day,” urged the duchess.
“I know,” said the wily Gillette, “but that’s the north express and
doesn’t stop at your station.”
“Oh, I’ll have it stopped for you!” said the undefeatable duchess.
And she did, and the actor lost his day of rest.
“Secret Service,” with its English company, was a big success, and a
great critic wrote of the Adelphi audience:
“They had once more got their Terriss, and he loved an honest girl, and
he was shot in the hand by a rival, and, like Jim Bludso, he did his
duty, and ‘went for it there and then,’ and that was enough for the
pit.”
It was during the run of “Secret Service,” on the sixteenth day of
December, 1897, that my dear friend and comrade met his death at the
hands of a man he had befriended.