“The School for Husbands.”--Disadvantages of loyalty.--Some curious
theatrical history.--Mr. Henry Arthur Jones.--“The Hypocrites.”--An
actress’s qualifications.--America again.--Miss Doris Keane.--The
three great essentials.--A fascinating experience.--A regret and Sir
Arthur Pinero.--Anxious moments.--I consult King Solomon.--His Majesty
speaks his mind.--I make a prophecy to Mr. Jones.--Success.--My
prophecy confirmed.--Entering into the part.--Marriage.--A brother’s
compliments.--A compliment in verse.--John Glendinning.--Buying a
play.--A pleasant town.--Vaudeville.--“Mr. Fitzsimmons, the eminent
boxer.”--A pugilistic play.--Professional jealousy.--Women at boxing
matches.--A poison mystery.--The fatal draught.--“Cleopatra’s”
ambition.--Home.--“The Rosary.”--Shattering an illusion.--War.
There is no kinder, more loyal public than the British public, but its
very loyalty sometimes makes it intensely conservative, and “The School
for Husbands” had not quite the success one had hoped for it; partly,
I think, because the audience could not understand why the Jessie
Millward they had known and been so good to at the Adelphi should be
playing in comedy.
I was told that night after night the attendants at Dr. Distin
Maddick’s beautiful theatre would hear the same disappointed comment:
“Oh, yes, it’s very nice, of course--but it’s a _comedy_!” and the
critics, though equally kind, echoed the complaint.
“Miss Millward proves herself to be a brilliant comedienne,” wrote
one of them generously, “but--” and the “but” seemed always the
same--“when are we to see her again as the familiar and adorable
persecuted heroine?”
This loyalty to the past in its very kindness was disturbing, for
players are, after all, only human, and the loyal audiences and kindly
critics overlooked the sad associations and painful recollections
evoked by the old familiar parts. I had long determined that never
could I go back to them, and Charles Frohman had backed me in my
decision.
And in spite of its occasional drawbacks, the conservatism of the great
British public had its inestimable advantages--once that public has
taken you to its heart it never forgets you. Tradition plays a part,
and a kindly part, in the life of the theatre-going public of Britain,
and the younger generation of playgoers are by no means contemptuous of
it, even if they are at times quite pardonably inclined to mix their
traditions.
For instance, it was during my season at the Scala that in the
lounge of the hotel in which I was staying I chanced to overhear an
interesting little piece of theatrical history.
The historian was a young gentleman, one of those inconsequential
talkers who are fond of discoursing loudly in public places for the
benefit of everyone within earshot. The conversation had evidently been
upon theatrical topics, and presently someone asked him his opinions of
the Scala.
“Oh, structurally and decoratively it is a beautiful house,” said he,
“and I’m glad to see that the management is reverting to the style
of comedy with which the place won immortality--I mean such plays as
‘Money,’ ‘Caste,’ ‘The School for Scandal’ and all the rest that
Marie--er--Marie _Lloyd_ first made her name in.”
Shades of the Bancrofts and the old Prince of Wales Theatre!
But I had no reason to regret my season at the Scala, for it led
indirectly to a renewal of my association with Mr. Henry Arthur Jones.
Mr. Jones came several times to see my excursion into comedy, and one
afternoon came round to my dressing-room and asked me if I would call
and see him at his house in Portland Place in order to discuss a play.
Naturally I felt delighted, and the next morning at eleven o’clock
punctually I was on his doorstep. His first words gave me a mild
surprise.
“Miss Millward,” he said, “would you object to play the part of a
mother--a well-preserved woman of, say, forty-five?”
“Object! Good gracious, no,” I replied.
“Good. So many actresses do object, I find.” And then he went on to
tell me that Charles Frohman was very anxious for me to return to the
States. I frankly admit that I was disappointed. After my long absence,
I had hoped to be able to settle down once more in my own home.
However, Mr. Jones read his play to me, and I was both delighted and
fascinated.
“What have you called it?” I asked.
“‘The Hypocrites.’”
“A splendid title. But, Mr. Jones”--for a sudden fear had struck
me--“I’ve never played a part of this type before; how can I play the
part of the mother as you have created it? I’ve never been one.”
“An actress has imagination,” he replied. “Surely it isn’t necessary
for a lady to commit a murder in order to play Lady Macbeth!”
So I joyfully accepted the part, and a few days later the company met
and the author read the play, and it was in Mr. Jones’s drawing-room at
Portland Place that I first met my future husband, John Glendinning,
who was cast for the part of the only character who was not a hypocrite.
The English company which sailed for America included John Glendinning,
J. H. Barnes, Arthur Lewis, Leslie Faber, myself and Mr. Jones’s
daughter, and the only two Americans in the cast were Richard Bennett
and Miss Doris Keane, who has since achieved fame and delighted so many
thousands of playgoers on both sides of the Atlantic in “Romance.” Long
afterwards, when London was flocking to see the clever lady in her
famous part, I met Mr. Jones near the theatre in which she was playing.
“When you saw her in that little part in “The Hypocrites” did you think
she would rise to this?” he asked.
“Yes, I did,” I replied truthfully, for even in those days and in a
tiny part Doris Keane had impressed me by her intelligence, industry
and charm--those three essentials to success in the world of the
theatre.
We were to open in “The Hypocrites” at the Hudson Theatre in New
York, and immediately on our arrival we started rehearsing under the
direction of the author.
I have, I think, been more fortunate than most in my professional
career. I have rehearsed under the personal direction of the most
distinguished folk in their line, under great actors and actresses
such as Henry Irving, Genevieve Ward, and Mrs. Kendal; under great
producers such as the Frohmans, Belasco and Augustus Harris, and also
under authors as distinguished as Henry Arthur Jones, Haddon Chambers
and Comyns Carr, amongst many others, and it has been a lasting regret
with me that I was unable to accept Sir Arthur Pinero’s offer to me
to create the part in “The Profligate” played by Miss Kate Rorke, but
I was engaged at the Adelphi, and the Gattis quite rightly refused to
release me. Nor when he asked me to play Paula Tanqueray in Australia
could I obtain a release from my engagements, and I fear that my
chances of learning a Pinero part under Pinero are gone for ever.
“Why don’t you come back? We want you,” he told me gallantly when I met
him at the private view of the reconstructed Drury Lane.
“I’m too old,” I replied. It is always best to face the truth, however
horrid!
The rehearsals of “The Hypocrites” were a wonderful and valuable
experience. And those rehearsals were no joke--not that rehearsals
should ever be a joke--but the heat in New York that August was well
nigh tropical, and, accustomed as I had been to the tireless energy
of Irving and the exhausting Lyceum routine, even I began to feel
something of a physical and nervous wreck as the time for production of
the play drew near.
As so often happens after the long and anxious rehearsal of a play to
which one is burning to do every justice, there came a sort of reaction
on the very day before the production. We were all very depressed, very
languid from the heat, and very nervous, and the author’s kindness and
tolerance were highly tried.
As I walked back in silence to my hotel with my maid Lottie, I felt
desperately gloomy. Once more the horrible doubt began to assail me
that perhaps I was mis-cast; that I could not possibly do the author
justice; that, from beginning to end, my interpretation was utterly
wrong, that--but every creative artist knows the doubts that come
flocking in on the mind in certain moods. What did the morrow hold? And
just then my eye was caught by a sign over a doorway:
ARE YOU WORRIED ABOUT TO-MORROW?
THEN CONSULT KING SOLOMON.
“Lottie,” I announced, “I’m going to consult King Solomon.”
“Rubbish, Miss Jessie!” said Lottie severely, “You’ve gone mad!”
But I had rung the bell, and in an instant the door opened and a
faded-looking woman was asking me what I wanted.
“To consult King Solomon,” I replied.
“Miss Jessie--” began Lottie, in whispered remonstration.
“Have you an appointment?”
“No; I’ve only just seen the gentleman’s sign.”
“King Solomon only sees clients by appointment.”
“That’s a blessing, anyway,” blurted Lottie, “and now, Miss Jessie,
perhaps you’ll come along.”
But at that moment a door in the background opened, and a tall figure
in a red velvet robe, and wearing a sort of tinsel crown on his woolly
locks, appeared. King Solomon was a full-blooded negro, as black as
your boot and fully six feet tall.
“King Solomon will see the lady,” he announced in a high, reedy
voice--a weird voice to proceed from such a bulk--and the woman stood
aside for us to enter.
His Majesty waved me into his holy of holies, a dark little den opening
out of a dark passage.
“Don’t go away, Lottie,” I whispered hurriedly and a trifle nervously
as I passed in, for I had not bargained for a _tête-à-tête_ with a
coloured monarch.
“Me go away!” sniffed the indomitable Lottie. “King Solomon or no King
Solomon, I stand here on this mat till you come out.”
Seating himself opposite to me, the King looked earnestly into my hand,
and then began to gaze into a bowl which apparently contained ink. For
some time he mumbled unintelligibly, and then he began to speak.
“It seem to me,” he piped, in that curious head voice, “that you are
surrounded by bad people--scandal-mongers and hypocrites. It seem to me
you in big building, in crowds of people, all shouting and making great
noise. It seem to me great success somehow. It seem to me you long time
in place. It seem----”
There were several other “it seems” of various intelligibility and
importance, and then “it seemed” to His Majesty that his fee was one
dollar and the séance was concluded.
Next morning I met Mr. Jones at the theatre.
“We’re going to have a huge success to-night,” I told him.
“I hope so, I’m sure,” was his answer, “but one can never tell.”
“I can tell.”
And the play _was_ a huge success, the audience rising to its feet and
cheering wildly as the author bowed his acknowledgments from his box at
the end of the third act.
“I told you it was going to be a success,” I reminded him afterwards.
“I had private information about it beforehand.”
“From whom?”
“King Solomon!”
So great was the success of “The Hypocrites” that Mr. Jones’s play
became the topic of literary and artistic New York, and the papers were
filled with correspondence on its “lesson,” or what the writers of the
letters thought to be its “lesson,” and various literary societies held
debates on the questions raised by the play.
At one such debate, at the Astor Hotel, I was asked to take the chair,
but not feeling equal to speaking in private I resigned the honour in
favour of Mr. Murray Carson. The subject for discussion was: “Is a
mother ever right in sacrificing her son’s future?” and the discussion
soon became very animated, even heated. And so excited did I become
that I remember leaping to my feet and crying wildly:
“No! I’d do anything and everything on earth to protect my sons!”
“For all the world,” as someone afterwards told me, “as if you had a
family of at least a dozen!”
Which merely went to prove the truth of Mr. Jones’s remark to me after
his first reading of the play, that a lady need not commit a murder in
order to enter into the feelings of Lady Macbeth. An actress must have
imagination.
“The Hypocrites” settled down into a great success, and after a long
run at the Hudson Theatre in New York went on the usual tour of the big
cities.
It was while we were in New York, however, that during the Christmas
Day _matinée_ Mr. Glendinning came to me as I stood in the wings and
said: “Jessie Millward, will you marry me?”
“Go away! How dare you? You must be mad!” was my rather unconventional
reception of the proposal.
“I shall ask you every day until you say ‘yes,’” was all he said, and
he carried out his word. His first rejection was on Christmas Day, and
on January 24, 1907, we were quietly married, with my faithful Lottie
as witness, in a beautiful church on Broadway, on a glorious, sunny
winter morning.
On leaving the church we drove straight to a telegraph office and I
cabled my brother Percy: “Tell mother I was married to-day.”
Back came my brother’s answer: “Tell him he is the luckiest man in the
world, but we should like to know his name.”
It is nice that a brother should have such a high opinion of his sister.
And very soon afterwards came another compliment, this time in verse,
from an old friend who had known me all my life, which I have always
treasured, and hope to be forgiven for reprinting it. But if poets will
write kind and flattering verses they must abide by the consequences.
JESSIE MILLWARD
The beauty of the woman doth not dwell
Alone within the circle of her form;
Her smiling eye--her pulsing heart, her warm
Hand-clasping, all her depth of meaning tells;
And so from thee a glorious flood upwells,
As from the pictured heath, the crystal flow
Of limpid splendour--’mid the flowers ablow--
Gushes to charm us with its mystic spells.
Long years have proved thee noble in thy life--
True to the art that sways thy cultured mind--
Thy graces beaming round thee--unconfined--
To shape thy being for the perfect wife;
So may’st thou walk life’s pathway, bright and new,
With him, who stands beside thee--staunch and true.
ALFRED S. JOHNSTONE.
Hillside, Rednal,
Worcestershire, July 3, 1907.
[Illustration: JOHN GLENDINNING.]
[Illustration: SIR SQUIRE BANCROFT.]
As an actor my husband had represented the leading character in nearly
every leading play, ancient and modern, and in determining the range
of his versatility one had not to bother to strain one’s calculations
beyond two points--“Macbeth” and “The Girl in the Taxi.”
In the ’eighties Mr. Glendinning was known all over the United Kingdom
as “the Terriss of the road.” While Terriss, handsomely defiant, was
steadily winning the evergreen stage case of virtue versus vice, and
vice versa, at the Adelphi every night and at Saturday _matinées_, John
Glendinning was doing likewise in the provinces.
Romantically and physically robust enough for the hero of “The Harbour
Lights,” it naturally fell to the lot of Mr. Glendinning to be chosen
to follow Wilson Barrett in “The Silver King” and Charles Warner in
“In the Ranks.” From melodrama he passed to comedy-drama--to “A White
Lie” at the Court, under the management of Mrs. Kendal, and it was this
engagement that led to his future work being confined almost entirely
to the American stage. In 1889 he went with the Kendals to New York,
playing Octave in “The Ironmaster,” Victor in “Impulse,” and Captain
Tempest in “A White Lie.”
Later he played lead with Cara Morris in “The New Magdalen,” “Renee,”
“Camille,” and “Claire,” and from that time onwards was engaged in
playing to American audiences an extensive variety of parts, including
Shylock and the Laird in “Trilby,” Othello and Mark Embury in “Mice
and Men,” Iago and Sir John Plugent in “The Hypocrites,” Mercutio and
Charles Summers in “Irene Wycherley,” Macbeth and Frederick Smith in
“The Girl in the Taxi.” His last appearance was in “The Rosary,” in
which he played the part of a Catholic priest, Father Brian Kelly, a
lovable and sympathetic character which has won thousands of hearts in
America and in the British Isles.
At the conclusion of the tour of “The Hypocrites” my husband and I
returned to England, and spent the summer at our bungalow at Lancing
Beach. During our holidays I heard great things of a one-act play,
which was being acted in London by Arnold Bell and his wife, called “As
a Man Sows.” I went up to town, saw the play, liked it, and invited Mr.
Bell down to the bungalow for the week-end, in order to discuss terms.
He came, and I bought the rights for vaudeville in America, as I felt
the playlet was just the very thing for my husband and myself to act
together.
When the deal was completed, Mr. Bell wired to his wife: “Miss Millward
has bought ‘As a Man Sows’ for America.” On his return to town Mrs.
Bell expressed her surprise at my decision to go in for pig-keeping.
“What on earth do you mean?” asked her husband, and she showed him his
wire as she had received it: “Miss Millward has bought many sows for
America.”
Even in those dear, dead _ante bellum_ days beyond recall the postal
system was not absolutely perfect.
Late in the autumn we returned to America, and after a season in
“Lady Frederick,” in which I played the part of Lady Merestow, my
husband and I had a delightful tour along the Pacific coast with “As
a Man Sows”--which we re-named “Reaping the Whirlwind”--visiting Los
Angeles, Colorado, San Francisco and the other principal cities of
that beautiful coast, now and then breaking our journey and resting
a week or two in some place that particularly appealed to us. It was
a wonderful experience, and was more in the nature of a prolonged
holiday among glorious surroundings than of a workaday theatrical tour.
In spite of the increased popularity of vaudeville, in one or two
of the cities we visited we found people who expressed a little
surprise at seeing me on the music-hall stage, and in San Francisco an
interviewer asked me point-blank why I was playing in vaudeville.
“Read that sign,” I told him, and pointed to a printed notice which was
fixed to the dressing-room door. It ran:
“Salaries are paid every Saturday night.”
“And my salary is a very pleasant one,” I added. It seemed to me a very
sound reason, and also convinced the interviewer.
One met all sorts of interesting folk on this tour.
Walking one day with my husband, a tall, heavily built man who was
passing raised his hat, and, rather to my surprise, my husband called
to him and introduced him.
“This is Mr. Fitzsimmons, the eminent boxer, Jessie,” he explained, and
Mr. Fitzsimmons thrust forth a huge hand.
“Glad to know you, Miss Millward,” said the ex-fighting man; “always
glad to meet a brother professional.”
“A brother professional?” I stammered.
“Well, p’r’aps I should say sister professional. Me and my wife’s taken
to the stage, and are starring in a sketch.”
In those days, instead of taking to the films, famous pugilists adopted
the music-halls when the ring had ceased to lure them, and Fitzsimmons
was at that time touring in a sketch in which he played the hero, shod
a horse--his original profession had been that of a blacksmith--and
boxed three rounds with the villain.
If all one heard was true, it was necessary to renew the villain
occasionally.
So great was the attraction of the halls for “professors of the fistic
art”--I believe that is the correct phrase--that even old John L.
Sullivan was starring in a playlet called “Honest Hearts and Horny
Hands”--or something like that.
But there would seem to be a certain amount of professional jealousy
even amongst theatrical pugilists, for when Mr. Glendinning questioned
Fitzsimmons as to Sullivan’s success:--
“Bless you, Mr. Glendinning,” he replied, “old John L. will never
make a real actor like you and me. He’s not got the artist’s nature.
Half a dozen stage directors have given up even trying to break him
of the habit--just as he’s pulling on the gloves to do in the girl’s
betrayer--of coming down to the footlights and confidentially winking
at the audience.”
“Did you notice the diamonds in his teeth?” asked my husband when he
left us. I had noticed them, and came to the conclusion that, instead
of decorating his wife or his sweetheart with diamonds, the successful
pugilist preferred to use them for tooth-stoppings. Which is all a
matter of taste.
Mr. Glendinning always maintained that the success of Fitzsimmons
over Corbett settled once and for all the much debated question as to
whether women should attend championship fights.
“Only think, Jessie,” he would say; “here were the two fighters, dazed,
semi-exhausted, after a long and punishing bout. Corbett was still a
possible winner, and had not Mrs. Fitzsimmons been at the ringside
a different tale might have been told; but with the unerring tact
of the true woman she seized the psychological moment, and, rising
in her seat, she cried shrilly to her devoted husband: ‘Never mind
his nut, Bob! Paste the tinker in the slats!’ Whereupon her obedient
spouse immediately delivered the all-conquering ‘solar plexus jolt’ and
Pompadour Jim bent to the storm.”
Such, at least, was Mr. Glendinning’s solution of the problem. It was
Greek to me.
“Reaping the Whirlwind” was a grim little tragedy in which a woman,
for entirely excellent reasons, poisoned a worthless man, and from the
first the poison gave us trouble.
As the playlet was under no circumstances to last longer than twenty
minutes, the exact kind of poison to be used became important. If any
sort of realism was to be attempted a lingering death from strychnine,
for example, was out of the question, and after my husband and I had
debated the question at some length I rang up an old medical friend,
Dr. McPherson, and implored his advice.
“I’m in a dreadful fix,” I told him over the ’phone, “and I want you to
help me.”
“Of course,” came his voice. “What is it?”
“Tell me the quickest kind of poison there is.”
“Depends on what you want to poison. Is it a dog?”
“No, it’s my husband.”
I heard an indescribable exclamation at the other end of the wire, and
then came the doctor’s voice:
“Look here,” he said, “I’m coming round to see you at once. Don’t you
go out till I come; I’ll be round in a few minutes. And suppose you lie
down. I’ll be round immediately.”
And he rang off.
When in an incredibly short time he arrived at the hotel he seemed
quite surprised to find my husband and myself still earnestly
discussing the quickest possible death by poison.
After the particular brand of poison had been settled on--with the
doctor’s advice--there was still another difficulty to arise. On
our first appearance at Hammerstein’s--an appearance which Oscar
Hammerstein had told me was in the nature of an experiment, as he did
not yet know his audience would care for serious drama--to my horror I
noticed as I was about to hand the fatal glass to my victim that there
was a large fly in it. Knowing Mr. Glendinning, I knew too well that
play or no play, Hammerstein or no Hammerstein, nothing on earth would
persuade him to drink from that glass if once he saw the fly. Hiding it
with my hand until the last moment I gave him the fatal draught, and to
my intense relief he swallowed it, fly and all.
Then I began to feel uneasy. The fly might be a poisonous one; I
might in reality have poisoned my husband; all sorts of terrible
complications might ensue, so when I got back to my dressing-room
I implored Lottie to get a glass of brandy and take it round to my
husband’s room.
“When we met later: “What on earth made you send Lottie round to me
with some brandy?” he asked.
“I--I thought you looked pale,” I stammered feebly, but I hadn’t the
courage to give the real reason for some considerable time.
Another little contretemps over that death scene occurred at Denver.
Like many other people, I felt the effect of the rarefied air, and
several times during the performance I felt myself on the verge of
collapse. But I pulled myself together, administered the fatal dose,
the victim died, and the curtain came down to loud applause. Barely was
it down before I gasped: “Jack, I’m fainting! Catch me!”
My husband leapt from the floor and caught me, and at that very moment
the curtain, rising for a “call,” disclosed the murderess clasped in
her victim’s arms.
A break-down, resulting in a long and serious illness in New York,
brought our tour to an end, and after lying in hospital for weeks I
determined that if I was going to die I would die in England, so from
the hospital I drove to the steamer, and settled down once more in
London.
Shortly before my illness I had seen a performance of “The Rosary,” a
play by Edward Rose--who was for many years associated with Charles
Frohman at the Empire Theatre, New York--which had attained an immense
popularity in America, and when I sailed for home I had arranged
with my husband that we should buy the English rights. Owing to his
professional engagements he was unable to sail with me, and was obliged
to remain in the States for a few weeks, and so keen was I on the play
that for a week after landing I cabled him every day: “Have you bought
‘Rosary’?”
Poor man!
But at last came the impatiently expected cable: “Have bought ‘Rosary’
and am sailing Wednesday.”
News of the American success of “The Rosary” had already reached
England, and when my husband landed it was to find that many plays, in
the titles of which the word Rosary occurred, were being played all
over the country, so the first and most obvious thing to be done was to
get our “Rosary” played somewhere, somehow, and at once, in order to
protect the title: “The Rosary.”
A company was hurriedly engaged and the play was put into rehearsal,
and, a suitable London theatre then being out of the question, my
husband set to work to improvise a tour.
“Get it done, no matter where,” I had begged him, and one day he came
to me with an amused smile.
“For heaven’s sake, don’t look at my letters in the morning,” he said,
“if you do, I dare say you’ll have a fit.”
“What on earth is the matter?” I asked him anxiously.
“Nothing is the matter. I’m only going to produce ‘The Rosary’ next
week.”
“Where?”
“You remember what you said: ‘No matter where’?”
I nodded.
“Well, the only theatre we can get _at once_ is the Elephant and
Castle. So that is where we start.”
The Elephant and Castle Theatre was not quite in the West End of
London, certainly, but the great thing was to get the play produced as
quickly as possible. So at that theatre the tour started.
I had not wished to play the heroine; however young one may feel in
heart a certain physical youth is desirable in stage heroines--in my
humble opinion, at least, though I sometimes have had reason to wonder
if I am in a minority--but in Liverpool and one or two of the bigger
towns Mr. W. W. Kelly and others lured me to play, and in Woolwich I
had a little adventure which almost persuaded me into the belief that I
had been absurdly bashful about my age.
After a _matinée_ at Woolwich a girl sent her card up, asking if she
might see me for just one moment, and, remembering vaguely what Charles
Frohman had instilled into me of the vast importance of that powerful
young lady the “_matinée_ girl,” I was on the point of saying that I
would receive her when my maid anticipated me.
“Do see her, Miss Jessie,” she pleaded, “she seems so nice and so
anxious.”
So a charming girl of about eighteen was shown into my dressing-room,
and after shily thanking me for receiving her:
“I did want to see you so much, Miss Millward,” she stammered
nervously; “I’ve admired your performance more than I can say, and
my mother always admired _your_ mother so much. Your mother was her
favourite actress when she was young, and she always talks about her
performance in ‘The Harbour Lights.’”
“In ‘The Harbour Lights’?”
“Yes, that was the first play she saw your mother in, and she fell in
love with her on the spot.”
“My dear,” I said feebly, all my best grammar failing me under the
shock, “that was _me_!”
“You!” she cried, staring at me round-eyed--I was still in my stage
costume--“it couldn’t be! My mother’s quite an old lady.”
It is terrible to shatter the illusions of youth, but it had to be
done, even at the risk of shattering one or two of my own few remaining
illusions about age.
It was during this tour that occurred that great tragedy which eclipsed
all minor tragedies.
The war broke out.