PEOPLE OF THE THEATRE
Sir Herbert Tree—Gordon Craig—Henry Arthur Jones—Temple
Thurston—Miss Janet Achurch—Miss Horniman
Sir Herbert Tree never met a stranger without trying to impress him. He
always succeeded. He would take the utmost pains about it: go to any
lengths: use his last resource.... I am not now, of course, dealing
with him as an actor. We all have our varying opinions of him as an
actor. Some think he could; some think he couldn’t.... But I am writing
of him at the present moment as a man. A showman, if you like. As a
man, as a man who “showed off” either as a wit, a mimic, a man of the
world, a superman, or what not, he was supreme.
I met him in his private office at His Majesty’s in the middle of the
run of _Joseph and his Brethren_. He had invited me there in order to
dictate an article to me, but, as he told me over the ’phone, he hadn’t
the remotest notion what the subject of the article was going to be.
Could I help him with any ideas? His article was for a Labour paper.
Did I know anything about Labour? If I didn’t, did I know anybody who
did?
In speaking to me over the ’phone, he appeared so anxious that I began
to rack my brains for a subject. In the recesses of my meagre intellect
I found the remnants of two or three subjects, and at nine o’clock that
evening I presented myself at His Majesty’s Theatre with them on the
tip of my tongue.
His room was empty as I entered it. Opposite the door was a fireplace
and above the fireplace a mirror; on the left of the door as you
entered it was Sir Herbert’s large desk. By the side of this, seated on
a low chair, I waited. I had not to wait long, for presently I heard a
soft, rather pulpy kind of sound coming down the passage and, a moment
later, Sir Herbert entered, wearing a long white beard and the garments
of a gentleman of the East. The play was still in the first act, and he
had that minute come off the stage.
“Got a subject?” he asked, shaking hands. “So have I. The Influence of
the Stage on the Masses! What do you think of it? Very trite, I know,
but there are a few important things I want to say. Sit here, will you?
Here you are—ink and paper.”
And, sitting down, he began immediately to dictate the article. He
got along swimmingly, and about a third of the article must have been
down on paper when I heard a squeaky voice outside the door. It was
the call-boy. Sir Herbert rose, stroked his beard, adjusted his gown,
and walked outside; as he did these things he continued dictating, his
voice stopping in the middle of a rather involved sentence when he was
out in the passage.
After five or six minutes, I heard the same soft, pulpy sound
approaching and, while yet outside the door, he began dictating at
the precise point where he had left off, rounding off the sentence
most beautifully. It was a remarkable feat of memory. After a very
short period, we heard the high-pitched voice a second time, and
once more he moved dreamily away, still dictating. Again he stopped,
purposely as it seemed to me, in the middle of a sentence, and again,
when he reappeared, he spoke the waiting word. Marvellous! He gave me
a cautious, inquiring look, as if to discover if I had noticed his
cleverness. I smiled back reassuringly. In a few minutes the article
was finished.
“Do you like it?” he asked.
“Exactly the thing. _The Daily Citizen_ readers will be delighted. But
what an extraordinary memory you have!”
“Ah! You noticed that?” he said, seemingly well pleased.
He began to talk of _Joseph and his Brethren_ and, in the middle of our
conversation, Mr Temple Thurston, looking rather nervous, was shown in.
I knew that, at that time, Thurston was writing for Tree a play on the
subject of the Wandering Jew, and as I guessed they had business to
transact, I withdrew as quickly as possible.
I saw Sir Herbert on another occasion, but whether it was soon before,
or soon after, the incident I have just related I cannot recollect.
He was conducting a rehearsal on the stage of His Majesty’s, and I
stood in the wings, watching him. He had recently produced a play
called, I think, _The Island_, by a Spanish or a Brazilian writer. It
was a dead failure and was withdrawn after three or four nights. It was
to talk of this play that I had come, and as he advanced to the wings I
noticed that he looked rather worried.
“What _was_ wrong with the play?” he asked. “All you critics have
tried to tell me, but I’m blessed if I can understand what you are all
talking about.”
“To me the fault of the play was quite obvious. The author had got hold
of a good idea and the drama had several fine situations; but, whereas
the idea was poetical and mysterious and the situations tense and
dramatic, the author or the translator had employed the most stilted
kind of dialogue, and language as commonplace as that which I am now
using. The play should have been translated or rewritten by a poet.”
“Ah! It’s very strange you should say that, for I myself had felt
strongly disposed to ask John Masefield to prepare the thing for the
stage. I wish I had done; but, of course, it’s too late now. But a
manager can never tell beforehand what play will be a success and what
won’t.”
“Pardon me. That is often said, but I don’t believe it’s true. Some
people really _do_ know what the public wants. Arnold Bennett, for
example, and Hall Caine, not to mention others. Do _they_ ever make
mistakes? Has Arnold Bennett ever been guilty of a failure?”
“No, perhaps not. But I can’t engage Bennett as a reader. Even if he
would consent to do the work, I should not be able to afford his fee.”
“Yes, I know. But my contention is that there are people who can and do
gauge to a nicety the taste of the public.” And I mentioned the names
of two critics who had, on many occasions, foretold most accurately the
exact length of time new pieces would run.
Tree was called back to the rehearsal, and he glided away for a few
moments, fluttering a handful of loose papers as he went. He soon
returned, and this time he was cheerfulness itself.
“It’s going very well,” he said, referring to the rehearsal. “It’s only
a stop-gap, of course, but it’ll make a little money. I must write to
those critics you mentioned,” he added musingly; “or perhaps it would
be better if I seemed to run across them accidentally?”
But whether or not he did run across either of the critics
accidentally, I do not know, for the war broke out soon after and
disrupted everything.
* * * * *
It was when I was staying in Guilford Street, Bloomsbury, six or seven
years ago, in a house opposite the Foundlings’ Hospital, that, one
morning, Gordon Craig came into the room. He was, I think, in search of
Ernest Marriott, a most ingenious and original artist, who at that time
and for long after was doing some sort of work for Craig. Marriott and
I were staying at the same boarding-house.
When Craig’s bulky form filled the doorway I recognised at once, from
Marriott’s description of him, who he was, and I introduced myself to
him, telling him Marriott was out.
“Yes, I know he is,” said Craig; “but I have often wanted to look at
one of these fine old houses.”
And he walked round and round the room, with his eyes on the cornice,
telling me all sorts of things, which I have long forgotten, that I had
never heard before. He seemed to have made a special study of English
architecture of the early nineteenth century, and whilst he was in the
house talked of nothing else, though I tried to lure him into gossip of
the theatre.
He gave me the impression of a large, white man with hair which, if not
entirely grey, was very fair. He had, I remember, hands much plumper
than one would expect an artist to possess; his face also was rather
plump. He seemed to fill the large room and radiate vitality. He left
as suddenly and as inconsequently as he had come.
“How like he is to Miss Ellen Terry!” remarked my landlord, not knowing
the identity of his visitor.
“Yes,” said I, “now you mention it, I notice the extraordinary
resemblance. But, after all, the resemblance is not so remarkable, for
you see, he is her son.”
* * * * *
On one occasion I was sent to interview Mr Henry Arthur Jones. Over
the telephone I made an appointment with him for the morrow, and when
I arrived at his house I found rather elaborate preparations had been
made for the occasion. Mr H. A. Jones was standing in the middle of the
drawing-room with outstretched hand, on a table near the open window
(it was July, I think) was a tray with what one calls tea-things, a
lady shorthand typist (specially engaged for the occasion) was waiting
with notebook and pencil, and a maid was carrying into the room a
teapot, and cress sandwiches.
The presence of the lady typist embarrassed me. She took down in
shorthand my questions and Mr Jones’ replies. Thinking it would be
foolish to waste any time on preliminary politenesses, I plunged
straight into the middle of my subject. The lady typist sipped her tea
in the awkward little pauses that came from time to time. It was not
an interview; it was a kind of official statement. It was like the
proceedings at a police court. I felt I should be held responsible to a
higher authority for every word I spoke.
However, at the end of an hour a good deal of excellent matter had
been taken down, probably enough for a two-column article. But my news
editor did not want a two-column article. He wanted a scrappy little
paragraph or, at most, two scrappy little paragraphs. Now, in view of
the fact that Mr Jones had gone to the trouble and expense of getting a
shorthand typist specially from town, and, more particularly, in view
of the fact that it was perfectly clear that he had not contemplated
the possibility of an interview with him being used merely and solely
for a snappy little paragraph, I felt it incumbent upon me to tell him
just how matters stood. But how could I? Could you have told him? Well,
_I_ couldn’t, though I tried and tried hard.
When the interview was over, he arranged that the shorthand typist
should return to her office, type out her shorthand, and send the
result to me in Fleet Street early that evening. In due course, ten
foolscap sheets of valuable and most interesting matter came along, and
I handed it in to the night-editor just as it stood.
Next morning, only two snippety paragraphs appeared in the paper, and I
have often thought since that Mr H. A. Jones must have felt disgusted
with the paper, a little more disgusted with himself, but most of all
disgusted with me. After all, it was not entirely my fault, was it?...
I mean, he should not have taken himself _quite_ so importantly, should
he?
I retain a very clear impression of his personality. He was short,
rather dapper, and very deliberate. He always thought briefly before
he answered a question, but when he did answer it he did so without
hesitation, going straight into the middle of the matter. He struck me,
as he sat on a rather low chair opposite the window, as essentially
earnest, essentially honest-minded, essentially clear-headed. His
manner was a little important. He may be said to have “pronounced”
things rather than to have spoken them. He was formally courteous. I do
not think one could justly say that he has the “artistic” temperament,
and I imagine he possesses no particularly acute perception of beauty.
There is no emotional enthusiasm about him; he has no unreliable
“moods”; he does not think or feel one thing to-day and another
to-morrow. By no means typically a man of this generation, and yet not
a man who has outlived his own time. It appeared to me that he had
little intuition; his very considerable knowledge of human nature is
probably based on close observation and most careful deduction.
When we parted he gave me copies of two of his plays.
He was a man of considerable personal charm and no little intellectual
weight: a man both kindly and stern: a man who could at all times be
trusted to see the humour of things and who, on occasion, could be
cruel to be kind.
* * * * *
Not so very long before the war, my journalistic duties took me to the
first night of Mr Temple Thurston’s _The Greatest Wish in the World_,
a rather weak but quite innocuous play given by Mr Bourchier. If the
play “succeeded,” the audience assuredly didn’t. When the curtain went
down on the last act, there was a good deal of applause, chiefly from
the gallery, and we who were seated in the stalls waited a moment to
discover what the verdict of the house was going to be.
Now, every close observer of theatre audiences knows well enough that
among the many different kinds of applause there is one kind that is
very sinister: it is a kind difficult to describe, but unmistakable
enough when heard: to the uninterested listener it sounds sincere
and hearty, but if you listen carefully you will catch, beneath the
heartiness, a derisive note—something viciously eager in the shouts,
something malicious in the whistles. There was this sinister sound, a
kind of ground-bass, in the applause that followed the last fall of
the curtain at the first production of Mr Temple Thurston’s play. The
mimes had walked on and bowed their acknowledgments when, suddenly,
there arose loud cries of “Author! Author!” Well did I know what those
cries meant, and I told myself that the play had failed pitifully. I
was edging my way out of the stalls when, to my amazement, I saw the
curtain rise once more and disclose the nervous figure of Mr Temple
Thurston. Instantly there went up from a section of the audience
hisses and boos and cries of half-angry disappointment. Mr Thurston
shrank and winced as though he had been struck in the face, and his
exit was confused and awkward. It was as wanton an act of cruelty as
I have ever witnessed: deliberate, heartless, stupid. This is not the
place to discuss the propriety or otherwise of an audience insulting a
writer who has failed to please it, but it is certain that in no other
profession, in no other walk of life, do such savage traditions prevail
as in the enticing and intoxicating world of the theatre.
Not long after this incident I was received by Mr Temple Thurston at
his flat. I found him writing, and almost at once he began to talk most
intimately about himself.
“Never again,” said he, apropos of the episode I have just related,
“shall I ‘take a call.’ I cannot even now think of those awful few
moments on the stage without a shudder. It is distressing enough for an
author to fail—distressing: not only because of his own disappointment,
but chiefly because of the disappointment he brings to the actors who
have done their best for his play—without having his failure hurled
in his face, so to speak. But though I shall never again take a call,
I shall continue writing plays. I have never yet written a really
successful play, and no work of mine has had a longer run than sixty
performances. I have had many chances, of course, but I shall have
more.”
He then told me of his early attempts to win fame. Like many other
successful writers, he began in Fleet Street. The work there did not
suit him, and he soon abandoned it. He married early, lived with his
wife in a couple of rooms in Chancery Lane, and for a little time
picked up a living as best he could. The story of his first wife’s
extraordinary success with _John Chilcote, M.P._, is common knowledge.
That success preceded his own by two or three years, but he had not
long to wait before his own work found and pleased the public.
I saw Thurston on two or three other occasions, and found him a man
avid of enjoyment, frank, a little bitter, combative, kindly, strong,
sensitive, independent. He has a nature at once contradictory and
baffling.
* * * * *
Twenty years must have passed since Miss Janet Achurch gave her
astounding performance in Manchester of Cleopatra in Shakespeare’s
_Antony and Cleopatra_. It was a performance so remarkable, so
electrifying, that the old Queen’s Theatre in Quay Street became, for
a time, the centre of theatrical interest for the whole of England.
What London critic nowadays goes to Manchester, or anywhere else more
than five miles from home, to witness a Shakespeare play? Yet they all
went to see Miss Achurch. I remember a cheeky and brilliant article
by Bernard Shaw in _The Saturday Review_ on Miss Achurch, another by
Clement Scott in _The Daily Telegraph_, a third by William Archer in (I
think) _The World_.
For myself, I saw the play seventeen times, and though I have seen
many other actresses interpret Cleopatra, I have not known one whose
performance could rank with the gorgeous presentation by Miss Achurch.
All my visits to the Queen’s were surreptitious, for I was brought up
in a family that not only hated the theatre as an evil place but feared
it also. Though I was but a boy I had a certain amount of freedom, for
I was studying medicine at the Victoria University, and many afternoons
that should have been spent in dissecting human feet and eyes were
passed in the gallery of Flanagan’s theatre.
I suppose I must have been in love with Miss Achurch, though the kind
of feeling that a boy sometimes has for a great emotional actress is
more akin to worship than love. I longed to approach my divinity, but
feared to do so. I wrote about her in local papers, and I remember a
curious weekly called _Northern Finance_ which, for some dark reason
or other, printed, among its news of stocks and shares, a crude,
bubbling article of mine on Miss Achurch. I sent all my articles to her
and, with the colossal impudence of youth, and driven by a schoolboy
curiosity, asked for an interview.
She wrote to me. Reader, are you young enough to remember how you felt
when you first saw Miss Ellen Terry? Can you recall your adoration,
your devotion?... Those days of young worship, how fine they are!
Novelists always laugh at calf love because they cannot write about
it and make it as beautiful as it really is. Like many other things
that are human, calf love is absurd and beautiful, noble and silly,
profound and superficial. But, unlike so many things that are human,
there is nothing about it that is mean and selfish, nothing that is not
proud and good.
Yes, she wrote to me and invited me to visit her. She was kind and
gracious.... Amused? Oh, I have no doubt she was amused, but she never
betrayed it.
I used to hang about the stage door in the dark to watch her go into
the theatre or come out of it. I scraped up an acquaintance with
several members of the orchestra, for I thought I saw in them a kind of
magic borrowed from her. Her hotel was a castle.
Those of my readers who never saw Miss Achurch in what theatrical
writers call her “palmy” days can have only a very faint conception of
her genius. She became ill: her beauty faded. Only rarely did one see
her on the stage.
Years later I saw her in Ibsen’s _Ghosts_ and, again much later, in a
small part in Masefield’s adaptation of Wiers-Jennsen’s _The Witch_.
She was wonderful in both plays, but the grandeur had departed, the
glory almost gone.
It is most sadly true that actors live only in their own generation.
Janet Achurch ought to have lived for ever. She will not be forgotten
while we who saw her live; but we cannot communicate to others the
genius we witnessed and worshipped.
* * * * *
Miss Horniman is one of the many people I have never met. “Then why
write about her?” you ask. I really don’t know, except that I want to.
She was (and, for all I know to the contrary, still is) something of a
personality in Manchester, and she was so for a considerable period,
she producing quite a few plays at the Gaiety Theatre that were well
worth seeing.
But she was ridiculously overpraised. She was petted and spoiled
by _The Manchester Guardian_, the Victoria University gave her an
honorary Master of Art’s degree, many literary and dramatic societies
went down on their knees to her and implored her to come and speak to
them, and she was regarded by the entire community as a woman of daring
originality, great wisdom and vast experience. She could do nothing
wrong. No play she produced, no matter how sour and Mancunian, was ever
condemned by the local Press. Miss Horniman had given it, therefore it
was “the right stuff.” She knew about it all: _she knew_: SHE KNEW.
Many Manchester dramatic critics were themselves writing plays, and
Miss Horniman smiled upon them. She smiled upon Stanley Houghton,
Harold Brighouse, Allan Monkhouse, all critics of _The Manchester
Guardian_. She would have smiled upon the plays of J. E. Agate and
C. E. Montague if they had written any. She was our benefactress, and
we used to sit and watch her in her embroidered gown as she rather
self-consciously queened it in a box at her own theatre.
Yet, after all, she had a rather depressing effect upon the city.
She gave no new play that was perfectly beautiful. She appeared to
detest romance and had little understanding of blank verse. Starting
her public life as a patron of Bernard Shaw, she declined upon Shaw’s
fevered disciples. She spoke in public very frequently, and always said
the same things. She had all the enthusiasm of a clever business woman.
Wishing very much to make money (so she told us), she understood all
the arts of self-advertisement. But, really, Manchester was not the
place for her; it was sufficiently hard and provincial before she came——
But perhaps I am allowing myself to run away with myself in writing
down all these disagreeable things. Yet I believe them to be true, and
they must stand. Her plays gave me several enjoyable evenings which,
but for her, I should never have had, and I can never be too grateful
to her for restoring to the Gaiety Theatre the drink licence that the
Watch Committee had taken away some years before she came. That act,
at all events, did in some degree help to make the Manchester plays a
little less like Manchester plays.