by David Lodge
One thing the two women seemed to have in common, apart from an interest in himself, was a liking for the English institution of lodgings, where unmarried ladies could have their meals served in the privacy of their own rooms; on the Continent one either ate at a public table, or had to take a house and employ one’s own servants. Not long after Fenimore settled in Cheltenham, however, Alice left Leamington. Her health seriously deteriorated in the summer of 1890, and in the autumn she and Katharine moved back to London, taking rooms in a hotel in Kensington, to be near Henry and medical specialists. Alice and Katharine were now locked in a relationship that, it was obvious to Henry, would only end with Alice’s death. If there was in Katharine’s dedication something more than pure altruism, an emotional investment of a kind he had written about in The Bostonians, Henry was not disposed to comment or criticise. He gave daily thanks that his sister had such a devoted carer who relieved him of what would otherwise have been a crushing responsibility. His function was mainly to cheer Alice’s spirits with news of the great world and his own doings in it.
One unexpected bonus of his plunge into the unfamiliar and murky waters of the theatre was that it had proved a source of inexhaustible interest and diversion for his sister. She had been the first, enthusiastic, reader of the complete text of The American, and had followed every phase of the play’s progress to production with eager attention, empathising with his volatile hopes and anxieties. As promised in his telegram, he had written a longish letter to her and Katharine before leaving Southport giving details of the triumphant premiere, the first instalment of a fuller account to come when he returned to London. This was done partly to counter any jealousy Alice might feel that Fenimore should be the first to receive his verbal account of the event. He was aware of the risk, but he had made the arrangement with Fenimore nevertheless, feeling that, if the play were to fail, she would be the person best qualified to dress his wounded self-esteem. That service, happily, was not required, but there was another that he had in mind.
Fenimore occupied a pleasant set of rooms in a terrace of Regency town houses that looked on to the Parade and its shops from behind a double screen of trees. Henry had visited her there before on a couple of occasions, staying conveniently in a ‘bed and breakfast’ establishment next door. She was standing by the window of her sitting room when the maidservant of the house showed him in.
‘Congratulations,’ she said with a smile.
Henry gaped at her. ‘How did you know?’
‘I have been watching out for you,’ she said, smiling. ‘When I saw you striding along the pavement, there was such a bounce in your step, and such serenity in your expression, I knew the play must have been a success.’
‘It was a triumph,’ he said, and told her the whole story. Only the maidservant knocking on the door to bring in fresh coals brought his narrative to a conclusion. He strolled to the window and looked out as Fenimore instructed the girl about serving their luncheon.
‘An admirable situation, Fenimore,’ he said, when they were alone again. ‘Quiet, but not too quiet.’
‘It does well enough,’ she said, with a shrug, ‘but I’m getting bored with Cheltenham.’
‘You do “use up” places at a rate,’ he gently teased her.
‘I’ve become a nomad,’ she said. ‘I don’t belong anywhere in Europe, but I’ve been away from home too long to go back.’
‘Well, I’m in much the same condition,’ he said. ‘I like to think it is conducive to literary creation.’
‘It has been for you, Henry, but I find writing more and more difficult.’
‘It seems to me you still produce a good deal for the magazines,’ he said.
‘Yes, but my new novel drags.’ Fenimore had published one novel since East Angels, called Jupiter Lights, in 1889. It had not been the advance in achievement that Henry had hoped for in his ‘Miss Woolson’ article. Both were aware of this, and the unspoken thought created an awkward silence between them.
‘So you are well and truly launched on a new career,’ she said.
‘Well, one mustn’t, as the admirable Compton says, count one’s chickens, but I’m hopeful, genuinely hopeful. I’ve already written a second play – in fact – if it would not be too much of an imposition – if I might read it to you – a part of it – while I’m here . . . ? I would greatly value your opinion.’
‘Of course, I should feel privileged,’ she said.
They took a walk after lunch, through the Pittville estate to the huge neoclassical Pump Room at the summit of the park, and imbibed a little of the brackish-tasting water under its echoing dome. Then, with dusk falling, they returned to her cosy sitting room, drew the curtains, seated themselves in easy chairs on either side of the fire, and Henry read the whole of his play, Mrs Vibert. The plot was very loosely based on a tale by a tolerably obscure French writer, Henri Rivière, which he had read in La Revue des Deux Mondes twenty-five years ago, and had transferred to an English country house setting. The young hero was in love with his father’s ward, an heiress. The father’s former mistress, Mrs Vibert, turned up unexpectedly with their grown-up illegitimate son, and a villainous tutor, in tow. Mrs Vibert tried to attach the ward to her son, and the tutor sought to exploit the situation through blackmail. In the end his bluff was called by a morally reborn Mrs Vibert and all ended happily. It was a comedy. Fenimore listened, frowning with concentration. She used her ear trumpet, angling her head to enhance its effectiveness. At the end she pronounced the play ‘very striking’.
‘You didn’t laugh very much,’ he said.
‘I laughed inwardly,’ said Fenimore. ‘I didn’t want to miss anything. You write beautiful dialogue, Henry.’
‘Thank you, Fenimore.’
‘If only people spoke in such perfectly formed sentences in real life,’ she sighed. Henry observed her closely to see if any irony was intended, but Fenimore’s expression was transparently sincere.
5
HAVING drunk the heady wine of theatrical success in Southport, Henry could not bear to be separated from his play for more than a few days at a time as it began its tour of the Midlands. He saw it at Wolverhampton, at Leamington, and at Stratford-on-Avon, where he was recognised in the audience and prevailed upon to go up on to the stage and take a bow, an action that already seemed as natural to him as a cardinal holding out his ring to be kissed. On each visit he conferred with Compton about improving the play by small adjustments to the text and the actor’s performances, and he stayed on at Leamington to rehearse some revised scenes. It was hard to contemplate with patience the long interval that would elapse before The American in its improved form would be presented in London. September was the earliest possible date, because the company was committed to tour the provinces until July.
He no longer bothered to conceal from his friends his involvement in the theatre, though he affected to despise it as a ‘base occupation’, forced upon him by financial need. The truth was that he was thoroughly engrossed by the new medium, fascinated by the challenges it presented to authorial ingenuity, and seduced by vague visions of the glory as well as the gold he hoped to obtain from it. In February he started yet another play, his fourth, and confided to William in a letter: ‘Now that I have tasted blood, c’est une rage (of determination to do, and triumph, on my part), for I feel at last as if I had found my real form, which I am capable of carrying far, and for which the pale little art of fiction, as I have practised it, has been for me but a limited and restricted substitute.’ On reading the letter through before sealing the envelope, the sentiment seemed somewhat extreme, but he let it stand. It expressed his current mood.
Shortly afterwards Compton communicated some news which threatened to upset their plans: Mrs Compton was with child, and would have to retire temporarily from the stage at the end of the provincial tour. This was a great blow, and one that in the past would have plunged Henry into helpless despondency. Instead he immediately began to apply his brain to the finding o
f a substitute, and some cunning unsentimental part of it (the ‘organ’ of theatrical management no doubt) told him that there might be an opportunity here to enhance the play’s prospects by employing an actress with a little more glamour than the worthy Mrs Compton. He had lately seen Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler, in Gosse’s translation (a very bad one according to the rival Ibsenite, William Archer), and he had been deeply impressed by a young American actress called Elizabeth Robins in the title role. He was not alone – Archer wrote in The World that ‘Sarah Bernhardt could not have done it better’. He was seized with the idea of casting her as Claire Cintré, took Compton to see her at a matinee, and won his agreement. He then wrote a subtly flattering letter to Miss Robins, arranged a meeting between her and Compton, and was rewarded with her acceptance of the part in April. The prospect of having a rising ‘star’ performing in his play strengthened his faith in its future.
That an American actress would be playing his French heroine and an English actor his American hero didn’t bother him in the least. In the theatre, as in all art, successful illusion was produced by a professional mastery of the appropriate technique, not by amateurish authenticity. A nice illustration of this principle was an anecdote George Du Maurier had told him recently, about a genteel couple, down on their luck, who had come to him on the recommendation of Frith seeking employment as models. They had been reduced to that expedient, lacking any qualification or skill other than impeccable manners. ‘They knew that I do a lot of pictures of people in good society,’ said Du Maurier, ‘and they offered themselves as the real thing. I gave them a trial, but they were completely hopeless – stiff as pokers. My little Cockney model Jessie, who works as a barmaid of an evening, can make herself look far more convincing as a society hostess welcoming a guest than Mrs Harrington will ever manage in a month of Sundays.’ Henry made a note of the anecdote for future use as the kernel of a short story, but for the time being all his energies were focused on playwriting. In the same month that Elizabeth Robins agreed to perform in The American, he had another piece of encouraging news. Some time ago he had read his play Mrs Vibert to the actress Geneviève Ward, who had passed it to the well-known manager John Hare, who after weeks of silence wrote to say that he considered it ‘a masterpiece of dramatic construction’ and would be happy to undertake a London production as soon as he was free of current commitments. This was just the additional vote of confidence in his dramatic powers that Henry needed. It seemed to him that his grand plan to conquer the English stage was proceeding very satisfactorily.
Only Alice’s declining health threw a shadow over the beginning of summer. By this time she and Katharine were living in a little house that Henry had found for them in Argyll Road, Kensington, not far from De Vere Gardens. ‘A very nice house to be ill in,’ he described it to William in a letter, but it seemed now that it would have to serve as a house to die in. A lump in her breast had been causing her pain, and at the end of May they called in a specialist, Sir Andrew Clark, who informed Alice that she had a cancerous tumour which was incurable by surgery or any other means. It was only a matter of time, he said – months rather than years – and the only thing that could be done for her now was to ease her pain as much as possible with morphia. Curiously – or perhaps, on reflection, not so curiously – this sentence of death seemed to improve Alice’s spirits. All her life she had suffered from illnesses that could not be diagnosed except as the product of her own hypersensitive nervous system, and had been so wretched that on at least one occasion she had seriously contemplated suicide. Now at last she really was undeniably, irrefutably, mortally ill. The fact, and her knowledge of it, gave her a kind of authority which she had never had before. No one could argue with a tumour. She prepared herself for death with considerable courage and a sometimes disconcertingly dark sense of humour. ‘I am working away at getting dead,’ she would say, ‘to relieve Katharine and Henry of their burden.’ Her only reason for wishing to prolong her life was to share the excitement of the London opening of The American, and she admitted to a regret that Henry had not started his dramatic career earlier, so that she might perhaps have been carried to the theatre and wheeled into the stalls in a bath chair to see it. He did his best to keep her up to date with the preparations, and one day brought her a sample of the cloth from which one of Elizabeth Robins’s dresses was to be made, which he had chosen himself.
Compton had taken a lease on the Opera Comique, a largely subterranean theatre at the Aldwych end of the Strand, for the London debut of his company. Henry thought the name unfortunate, and the site unattractive, but the theatre had been recently refurbished and boasted ‘the latest sanitary arrangements’, a feature by which Compton set great store. Rehearsals took place there throughout September, punctiliously attended by Henry. ‘You don’t have to come every day, you know, James,’ Compton assured him, but if he stayed away for a day or two the actors were apt to let their accents slip or introduce unauthorised bits of ‘business’. In any case, it was useless to stay at home and pretend to work. His thoughts were always with the play. Compton sometimes seemed impatient with his comments and interruptions, but the actors bore them good-humouredly. He had endeared himself to them by providing refreshments. Shocked to discover that they were expected to rehearse from ten in the morning to four in the afternoon without sustenance, and feeling not a little peckish himself on these occasions, he arranged for Mrs Smith to prepare daily a hamper of sandwiches and other cold victuals which her husband delivered to the theatre at noon, and from which Henry invited the actors to help themselves when they were ‘off’. Miss Robins remarked that it was the first time in her experience that a playwright had thought of feeding his company.
She was an interesting and intelligent young woman, very different from the usual run of actresses. She was delighted when he told her that Hedda Gabler had finally converted him to Ibsen and convinced him that the Norwegian was a truly great playwright, for she had produced the play in partnership with another actress, and they hoped to form a company to put on more plays by Ibsen and other major European dramatists. She had come from America partly to distance herself from a tragic personal history: her husband, also an actor, had drowned himself in the Charles River in a suit of theatrical armour, a piece of symbolic action that Ibsen himself might have invented. Henry sympathised with her cultural ambitions and missionary spirit, and succumbed to her personal charm and the hypnotic effect of her huge eyes of crystalline blue. As an actress she was exceptionally quick to grasp the dramatic point of every scene and line, and magnetised one’s attention as soon as she began to move or speak. Henry’s only worry was that she was perhaps trying too hard to make the most of her relatively modest part, investing the essentially passive and pathetic character of Claire Cintré with Hedda Gabler’s intense and independent spirit. ‘Well, you chose her,’ Compton said rather brusquely, when Henry confided this thought to him. ‘That’s the kind of actress she is. I can’t ask her to change her performance now.’ The play was due to open in a week’s time, on September 26th.
Henry began to feel again all the nervous doubts of the prelude to the first night at Southport. ‘Will it “go”, my dear Compton?’ he asked at the end of the first dress rehearsal. ‘Shall we conquer London, do you think?’ Compton was still in his costume, the chief feature of which was a coat of startling design, made of brown velveteen with light blue facings and enormous mother-of-pearl buttons, evidently the costumier’s idea of an American millionaire’s usual attire, which made Henry wish he had taken as much interest in the male actors’ costumes as in the ladies’ dresses. ‘I’ll tell you in four weeks’ time,’ said the always down-to-earth manager. ‘There are two things you need to succeed in London. Good reviews and good word of mouth. Ideally you want both, but sometimes you can pull off the trick with one. With neither, you’re sunk.’ There had been only a couple of reviews of the Southport production, neither of them a reliable augury: a neutral one from Archer, kind to the playwright but re
serving judgement on the play, and a complimentary but stupid one in the local paper.
The reception of the play at its London first night was auspicious: warm applause at the end, and calls of ‘Author! Author!’ to which Henry responded, contenting himself with a single deep dignified bow, standing alone in front of the curtain. The knowledge that so many friends and admirers were in the audience – Fenimore, George and Emma Du Maurier, the Gosses, John Singer Sargent and George Meredith, among many others – made the ovation especially sweet. It was also pleasing to know that celebrities from the world of the theatre were present – the playwright Arthur Pinero, for instance, the American impresario John Augustin Daly, and Geneviève Ward, who was to take the title role in Hare’s promised but postponed production of Mrs Vibert. Most gratifying of all was the presence of William, who had crossed the Atlantic, typically at short notice, primarily to see his ailing sister, but also to share his brother’s big night. He came trailing clouds of glory himself, for his monumental Principles of Psychology, which had finally appeared the year before, was gathering plaudits from all over the world. All their lives the two brothers had been rivals for the attention, first of their family, then of the public at large. But now all competitiveness was suspended in a sincere enjoyment of each other’s success.
Henry had arranged a supper party at De Vere Gardens for William, the Comptons, Miss Robins, their mutual friend Mrs Hugh Bell and her husband, Balestier, and the Du Mauriers. He had decided after some hesitation not to invite Fenimore, because it would have revealed the closeness of their friendship too obviously, and would have entailed inviting her dull sister, who was visiting her; but he managed to speak to her alone in the second entr’acte while the sister was otherwise engaged. She was bright-eyed with the excitement and glamour of the occasion, and commented on the dazzling appearance of the ladies. ‘I’ve never seen so much expensive jewellery all at once – or, I have to admit, so much bosom,’ she said. Her own bosom was as usual covered up to the throat, but her long dress of dove grey with a little black velvet tippet was elegant, and he complimented her on it, to her obvious pleasure. She congratulated him on the play, which she had seen in Cheltenham on its provincial tour. ‘I enjoyed it then,’ she said, ‘but it is immensely improved. I can understand why you’ve become so immersed in the theatrical world, Henry. It must be quite intoxicating to know that you are responsible for all this.’ She gestured with a gloved hand to take in the glittering, chattering throng under the chandelier in the foyer, eating their ices, smoking their cigarettes and fanning themselves with their programmes.
