by David Lodge
He picked up the third volume (the second, in which Little Billee made his name as an artist in England, but failed to heal his broken heart, was the most tedious of the three) and turned to its closing pages. After the death of Svengali in the middle of a concert, attended by Little Billee and his friends, which caused her to lose her ability to sing, Trilby sank into a slow decline. Then one day she was shown a portrait of the evil genius which was enough to reassert his spell over her: she produced one more flawless vocal performance, of Chopin’s Impromptu in A flat, and fell back dead on the pillow. Little Billee followed her to the grave not long after in a passage of typical authorial insouciance. ‘There has been too much sickness in this story, so I will tell as little as possible of poor Little Billee’s long illness, his slow and only partial recovery, the paralysis of his powers as a painter, his quick decline, his early death, his manly, calm and most beautiful surrender – the wedding of the moth with the star, of the night with the morrow.’ Was ever a writer’s duty to his tale and his readers so shamelessly shirked? And yet, and yet – the public loved it. The manuscript itself had been bought for a huge sum by the London Fine Arts Society, and was to be exhibited at their premises under glass on payment of a shilling as if it were a first Folio of Shakespeare or the holograph of The Pickwick Papers. A mystery!
He snapped the book shut, and returned the three volumes to the book table. He had managed to pass an hour since breakfast. It was time to walk to the Haymarket and secure his seat for An Ideal Husband.
Because of the length of his excursion he was obliged to leave Tosca behind and endure her whimpering and reproachful looks as he left the flat – Smith would give her a run later. He walked through Kensington Gardens and across the Park to Piccadilly, muffled up in greatcoat, gloves, scarf and hat. It was a cold, grey morning with, as his servant had promised, a biting wind, but he was glad of the exercise. There was ice on the Serpentine, but it was thin and transparent as glass, and there were notices warning would-be skaters and sliders of the danger. Keen equestrians were trotting their mounts up and down the Row, riders and horses sending clouds of condensed breath into the cold atmosphere. There was a sleety precipitation in the air, and he squinted anxiously upwards, assessing the threat of the sky. ‘Shall we have snow?’ he asked a park attendant who was sweeping the footpath. ‘I shouldn’t think so, guv’nor,’ the man said. ‘Nuffink to worry about, anyways.’ ‘I’m glad to hear you say so,’ he said. ‘Good day.’ At the gates on Park Lane he passed a legless beggar sitting on a little wheeled pallet, and dropped a half-crown into his upturned cap. ‘Fanks, sir, you’re a Christian,’ said the man, seizing the coin and biting it – thus displaying rather unchristian suspicion. But after all it must have seemed an astonishingly generous donation to the poor wretch, whose cap had previously contained only a few coppers. It was not every day of the week that he was passed by a playwright nervously awaiting the first-night performance of his play and superstitiously eager to bribe Providence by all available means to achieve a favourable outcome.
He walked the length of Piccadilly to the Circus, where Alfred Gilbert’s pretty monument to Lord Shaftesbury, erected a couple of years ago, still retained its pristine silvery gleam in spite of the sooty London atmosphere – apparently because it was made of aluminium. He was reminded by his recent encounter with the beggar that, according to the artist, the winged figure leaning forward, gracefully balanced on one foot, to release an arrow represented the Angel of Christian Charity, though it was widely believed to be the young god of profane love, a confusion that must be embarrassing to the pious philanthropist’s shade, though appropriate to the nocturnal character of this part of the West End. He turned down Haymarket and passed between the great columns of the Theatre Royal’s heroically proportioned portico to purchase his ticket at the box office within. He asked for a seat in the front stalls, and at the end of a row, so that he could slip out before the performance ended if need be, but he had to be content with one situated well towards the back of the auditorium, for apparently the house was nearly sold out. It looked as if Oscar had scored another ‘hit’.
From the Haymarket it was a short distance along Pall Mall to the Reform. It was always balm to the spirit to enter the extravagantly spacious premises, modelled on a Roman palazzo – indeed he had chosen the club more on account of its architecture than its membership. In the library, a vast hushed high-ceilinged room smelling of old leather, he wrote a brief letter, dated ‘Saturday, noon’, to Marion Terry: ‘I don’t want to worry you – on the contrary; so this is a mere word on the chance that I didn’t say a couple of nights ago distinctly enough that your business at the end of Act I – your going and leaning your face against the pillar of the porch – couldn’t possibly be improved . . .’ Ever since he had recalled it in the watch of the night he had been troubled by the thought that she might at the last moment – actors were such fickle and impulsive creatures – decide to omit or change this expressive gesture. He would have the letter delivered to the stage door of the St James’s, where she would find it on her arrival later that afternoon. Although he could easily drop it off himself on his way home, he had somehow conceived the idea that, just as it was said to be unlucky for a bridegroom to behold his bride in her wedding dress before she entered the church porch, so it would be inauspicious for him to set eyes on the St James’s, all bedecked with posters and placards for the premiere of Guy Domville, until he arrived that evening at the appointed hour, and for this reason he had carefully skirted the vicinity of King Street on his morning walk. He had not felt the same inhibition at Southport when The American was first performed – but he was still a comparative novice in the ways of the theatre then; he had not yet acquired a feeling for its protocol, its superstitions, and its codes, nor a full understanding of what was at stake in the launch of a new play. Nervous as he had been that day, it was nothing to the growing panic he felt now. Imagine, he had actually gone calmly to sit among the audience at the opening of The American! They would have to chloroform him to make him do the same tonight.
He gave the letter and a shilling to a porter with instructions for its delivery, and proceeded to the dining room. For luncheon he ate mulligatawny soup, steak and kidney pie, and sherry trifle, with a half pint of the club’s claret. He sat alone, studiously avoiding the eye of anyone else who entered, in case it was an acquaintance who might feel it his duty to inflict his company. Heavy with his repast, he returned to the library, picked up a copy of the Saturday Review and sank into a deep armchair near the fireplace. He started to read a leading article protesting against an Indian import tax on British cotton goods but almost at once lapsed into a blessed slumber, and woke half an hour later with a start, wishing it had been longer. He retrieved the Saturday Review, which had slipped from his grasp to the floor, and turned to the arts and book pages. He noted that the journal had acquired a new theatre critic, writing under the initials GBS. It must be the young Irish journalist, George Bernard Shaw, who used to write so amusingly about opera for The World under the same initials. Elizabeth Robins knew him and said he was clever but not to be trusted. He was certainly clever – his little book, The Quintessence of Ibsenism, was proof of that – and possessed of a caustic wit. He was reviewing a melodrama by Sydney Grundy called Slaves of the Ring, whose absurdities he mercilessly anatomised, concluding: ‘It is not a work of art at all; it is a mere contrivance for filling a theatre bill, and not, I am bound to say, a very apt contrivance even at that.’ Elizabeth said Shaw had ambitions himself to be a playwright, and had had a play put on with some success the previous spring, when he had been abroad. What would Shaw think of Guy Domville – for presumably he would be at the theatre tonight to review it? What would William Archer think of it? What would any of them think of it? At least they could not deny that it was – or strove to be – a work of art.
He felt a welcome inclination to move his bowels, and went downstairs to the lavatory, a dank, dripping chamber that seemed
like a sanitary afterthought to the rest of the building, being meanly proportioned and lined with institutional white tiles. While washing his hands there he had an absurd conversation with another member similarly engaged, who observed that it was a great day and an exciting prospect and how he wished he could be there, and Henry, assuming he was referring to the first night of Guy Domville, spoke at some length about his nervous anticipation of the event before he realised the man was referring to a rugby football match between England and Wales that was being played that afternoon in Swansea.
It was nearly three o’clock. If he walked home, not too briskly, that would consume another forty-five minutes. He collected his hat and coat and stick from the cloakroom and set off down Pall Mall, then cut across Green Park and into Hyde Park. The beggar had gone, no doubt to consume his half-crown in drink, and the horse-riders had departed from the Row. The cloud-filled sky, which had never allowed a glimpse of the sun all day, was growing darker already with the approach of evening. By the time he reached Kensington Palace, there were lights in its windows. He really must go and see the State Apartments that had been opened to the public by the Queen a few years ago, but it was always the way: when something was on your doorstep, you kept putting it off. Go now? No, he was not in the mood, and he thirsted desperately for a cup of tea.
Mrs Smith brought his tea and a buttered muffin to the study, with some more letters which had been delivered while he was out, including one from Edward Warren, his fellow godfather to Guy Millar. To reply to the messages of his wellwishers seemed the best way to pass the remaining hour or two before he must go and dress, and he accordingly lit a lamp and settled himself at his desk for this purpose. He began with Warren, to whom he wrote: ‘I am in a state of trepidation out of all proportion (I won’t say to my possible fate) but to the magnitude of the enterprise of the work. One can have a big danger, in the blessed theatre, even with a small thing.’ That, ultimately, was the root cause of his perturbation: the consciousness that soon he would be judged, in an unprecedented blaze of publicity, and in the presence of his friends and peers, on the evidence of a work which did not belong to his primary field of artistic expertise, and which was mediated in a form over which he had limited control.
Smith knocked and put his head round the study door to enquire about his evening dress. ‘White tie, I presume, sir?’
‘Of course, Smith. Thank you.’ If he was to take a bow in front of that audience he had better look the part.
2
IN his practice as a novelist and short story writer, Henry had developed a firm faith in the superior expressiveness and verisimilitude of the limited point of view. He believed the author of fictional narratives should represent life as it was experienced in reality, by an individual consciousness, with all the lacunae, enigmas, and misinterpretations in perception and reflection that such a perspective inevitably entailed; and if this function were to be shared by several characters in the course of a novel, it should be passed from one to another, like a baton in a relay race, with some regularity of plan. The antithetical method was well exemplified by Trilby, in which the authorial narrator, in Thackerayan fashion, took out his puppets from the box, and set them capering, and told you in his own confiding ruminative voice exactly what they were all thinking at any given moment, and awarded them marks for good or bad motives, in case there should be any danger of the audience having to make some interpretative effort on its own part.
But when he looked back later on the day which seemed, as he lived it, the longest he had ever known, he felt that neither of these narrative methods, and certainly not the one he himself favoured, would do satisfactory justice to the ironies, the follies, the enigmas, the queer conjunctions and coincidences of those hours, especially the later ones, after darkness fell. He moved through them in a kind of trance, his thoughts a confused mixture of hopes and fears and reverie, with no knowledge of what was happening in the place that concerned him most. It was only afterwards that he was able to piece together the whole story from what other participants told him – Alexander and the other actors, his friends in the audience, and persons who were unknown to him at the time, whom he only met months or years later, or whose memories of the occasion were passed on to him at second hand by mutual acquaintances, or unexpectedly encountered in memoirs and biographies long after the event. In retrospect he was aware that as he crossed and recrossed the space between De Vere Gardens and Piccadilly during that interminable Saturday, as he sat at his desk in his study, while dusk thickened outside the window, writing letter after unnecessary letter, as he sat in the Theatre Royal Haymarket with the laughter of the audience breaking in waves over his inattentive head – while this story, his story, with its drastically limited point of view, was proceeding, other connected stories were in progress, other points of view were in play, at the same time, in parallel, in brackets as it were.
[George Alexander was the first member of the cast to arrive at the theatre, but in his capacity of manager rather than actor. His wife Florence always made sure that he rested during the day at their home in Knightsbridge before a first night, but he was a perfectionist who hated to delegate tasks and he found it impossible to keep away from the scene of his operations for very long. By late afternoon he was in his office, going through the advance booking figures with his business manager, Robert Shone. Shone reported that the Libraries had taken sixteen hundred pounds’ worth of tickets, which was reasonably encouraging. The stage doorkeeper interrupted them, bringing a telegram, ‘No Reply,’ just delivered.
‘Another well-wisher,’ Alexander commented with a complacent smile as he opened the envelope. His desk was already littered with cards, letters and telegrams. His expression changed as he read the message.
‘What’s the matter?’ Shone asked.
Alexander slowly read out the words pasted to the slip of paper: ‘WITH HEARTY WISHES FOR A COMPLETE FAILURE TONIGHT.’
‘Good God!’ Shone exclaimed. ‘Who sent it?’
‘There is no name,’ Alexander said, passing him the telegram.
Shone examined the document. ‘It was sent from the Sloane Square Post Office,’ he said. ‘I’ll make enquiries.’]
To Minnie Bourget he wrote: ‘It is five o’clock in the afternoon and at 8.30 this evening le sort en est jeté – my poor little play will be thrown into the arena – like a little white Christian virgin to the lions and tigers.’ He conveyed his thanks to the unknown Mrs Wharton for her sympathetic good wishes, though not for alerting Minnie to the imminent premiere. ‘I hoped you wouldn’t hear of this little adventure save in the event of its being a success,’ he concluded, ‘but now I make haste to get this note off to you before my possible dishonour becomes actual.’ He took a large envelope for this letter to enclose with it one of the bright red playbills for Guy Domville. It occurred to him that William and Alice might also be amused to receive such a souvenir of the event, and dashed off a short note to them to accompany it. ‘I stick this florid “poster” into an envelope this tremulous afternoon to help beguile the hours until – 8.30 – and to bring my trepidation home to you. The omens, thank God, are decently good. But what are omens? Domine, in manus tuas! This is a time when a man wants a religion. But my hand shakes and I can only write that I am your plucky, but, all the same, lonely and terrified Henry.’
[Being in every respect a thoroughly up-to-date theatre, the St James’s was equipped with a telephone, by means of which Robert Shone was able to speak to the postmaster at Sloane Square Post Office. He reported his findings to Alexander. ‘Apparently two ladies sent the wire. They gave no names of course. The girl in the cage queried the wording, but they insisted it was correct.’
‘What did they look like?’
‘They were both wearing hats with veils, so it was hard for her to tell, but she thought one was youngish, the other middle-aged, both well-dressed and well-spoken.’
‘Hmm. Who the devil could they be?’
‘Somebody wh
o doesn’t like Henry James?’ Shone suggested.
‘But the wire was addressed to me,’ Alexander pointed out. ‘They could be actresses with a grudge, one of them anyway. Somebody I turned down at an audition perhaps.’
‘But you didn’t audition for this play,’ Shone said.
‘No. Well, somebody who thinks they should have been offered a part, and wasn’t. Or somebody who asked for an interview and was refused – I’m always getting letters from actresses begging to see me. You know what it’s like, Bob. It could be somebody I’ve completely forgotten about.’
The two men silently contemplated the mystery for a few moments. Both were made vaguely uneasy by it: any first night was risky and unpredictable enough without the added stress of anonymous ill-will transmitted by wire. ‘I want you to keep this to yourself, Bob,’ Alexander said at length. ‘Not a word to the cast, and whatever you do don’t mention it to James. The man is already a complete bag of nerves.’
‘He won’t be in tonight,’ Shone said. ‘He told me he would come behind at the end.’
