by David Lodge
[At first Elizabeth Robins entertained hopes that the third act would rescue the play from disaster. The curtain rose on a quite exquisite set, a parlour so comfortable and elegant and perceptibly solid that one would have been glad to live in it oneself. And the first scenes, between Mrs Peverel and Fanny, and Mrs Peverel and Frank Humber, re-evoked the charm of the first act. The actors playing these parts had been resting in their dressing rooms throughout the second act, and were unscathed by its rough passage. They performed with delicacy and poise and began to win back the audience’s sympathetic interest. But with the appearance of Lord Devenish (who was now, for his own reasons, eager to further a match between Guy and Mrs Peverel), shortly followed by the hero himself, it all began to go wrong again. W. G. Elliott had from the beginning been the weakest link in the chain of performers, tending to overplay the villainy of his character; now his sneers and leers became increasingly grotesque. George Alexander, still struggling to recover his poise after the traumas of the second act, was mannered in his gestures and strained in his diction. It didn’t help that the motivation of his character became increasingly complex and casuistical at this stage of the story. Guy had come back to declare his love for Mrs Peverel, but, on discovering that Frank Humber had been alerted to this intention by Devenish, changed his mind yet again, and decided to go into the priesthood after all, even though his friend gallantly urged him not to. The stalls and circle listened respectfully to his reasons, but the gallery and the upper boxes had lost all interest and belief in the story. A low mutter of irreverent commentary and snatches of inappropriate laughter filtered down from the upper levels of the theatre, to join similar noises from the pit. Some of those seated in the stalls or lower boxes looked up or over their shoulders disapprovingly, and a few hissed ‘Ssshh!’ but without much effect. Elizabeth Robins and Florence Bell exchanged alarmed glances. The atmosphere in the theatre was turning ugly.]
‘Gertrude, is it love you feel for me, or is it pity merely?’
‘It is love, Robert. Love, and only love. For both of us a new life is beginning.’
As the curtain came down, he leapt to his feet and hastened from the auditorium, propelled like a ball from a cannon by the explosion of clapping. Attendants loitering in the corridors stared as he burst through the Exit doors before they could open them. He could still hear the muffled waves of applause as he retrieved his hat and coat from the cloakroom, and not until he was outside on the Haymarket pavement did he shake off the sound of success at his back. He crossed the road and plunged down Charles II Street, ignoring the women who called softly to him from shadowy doorways, or swayed their hips and plucked at their skirts as he passed them under the gaslamps. What a cynical, meretricious play! The ideal husband a swindler and a hypocrite, whom his priggish wife had to forgive only because she had compromised herself. And he was supposed to be a Minister of the Crown. The ending might have been justified in a bitter satire on political corruption, but the play was essentially a sentimental comedy. And they loved it – the audience loved it. They arched their collective backs and purred with delight, they rolled over and waved their paws in the air while Oscar tickled their tummies with his facile wit.
He was halfway across St James’s Square when the full import of his own thoughts hit him, with a force that was almost physical and brought him momentarily to a halt. If An Ideal Husband was the kind of thing that pleased the contemporary West End audience, then Guy Domville, with its old-fashioned manners and decorous language, its morally fastidious hero and suffering, reticent heroine, its genuine ethical dilemmas and final endorsement of self-sacrifice and renunciation, certainly wasn’t. Although over the last days and hours he had made himself almost ill with anxiety, it was only now that he really believed in the possibility of failure, and he continued on his way at a slower pace, his heart heavy with foreboding.
[On the stage Guy Domville was creeping towards its conclusion. For most of the author’s friends in the audience, it could not come too soon – they longed for it to be over, for the wretched actors to be put out of their misery, for the snipers in the gallery to be deprived of their target, and for their own discomfort to be relieved. ‘Please God, let it end soon,’ Elizabeth Robins prayed silently, and she willed the actors to quicken their pace. But some perverse impulse seemed to make Alexander do the opposite, slowing the tempo of the final scene, and drawing out his last speeches with a sonorous, soulful delivery. It should of course have been his big theatrical moment, when Guy Domville finally renounced the world in favour of higher things, and selflessly commended his friend and the woman he loved to each other’s care – and if the play had worked its spell up to that point it would have been such a moment, but the spell had been irretrievably broken long before. The insistent repetitions of diction and cadence in the dialogue, intended to give the scene a moving elegiac tone, only offered further provocation to the disaffected sections of the audience. There was one phrase in particular, ‘the last of the Domvilles’, that had been uttered several times throughout the play, and frequently in the final act, and when Alexander solemnly enunciated it yet again, with a new, heavy emphasis, at the beginning of his long final speech – ‘I’m the last, my lord, of the Domvilles’ – a voice called out loudly from the gallery: ‘And it’s a bloody good job y’ are!’ Elizabeth Robins covered her ears against the laughter this sally provoked. She had no great affection for Alexander, but she didn’t like to see a fellow-actor suffer humiliation. She hoped against hope that Henry would arrive too late to share it.]
He entered the theatre by the stage door, with a nod to the doorkeeper, and, being familiar with its geography by now, threaded his way through the dimly lit passages, smelling faintly of gas and drains, that led to the backstage area. He had cut it fine. As he approached the wings he could hear Marion Terry uttering her penultimate line, ‘It was a dream, but the dream is past!’ He came to a little huddle of actors, Esmond, Evelyn Millard and Irene Vanbrugh, in their costumes as Round, Mary and Fanny, waiting to take their bows after the final curtain. They turned as he approached and, after showing him faces momentarily blank with surprise at his apparition, smiled in greeting. Was it his own apprehension that made their smiles seem forced? ‘Has it gone well?’ he whispered. Esmond raised a warning finger to his lips to enjoin silence – or to avoid replying? On stage Alexander was backing slowly, and rather awkwardly, towards the parlour door on the opposite side. ‘Be kind to him,’ he said to Marion Terry – though it sounded like ‘Be keynd,’ for his voice was strangely strangled – and ‘Be good to her,’ he said to Herbert Waring. He paused on the threshold, said once more, ‘Be good to her,’ and slowly closed the door. A moment later he reappeared in the wings opposite, dabbing at the perspiration on his brow with a handkerchief. He caught sight of Henry across the stage, where the other two actors were exchanging their final lines – ‘Mrs Peverel – I shall hope!’ ‘Wait!’ – and shot him a glance that he was unable to interpret. Then the curtain came down, and there was the sound of applause such as he had never heard before. It was loud, and long, but mixed in with the sound of clapping were other noises, shouts and yells and whistles that might have expressed enthusiasm or might have been the ejaculations of an angry mob for all he could tell. The curtain went up again and the actors took their bows, first as an ensemble, and then singly. From where he was standing he could see a box whose occupants – he thought he recognised the Burne-Joneses – were applauding vigorously. When Mrs Saker curtseyed at the front of the stage, her black plumes nodding, a section of the audience seemed to strike up a song, and she hurried from the stage as pale as death, passing Henry without a glance or a greeting. What was going on? He looked around for someone to ask, but there was nobody near whose eye he could catch. The curtain came down again, and a stage-hand held it open in the middle for Alexander to step out and take his usual solo bow. There was a storm of applause which sounded genuinely warm and lasted for two or three minutes. And then with unspeakable reli
ef he heard cries of ‘Author! Author!’ So it had gone well, after all.
[Elizabeth Robins immediately saw the danger. The cries of ‘Author!’ had come first from the gallery, and were then taken up enthusiastically by Henry’s friends in the stalls and circle, but the two groups had entirely different motives for wanting to draw him out into the open. The clapping continued. The cries of ‘Auth-or! Auth-or!’ became more insistent. She could see Alexander hesitating, glancing into the wings. Surely he would not be fool enough to expose Henry to this divided and volatile audience after such a flawed, unhappy performance?]
He saw Alexander beckoning him, taking a few steps towards the wings with hand outstretched, and an encouraging smile on his face. He took a deep breath, straightened his shoulders, and stepped forward into the dazzle of the footlights. Alexander shook his hand and drew him to the centre of the stage, and as he turned to face the audience . . . as he turned to face . . . as he turned . . .
[As Henry James turned to face the audience, and prepared graciously to bow, a barrage of booing fell from ‘the gods’ on his defenceless head. ‘Boo! Boo! Boo!’ There was also some hissing, and jeers and catcalls, but it was the long vowel sound of ‘oo’ that dominated the cascade of sound. ‘Boo! Boo!’ James looked stunned, bewildered, totally unable to understand what was happening, or how to react. He seemed paralysed, canted forward in the act of bowing, his pale plump face and bald brow thrown into relief by the fringe of dark beard and his black evening clothes. His mouth opened and closed once or twice, slowly and silently, like a fish in a bowl. ‘Boo! Boo!’ His outraged friends and supporters responded with more vigorous applause and cries of ‘Bravo!’ – which only provoked the booers to louder efforts.
‘This is intolerable!’ John Singer Sargent exclaimed, jumping to his feet. He felt a powerful impulse to clamber over the seats in front of him and leap up on to the stage to rescue his fellow countryman from this insult.
‘Why are they making that noise, Kiki?’ Emma said, clutching Du Maurier’s arm in fright, and impeding his efforts to clap.
‘I don’t know – well, I do know – but it’s unfair, it’s cruel,’ he said. ‘They’re a lot of cads. Poor James!’
‘This is dreadful!’ Florence Bell cried to Elizabeth Robins, raising her voice above the uproar. ‘What’s the matter with Alexander? Why doesn’t he take Henry off?’ Alexander was standing just behind and to the side of the author, with an embarrassed, hangdog expression on his face, shifting his weight restlessly from foot to foot.
‘I don’t know,’ said Elizabeth grimly. ‘Why did he bring him on?’
Perhaps it was only two or three minutes, but it seemed to his friends like an hour that Henry James stood there, buffeted by the storm of noise, until, with a kind of helpless shrug, he turned on his heel and fled into the wings, followed sheepishly by Alexander.
The gallery went on booing, the stalls went on applauding. Philip Burne-Jones stood up in his box and clapped his hands ostentatiously in the direction of the upper levels of the house, calling down a further salvo of boos and catcalls.
Arnold Bennett wrote in his notebook in shorthand: ‘A battle between the toughs and the toffs.’]
He blundered into the wings, in shock, dazed by the noise and still dazzled by the footlights. He knocked over a piece of stage furniture, and stood still, uncertain where to go, what to do, as Alexander came up to him.
‘I’m sorry, Henry,’ he muttered.
‘Why did you expose me to that – that – infamous treatment?’
‘I didn’t expect it,’ Alexander said. ‘You heard the calls of “Author!”’
‘You were under the impression the play was a success, then?’ he asked sarcastically.
‘Not exactly. The first act went like a dream, but things began to go wrong in the second. We must cut the drinking scene. It doesn’t work.’
‘Cut the drinking scene!’ he exclaimed. ‘Is that the only thing those – those – those barbarians – is that why they’re making that appalling noise? Because the drinking scene didn’t work?’
‘No, but—’
‘I have never been so insulted in my life,’ he said bitterly.
They listened to the continuing hubbub in the theatre.
‘It’s not very pleasant for me, either,’ said Alexander. ‘I’m not used to failure.’ A thought seemed to strike him. ‘In fact, we may be the victims of some kind of cabal.’
‘What?’
‘I had a telegram this afternoon, “Hearty wishes for a complete failure.” Unsigned of course.’
‘What? Who would . . . ?’
‘I’ve no idea. Some enemy, obviously.’ He turned his head at a new surge of noise in the auditorium. ‘I must put a stop to this. Excuse me.’
Alexander went back on to the stage, while Henry withdrew deeper into the wings.
[Alexander came forward to the footlights, centre stage, and held up his hands in a deprecating gesture. The booing stopped, and there was only the sound of applause, from all parts of the house, and cries of ‘Speech! Speech!’ Alexander indicated that he would respond, and silence fell.
‘Ladies and gentlemen: in my short career as a manager I have met with so many favours at your hands that these discordant notes tonight have hurt me very much . . .’
A voice from on high called out: ‘T’ain’t your fault, Alick, it’s a rotten play,’ and there was laughter and a chorus of ‘’Ear, ’ear’ from the same quarter.
‘I can only say,’ Alexander continued, ‘that we have done our very best; and if we have failed, we can only try to deserve your kindness by trying to do better in the future.’
He bowed, and there was another round of applause.
‘What a toadying speech,’ Du Maurier murmured.
‘What a grovelling performance,’ Sargent muttered.
‘Alec has saved the day,’ Lily Hanbury said encouragingly to Mrs Alexander.
‘The day, perhaps,’ said Florence. ‘But what about the run?’
At a signal from Alexander, Walter Slaughter led the orchestra into the National Anthem. The audience rose to its feet and stood in silence until the last bars faded away. The eventful evening was over, but they had plenty to talk about on the way home.
Herbert pushed his way through the throng, and collided with a young man of about his own age, and not dissimilar appearance, knocking from his hand a notebook covered with shorthand hieroglyphics. ‘I beg your pardon,’ he said, picking up the notebook and thrusting it into the hand of the stranger, who must, he presumed, be a critic too.
‘That’s – that’s – that’s—’ stammered the young man. Herbert did not stay to hear the rest of the sentence, but hurried forward. He was conscious of behaving rudely, but he had his sights fixed on another critic. He got to the foyer just in time to see the back of George Bernard Shaw disappearing through the swing doors, and caught up with him in King Street, striding briskly towards St James’s Square.
‘Mr Shaw!’
Shaw turned, lifting his chin and jutting his beard challengingly. ‘Yes, sir?’
‘May I introduce myself? Herbert Wells. I’ve heard you speak many times – back in the ’eighties I used to go to those meetings at William Morris’s house in Hammersmith.’
Shaw grinned. ‘Did you, indeed?’ he said, in his tenor Dublin voice. ‘In that leaky old conservatory – I remember it well.’
‘And we’re fellow-contributors to The Saturday Review.’
‘What’s this you said your name was?’
‘Herbert Wells. I write as “H. G. Wells”.’
‘Ah, yes, I’ve read some of your pieces, here and there. Interested in science, aren’t you?’
‘Very.’
‘So what attracted you to Guy Domville – I presume you were there tonight?’
‘Well, as a matter of fact I’m reviewing it, for the Pall Mall Gazette.’
‘Are you indeed? And how long have you been doing that?’
‘I only
started this week.’
‘And I only started last week, so we’re both beginners, you might say.’
‘But you were an opera critic before that. You know something about the drama—’
‘I do. I think I may say in all modesty that I know more about the drama than most of the eejits who write about it for the newspapers – no offence, young man.’
‘None taken. I know very little. I wondered what you thought about the play tonight – and the booing.’
Shaw looked at him quizzically. ‘Where do you live, Mr Wells?’
‘Mornington Crescent.’
‘I’m going in that direction myself. We’ll walk together, if you like.’
In the foyer Gosse ran into Norris, buttoning up his overcoat. His expression was funereal.
‘A bad business,’ Gosse said.
‘It was horrible.’
Both men were uncomfortably aware that they had unintentionally collaborated in their friend’s humiliation.
‘If I had known the gallery would behave so disgracefully,’ Gosse said, ‘I wouldn’t have called out “Author!”’
‘Quite,’ said Norris. ‘Neither would I.’
‘James will be terribly cut up.’
‘Do you think we should try and find him?’ said Norris. ‘Look after him?’
‘No,’ said Gosse. ‘I happen to know that he’s giving supper to the company. It won’t be a very cheerful occasion, I fear. We must do our best to buck him up tomorrow.’
‘Yes, indeed.’
They bade each other goodnight and parted. Neither of them had any inclination to discuss the play.
‘The second act was hopeless,’ Shaw said as they walked side by side up Shaftesbury Avenue. Herbert, who was only five and a half feet tall, had trouble keeping up with his long-legged stride. ‘The drinking scene was a nonsense – but Alexander should have seen that in rehearsal, and done something about it. The play never really recovered – neither did the actors. But the first act was charming. And what a pleasure to hear language like that spoken in a London theatre. Henry James uses words like a poet, even though it’s written as prose.’
