Nobody did. We let her play the part. She wasn't good.
Dan Frohman took the play for America. He wrote me that he was staying at the Hotel Victoria and would call and see me. We were living then in Alpha Place. My wife thought it would be an artful plan to lunch him well first and talk business with him afterwards. He accepted our invitation. We felt we had him in our hands. It was a gorgeous lunch. There was caviare and a stuffed bird and tricky things in French. For two days and a half my wife had lived with Mrs. Beeton. I saw to the cocktails myself, and after there was Château Lafitte and champagne. I can still see my wife's face when Frohman, in his grave emphatic way, explained that his digestion did not allow him to lunch; but might he have a few of the greens and some dry toast with a glass of apollinaris? But he smoked a cigar with me afterwards, and gave me good terms for the play.
E. H. Sothern played Bernard Gould's part in America; and fell in love with the lady who played Gertrude Kingston's part. They married during the run of the piece. I cannot claim to have been always successful as a match-maker. I introduced J. M. Barrie to Mary Ansell. That also was a by-product of “Woodbarrow Farm.” I had a travelling company of my own, playing the piece in the provinces, and had engaged Mary Ansell for the ingénue. Barrie was producing “Walker London” with Toole at the old Folly in King William Street; and asked me if I could recommend him a leading lady. He didn't want much. She was to be young, beautiful, quite charming, a genius for preference, and able to flirt. The combination was not so common in those days. I could think of no one except Miss Ansell. It seemed unkind not to give her the chance. I cancelled the contract and sent for her; and next time it was Barrie who introduced her to me, as his wife.
It was during another play of mine, “The Prude's Progress,” that a marriage was solemnized between my heroine, Lena Ashwell, and my light comedian, Arthur Playfair. The last time I saw Arthur Playfair was at Brighton. We were staying at “The Old Ship,” and he was there with his then wife, and three children. She was a beautiful, healthy, jolly young woman, and boasted to my wife of never having had a day's illness in her life. She was dead three weeks afterwards; and Playfair died a few months later: of a broken heart folks would have said in a more sentimental age. He had sown his wild oats, and had grown steady and somewhat stout. Hawtrey was there at the same time. When living in Park Row, and while shaving early in the morning, I had often looked down upon Charles Hawtrey sprinting round Hyde Park, in shorts and a sweater; but it had not saved him from the common fate of middle age. And even I myself was not the figure that I once had been. Mrs. Playfair had dug up from somewhere the photo of a Playgoers' Club dinner, taken twenty years before, showing us standing side by side; three slim young gentlemen—almost, one might say, sylph-like. She had cut us out, and labelled us “The Three Graces.”
The brothers Frohman, Charles and Dan, were good men to do business with. Their word was their bond. Charles used to say that no contract was ever drawn that a clever man could not get out of, if he wanted to. Towards the end, I never bothered him to sign anything. We would fix the terms over a cigar, and shake hands. He was a natural born sentimentalist: most Jews are. He spent a good deal of his time when in England at Marlow, where now stands a memorial to him. I had a house upon the hills, and Haddon Chambers used to rent a cottage at Bisham, near the Abbey. On a sunny afternoon, one often found Charles sitting on his own grave in Marlow churchyard—or rather on the spot he hoped would one day be his grave: a pleasant six foot into four of English soil, under the great willow that overhangs the river. He was still in negotiation for it the last time that I talked to him there. He went down in the “Lusitania,” the year following.
Reading a play to a manager is a trying ordeal. I remember Addison Bright sending me a message at twelve o'clock one night to come at once to his flat, and bring with me a comedy of mine, “Dick Halward,” that Sothern was then playing in America. Tree and Mrs. Pat Campbell were waiting for me. Tree had engaged Mrs. Pat for his “star” to open at Her Majesty's in three weeks' time; but had not found a play for her. He thought he had—some half-a-dozen of them altogether—but she had turned them all down one after the other. It was a dismal night. Tree sat watching Mrs. Pat's face, and evidently did not mind what the play was. I fell to doing the same and hardly knew what I was reading. Sometimes she laughed and sometimes she yawned, but most of the time she just sat. The dawn was breaking when I finished. She would not make up her mind, even then. Tree, on the stairs, thanked me for a pleasant night. Frederick Harrison is the most courteous manager I have ever read to. If he likes the play he shows it; and if he doesn't he makes you feel that the fault is not yours, but his. Frohman, until the end, would give no sign of what he was thinking. One hoped he was awake, but was not sure. He never pretended to know what the public wanted, and had a contempt for anyone who did.
“I'll tell you what a play is going to do, after I've seen the second Monday night's returns,” he would say. “Some people will tell you before; but they're fools.”
First-night receptions tell nothing. First nighters are a race apart. Like the Greeks, they hanker after a new thing. The general public, on the other hand, are faithful to their old loves. I met Arthur Shirley one afternoon. A new and original drama of his was to be produced that evening at Drury Lane.
“Feeling cheerful?” I asked him.
“Tolerably,” he told me. “There are three rattling good situations in it.”
“Capital,” I said. “You think they will go all right?”
“Well, they ought to,” he answered. “They always have.”
The piece, I am glad to record, ran the whole season.
The last play I wrote for Charles Frohman was in collaboration with Haddon Chambers. He paid us a good sum down, but never produced it. We had made our chief comic character a Lord Mayor of London, and Frohman was nervous about it. He had the foreigner's fixed notion that the Lord Mayor of London is, next to the King, the most exalted personage in all England; and feared that to put him on the stage in company with ordinary mortals would be to outrage all the better feelings of the British public. I am sorry. He was a jolly old chap and, I think, original. We had given him a sense of humour.
Haddon Chambers had the reputation of being a “dangerous” character; but my wife always said she was sure it was their fault, and our two daughters loved him. The elder, who was nearly thirteen, said the great thing was to keep him to serious subjects. They taught him croquet and talked to him about horses and religion; and he used to tell them stories about Bushrangers, and Madame Melba when she was a little girl.
“New Lamps for Old,” I wrote for Cissy Grahame. She produced it at Terry's Theatre. Horatio Bottomley was her backer. We all liked him. He used to take us out to lunch at the old Gaiety; and tell us stories about his early struggles, when he was a poor boy selling newspapers for his uncle, Charles Bradlaugh; and how he saved his first half-crown. Penley played the old family lawyer. He made a wonderful character of it at rehearsal. Penley was really a great actor. If he had played the part as he rehearsed it, he would have made for himself a new reputation. But he funked it at the end; and on the first night he was just Penley, as usual. Fred Kerr, Gertrude Kingston and Bernard Partridge were in the cast, in addition to Cissy herself. But the most wonderful person connected with the affair was our acting manager. I wish I could remember his name. It deserves to go down to posterity as the man who swindled Bottomley.
“He must have started faking the accounts from the very first week,” commented Bottomley, more in sorrow than in anger; “and he's done it so cleverly that, although it is staring me in the face, I can't prove it. Damned scoundrel!”
Later, he got a cheque out of The Daily Mail for telling lies about Lloyd George. The Daily Mail was very indignant and charged him with fraud. The man must have had a sense of humour, when you come to think of it.
Bottomley had a wonderful tongue. I remember a shareholders' meeting, called together for the sole and express
purpose of denouncing him. Half of them were in favour of lynching him. He talked to them for three-quarters of an hour; and now and then there were tears in his eyes. Before he sat down he had launched a new company on them. The majority of them subscribed to it before they left the room. He had his kindly side and was always good company. Once when I was in sore straits he lent me a thousand pounds; and never asked me for security or interest.
Augustus Daly took “New Lamps” for America; and Ada Rehan and John Drew played in it. Ada Rehan was superb in passion. Her Katharine in “The Taming of the Shrew” was a magnificent performance. It began like a tornado and ended like a summer's breeze whispering to the willows. But John Drew in Shakespeare always suggested to me “A Yankee at the Court of King Arthur.” Afterwards, Daly asked me to adapt Sudermann's “Die Ehre.” I had marvelled up till then at the linguistic range of the average dramatic author who at a moment's notice “adapts” you from the Russian, or the Scandinavian, or any other language that you choose. I did not then know very much German and had to confess it.
“That'll be all right,” said Daly. “I'll send you the literal translation.”
For translations, a shilling a folio used to be the price generally paid to the harmless necessary alien.
Somewhat against my conscience, I consented to bowdlerise Sudermann's play so as not to offend Mrs. Grundy, who then ruled the English and American stage. Poor lady! She must have done quite a lot of turning in her grave since then. Jones went further when he adapted Ibsen's “Doll's House.” In the last act Helmar took the forgery upon himself, and the curtain went down on Nora flinging herself into his arms with the cry of “Husband”; and the band played “Charlie is my Darling.” That was the first introduction of Ibsen to the British public. “A charming author,” was the verdict first passed upon Ibsen in London.
I wrote “The MacHaggis” in collaboration with Eden Phillpotts. Penley accepted it, but fell ill, and handed the part over to Weedon Grossmith. Our heroine shocked the critics. She rode a bicycle. It was unwomanly, then, to ride a bicycle. There were so many things, in those days, that were unwomanly to do. It must have been quite difficult to be a woman, and remain so day after day. She smoked a cigarette. The Devil must have been in us. Up till then, only the adventuress had ever smoked a cigarette. In the last act, she said “damn.” She said it twice. Poor Clement Scott nearly fell out of The Daily Telegraph. Once before, it is true, a lady (Mrs. Huntley, I think) had said “damn” upon the stage, but that was in a translation from the French. No one dreamed the day would come when Mrs. Pat Campbell would say “bloody.” But it is an age of progress, we are told. One blushes at the thought of what they may say next. She cost me a friend, that heroine of ours. By chance we christened the hussy Ewretta; and it happened to be the name of an actress friend of mine, Ewretta Lawrence. She wouldn't believe we hadn't done it of malice prepense. She never spoke to me again. I am sorry. It is always with fear and trembling that one chooses names for one's less immaculate characters. During the run of Pinero's “Mrs. Ebbsmith,” a real Mrs. Ebbsmith committed suicide. She thought that Pinero had been told her story and had used it.
Phillpotts and myself had bad luck over “The MacHaggis.” It was doing well when Penley suddenly closed the theatre. His illness, it turned out, was mental.
One of the things I best remember in “The MacHaggis” was Reeves Smith's performance of a cheerful idiot. He was a delightful actor. He went to America soon after, and they never let him come back. I met him there when on a lecturing tour. He was playing with Nazimova. I went behind to see him.
“Forgive me,” I said, so soon as his dresser had left the room, “but aren't you making him rather too noisy?” They were playing Ibsen—“The Master Builder,” I think.
“Great heavens,” he answered. “You don't think it's my idea, do you? It's the new method, over here. Everybody has to shout at the top of their voice, except the Star. 'How quiet and natural she is,' they say. 'What a contrast.' Clever idea. Gillette invented it.”
Alia Nazimova was drawing all New York. I found her somewhat changed from the quiet, simple girl who with her husband (they spelt the name “Nazimof” then) had knocked at our door in London with a letter of introduction from friends of ours in Russia. They had got themselves into trouble with the political police, and had had to cut and run with barely time to pack a handbag. She spoke German, but he spoke only Russian. They looked little more than boy and girl; and he in his way was as beautiful as she was. That first evening, we taught him an English sentence. He had said it in Russian, his eyes fixed on my wife. Alla translated it into German, and then we told him the English for it, which was: “You remind me of my first love.” He repeated it till he had it perfect; and subsequently quite a number of women mentioned to me casually that he only seemed to know one English sentence. We chaffed him about it. He maintained it was not humbug. All beautiful women reminded him of his first love. But his last love! There was no one like her. And kneeling, he kissed Alla Nazimof's hand. He was rather a lovable, childish person. I took them to Tree, and we fixed up a benefit performance for them at the Haymarket; and afterwards I got Frohman interested, and he fathered them into America. For some reason, the boy went back to Russia and was killed in a pogrom. The first person she asked me about, when I saw her in New York, was “Madame Needles,” as she had always called a small fox-terrier of ours. They had been great friends, and had played hunt the slipper together. Madame Needles would go outside the room, while Madame Nazimof would hide one of her shoes, and then open the door. Only once Needles failed to find it, and that was when Alla had sprinkled scent upon it. Needles said, in dog language, that it wasn't fair; and wouldn't play any more that night.
Another play Phillpotts and I wrote together was “The Prude's Progress.” I read it one evening to a little Jew gentleman, a friend of Fanny Brough's, at his chambers in Piccadilly. “Read it to him after dinner,” she had counselled me. Dear, sentimental, fat old gentleman, how he cried over the pathetic parts! At the end, he shook me by both hands, and wrote me an agreement then and there. He left the business arrangements to me, and I took the Comedy Theatre and gathered together a company regardless of expense: among others, Fanny Brough, Teddy Righton, Cyril Maude, Lena Ashwell, glorious in her first youth and beauty. Bernard Partridge was to have played an up-to-date journalist who knew everything and was not ashamed of it: an amusing fellow, and Partridge would have played him to perfection. Alas and alack! I listened to advice. The author who listens to advice is lost. During the second rehearsal, your manager draws you aside. He has been talking the play over with his mother-in-law. It seems that she likes it, immensely. She has only one suggestion to make—or rather two. He propounds them at some length. You explain that the adoption of either would necessitate the re-writing of the piece. “Well, better do that, my dear boy,” he answers, “than have a failure; I'm only advising you for your own good.” The producer does not agree with the manager's mother-in-law. His advice is: “Cut the other woman out altogether. Lighten the play and save a salary.” He slips his arm through yours. “If it was only a question of art,” he continues in a friendly undertone, “I daresay you're right. Unfortunately, we've got to consider the great B.P. Now I've had twenty years' experience,” and so on. Later on, the solicitor to the syndicate drops in and watches a rehearsal. He stumbled over the cat and reaches the stage. He has thought of an alteration that may save the play. The next afternoon, the stage door-keeper stops you on your way out. He also has been thinking the play over with the idea of helping you. They all know what the public want, and how to give it to them. It is everybody's secret, except the author's. I once overheard a producer talking to a friend concerning one of Barrie's plays.
“It was all no good,” he was saying. “He wouldn't take my advice. Of course the piece was successful—in a way, I admit. But think what it might have been!”
Over the play proper, I had learnt to be firm; but I was young at producing, and I li
stened to George Hawtrey. He meant well. He was a dear fellow, in many respects. He always did mean well. He had discovered a genius made by the Creator on purpose to play our journalist. Partridge was my friend, he would not stand in the way of my making my fortune—of my making Phillpott's fortune—of my making everybody's fortune. To cut a sad story short, I put it to Partridge, and, of course, he agreed. But he never forgave me; and I have always felt ashamed of myself for having done it.
It was hoped, when the Dramatists' Club was formed, that it might develop into a dramatic authors' trades union on the lines of the French Société des Auteurs Dramatiques. It would have been a good thing. The established dramatist can, perhaps, hold his own: though even he is never sure of not being cheated, especially when it comes to dealing with the syndicates. But the young and struggling are fleeced and humbugged without mercy. Often a play out of which the management will make its tens of thousands is sold outright for a few pounds down. “Take it or leave it,” is presented at the author's head; and the youngster, impatient to see his play produced, signs the receipt. Occasionally he makes good, and the future repays him. More often the play turns out to be his one and only success. We used to grumble at the actor manager. We wish now we had him back. He had his failings, but at least he was an artist. The theatrical bosses who nowadays control the English and American stage have no idea beyond that of pandering to the popular taste of the moment. They regard the author's work as raw material to be cut down, altered, added to, and generally worked up by “experts” at so much an act. They would have boiled down “Hamlet” to an hour and a half; written in some comic business for the ghost; and brought down the curtain on Hamlet cuddling Ophelia. Actors and actresses wail that not enough plays are being written. Where are the new dramatists? they bewilderedly inquire. Why don't authors write more plays? The answer is that authors with any self-respect are being practically forbidden the stage door. I asked a well-known literary man, when last in America, why he never wrote for the theatre. There could be no question of his ability.
My Life and Times Page 12
