by David Lodge
For various reasons – other pressing commitments on Henry’s part and a dilatoriness on Compton’s that he would come to recognise as an occupational vice common to all theatrical producers – seven months passed before he actually got down to the task of adaptation. In the meantime he told nobody about his grand plan except Fenimore, who approved it; and even when he finally began writing the play, early in 1890, he told only Alice and her companion Katharine Loring, and then in the strictest confidence. Later he let William into the secret, but again with elaborate, almost Masonic, adjurations to preserve it. He feared failure as much as he lusted for success in this new field of endeavour, for only success would justify his setting aside the fine-pointed pen of the novelist to take up the cruder instrument of the playwright. It would be especially humiliating if the project were reported in the newspapers, but in the end never reached the stage at all, as had happened with Daisy Miller. He therefore postponed as long as possible telling his literary friends – even George Du Maurier – about his dramatisation of The American, or, as he had re-titled it, The Californian.
The work went well. He had sent drafts of the first two acts to Compton by February, and of the third and fourth by April. The manager’s responses were encouragingly positive, though tantalisingly brief and unspecific. Curiously (as it seemed to Henry) they had never met face to face up to this point. Compton always seemed to be in some provincial town or city, moving on to another with his company week by week; and whenever he happened to be in London, Henry was invariably out of town. But eventually, early in May, they made an appointment to meet in De Vere Gardens.
He awaited Compton in his large light study overlooking the street, leafing through the drafts of the play to refresh his memory. Tosca, the handsome dachshund bitch curled up at his feet, pricked her ears and barked, sensing the arrival of the visitor, and moments later Smith opened the door to announce: ‘Mr Edward Compton and Master Compton.’ Smith pronounced these names with the slightly exaggerated sonority he had learned in the earl’s service, a tone that always reminded Henry of a stage butler. Perhaps for the same reason Edward Compton seemed unsurprised and unintimidated by the performance. It was Henry who was surprised, and somewhat disconcerted, by the presence of the young boy, an alert, goodlooking lad aged about seven or eight, dressed in a white sailor suit, standing beside his father with a blue leather-bound book in his hand. He was also taken aback by Compton’s physical appearance. A handsome, clean-shaven man in his mid-thirties, with a noble profile and a fine upright figure, he was as bald as an egg.
‘I beg your pardon, Mr James,’ said Compton, after they had shaken hands. ‘As you see, I’ve taken the liberty of bringing my son with me.’ He looked fondly at the boy, who was already making friends with Tosca. ‘I remember what a thrill it was to me, when I was his age, to be introduced to Thackeray by my father – not far from here as it happens, we were walking by Kensington Gardens – and what a pleasure it was to recall that meeting in later years. I couldn’t find it in me to deny him a similar privilege.’
‘Of course, of course – he’s most welcome!’ Henry murmured, delighted by the implied compliment, though flustered by the social challenge presented by the boy. ‘But how will he divert himself while we discuss our business?’
‘He’s under strict instructions to sit still and not interrupt,’ said Edward Compton. ‘But if you would be so kind as to sign his birthday book first . . .’
‘Certainly, with the greatest of pleasure,’ said Henry, taking the book from the boy’s outstretched hand. He read the title embossed in gold on the cover. ‘The Tennyson Birthday Book. Very good. And what is your name, young man?’
‘Edward Montague Compton Mackenzie,’ said the boy, very clearly.
‘A fine name! But how is it . . . ?’ Henry wrinkled his brow in puzzlement, leaving the question unfinished.
Compton laughed. ‘My own name is really Mackenzie, as was my father’s. He dropped it when he went on the stage, because his Scottish relatives disapproved of the profession, and I followed suit. We usually call this young fellow “Monty”.’
‘I see . . . and what must I write in this fine volume, Monty?’
‘Your name, if you please, sir,’ said the boy. ‘Under your own birthday.’
‘Well, that is April the fifteenth,’ said Henry, leafing through the book, which was designed like a desk diary, with a quotation from Tennyson for every day. ‘“Gorgonized me from head to foot/With a stony British stare” – Maud,’ he read aloud. ‘Hmm. A somewhat abrasive motto for my birthday – though I know that stare. Do you know what “gorgonized” means, Monty?’
The boy blushed. ‘No, sir.’
‘You know about the Gorgon, Monty,’ his father prompted.
‘Oh the Gorgon,’ said the boy. ‘He was a monster who turned you to stone if he looked at you.’
‘Very Good!’ Excellent!’ said Henry, impressed. ‘Though I believe the creature was female.’ He carried the book over to his standing desk, and wrote his name with a flourish in the appropriate place. The boy watched this operation with great curiosity.
‘Do you always write standing up?’ he asked.
‘Monty!’ his father cautioned, evidently fearing the question was impertinent.
‘No,’ Henry laughed. ‘Sometimes I writing sitting at that desk over there’ – he gestured to the desk by the window covered with drafts of the play – ‘and sometimes I write lying down.’ He led the boy and his father over to the chaise longue, attached to which was a small lectern on a swinging arm, and demonstrated how this apparatus worked. ‘I suffer from a back, you see,’ he said to Compton in explanation, ‘and must change my posture from time to time.’
‘Very ingenious,’ said Compton, admiring the swinging lectern.
‘And do you hope to follow in your father’s and grandfather’s footsteps, Monty?’ Henry asked. The boy looked blank.
‘Mr James means, do you want to be an actor when you grow up,’ Compton explained. ‘Actually, we think he might turn out to be a writer,’ he said to Henry. ‘He always has his head in a book.’
‘Indeed! Then we must find you one to read now.’
Finding books for his guests to read while he was otherwise engaged was a task Henry took very seriously, aiming always for a perfect match of reader, text, and context. ‘I’m afraid I don’t have very much in the way of juvenile literature,’ he said running his eyes anxiously along the shelves of books, pulling out an occasional volume and then replacing it with a sigh and a shake of the head. ‘Andrew Lang’s fairy tales are somewhat inspid I always think . . . Robert Louis Stevenson is perhaps a little advanced . . .’
‘Stevenson will do admirably, Mr James,’ said Compton, a little impatiently. ‘I don’t want to take up too much of your valuable time, and we have a play to discuss.’
‘Yes, yes, of course,’ said Henry, and gave young Monty Treasure Island to read, while they got down to business.
‘I have read your fourth act,’ said Compton, pulling the draft from his coat pocket.
‘And approve of it, I trust?’ said Henry.
‘It is well written, but somewhat depressing.’
‘Depressing! But it has a happy ending! The hero gets his bride.’
‘Only in the last two lines. Up till then the tone is bleak and forbidding, more like a tragedy than a comedy – we are the Compton Comedy Company remember. The death of the brother, Valentin, casts a pall.’
They discussed this point for some time. Henry strenuously defended the death of Valentin from wounds received in a duel. The duel, with its antiquated and essentially hollow notion of ‘honour’, was a dramatic embodiment of the ethical difference between Europe and the New World, and the moving reconciliation of Valentin with his opponent before he expired prepared for the ultimate union of hero and heroine. Henry felt he had already sufficiently compromised the spirit of the original novel by allowing them to marry. Compton, evidently a pragmatic man, capitulated.
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br /> ‘Very well, but do what you can to lift the audience’s spirits a bit sooner,’ he said.
They went over the earlier acts and Compton made numerous suggestions for possible improvements, most of which Henry felt he could accept.
‘Well, that seems to be it,’ said Compton, squaring up the scattered sheets. ‘I look forward to receiving a complete text – as soon as you can. Oh – one more thing: I don’t care for your new title.’
‘Dear me! I thought that by making Newman a Californian – as you will remember, he’s from the South in the novel – I would license myself to make his manners a little rougher, and thus more amusing in the Parisian setting,’ Henry explained.
‘Move him to California by all means,’ said Compton, ‘but keep the original title. A lot of people will come to see the play because they’ve read the book.’
‘Really? How curious. I thought that might be a deterrent,’ said Henry. Privately he had wished to suggest that the play was a new piece of work by giving it a new title, but he accepted the manager’s judgement.
‘Excellent,’ said Compton. ‘“The American, by Henry James”. It will look well on the billboards.’
‘Does this mean then – am I to understand – that you are definitely going to . . .’ Henry scarcely dared complete the question for fear of a negative or ambiguous answer. ‘Do it?’ he finally breathed.
‘Of course. Didn’t I make that clear?’
‘Not entirely . . . I’m delighted to hear it.’
‘I’m in correspondence with your agent about terms. I’m sure there will be no difficulty.’
Henry had lately put his literary affairs in the hands of Charles Wolcott Balestier, an amiable and energetic young American who had taken up the relatively new profession of literary agent in London. Henry liked and trusted him and was delighted to have the sordid business of financial negotiations taken off his hands. ‘When? And where?’ were his next questions.
‘We’ll give the first performance at the Southport Winter Gardens, in January,’ was the answer.
Henry’s euphoria suffered a certain deflation. ‘Not till next year?’
‘We’ll need all that time. There’s much to be done with a new play – you’ll see.’
‘And why Southport? I’m not sure I even know where it is.’
‘It’s a seaside resort near Liverpool. A very nice place. A lot of well-off, theatregoing people live there.’
‘A long way from London.’
‘All the better.’ Compton shot Henry a shrewd, appraising glance. ‘I take it that you’re interested in making money out of this play, Mr James?’
‘I blush to say,’ he replied, ‘that it is my prime motive for venturing into this field of endeavour.’
‘Well, the only way you’ll make any money to speak of is with a good London run. When we tour the provinces, we spend a week in each place and put on a different play every night – so we’ll only do The American once a week. Seat prices being what they are in the provinces, you’re not going to make a fortune out of that, even if we get good houses. But in London, with stalls at half a guinea, it’s a different story. A successful play could earn you a hundred pounds a week, in royalties. More.’
‘Really?’ Henry’s eyes widened. ‘So, if it ran for, say six months . . .’
‘You would earn two or three thousand. Then if a play really takes, the word travels, and you get productions in America, Australia, all over. Henry Arthur Jones earned ten thousand in one year from his last play.’
‘Good heavens!’ Henry could almost hear the chink of sovereigns being counted in some windowless backstage office.
‘But don’t count your chickens before they’re hatched,’ said Compton, as if reading his thoughts. ‘London audiences are hard to please, and the competition is fierce. That’s why I want to work on this play in the provinces – give it a good airing on tour – see how it goes with audiences – get everything right before we bring it to London. You understand me?’
‘I do, and am much obliged to you for the explanation,’ said Henry.
‘Southport is a good place to start. As a matter of fact the Winter Gardens was the very first venue the company played. It’s always been a lucky house for me. Theatre folk are somewhat superstitious about such things. Have you any other questions, Mr James, before I go?’
Henry had another question, but didn’t quite know how to put it. Compton however, perceived the import of his involuntary upward glance.
‘Yes,’ he said, smiling. ‘I shall wear a toupee for the part of Newman.’
‘I presumed so,’ said Henry, but he was relieved to hear it.
Henry heard the story of Compton’s premature baldness a few months later from the stage manager and prompter of the C.C.C., who had been with the company from its foundation, and a very dramatic story it was. A decade or more ago, Compton was engaged to be married to an actress with whom he had worked professionally for several years. On a trip to Paris to buy her trousseau, however, she collapsed suddenly after drinking a glass of iced milk, and died in his arms. The shock was so great that he lost all his hair, and it never grew again. He decided that his future as an actor must be in costume drama, in which he could easily disguise his baldness with wigs, and consequently formed a company dedicated to performing classics of English comedy, using for this purpose some money left to him by his deceased fiancée. In due course he met and married another actress, Virginia Bateman, the mother of young Monty, and the Compton Comedy Company became a popular and highly regarded institution of English provincial theatre. The American, therefore, was a bold venture for Compton: not only would it be his first attempt at mounting a London production, but it would also be his first performance for many years in a modern play, wearing a toupee rather than a wig.
This story of cruel heartbreak and resourceful recovery moved Henry much as George Du Maurier’s courageous adjustment to his partial blindness had affected him. It epitomised the ‘romance of the theatre’ which had fascinated him since he was a child, had brought him night after night to sit in the stalls, and had finally drawn him to the other side of the footlights. But there was precious little that was romantic about the day-to-day life of a touring company as Henry observed it, and increasingly shared it, after The American went into rehearsal in the autumn of 1890. It was a hard life, rehearsing by day in gloomy and often chilly theatres, performing a different play every night, Monday to Saturday, sleeping and eating in lodgings that afforded varying degrees of comfort, and travelling on to the next venue each Sunday on slow cross-country trains with poor connections. The actors did this for forty-six weeks of the year, with only Holy Week, when all the theatres were closed, and a four-week summer break, in which to rest.
Henry’s initiation into this world came in September, when he went to Sheffield, where the company was performing its current repertory at the Theatre Royal, to read his finished play to the assembled actors. Compton was at the station to meet him and conduct him to his hotel. Henry had never been to Sheffield before, knowing it only as a name stamped on cutlery, and was surprised to find how extensive it was, a city of grey stone and rusting iron, sprawled over the Yorkshire hills in the slanting late afternoon sunshine, with soot-blackened steeples, fuming factory chimneys, noisy bustling streets – and a theatre. The next morning he sat on its stage on a hard upright chair, with his back to the darkened auditorium, and the cast, similarly seated, facing him in a semicircle, and read the play straight through, with only brief pauses between the acts. He threw himself energetically into the task, drawing on such histrionic skills as he had acquired in the charades at New Grove House, and similar party games in his New England youth. He knew it was important to enthuse the actors with the parts they would be playing, and it was also an invaluable opportunity to indicate how his lines should be spoken, for he was by no means confident of Compton’s American accent, or the other actors’ ability to impersonate French aristocrats. He had no idea what the protoc
ol was on such an occasion, or what kind of response to expect from his little audience. They seemed to enjoy the first act, smiling and laughing aloud on occasion, but as the play went on they grew silent. The play itself of course became more sombre as it progressed, and that was no doubt the reason. When he finished, exhausted and hoarse from the effort, there was a patter of applause, and polite smiles and murmured thankyous from the actors, but they jumped up from their seats and disappeared with disconcerting speed.
‘Where has everybody gone?’ Henry wondered aloud as Compton helped him on with his overcoat.
‘They have gone for their dinners,’ said Compton, ‘and I think we should go for ours. Mrs Compton is waiting for us.’ Mrs Compton, who was to play Claire Cintré, had excused herself from attending the reading as she was already thoroughly familiar with the play from the various drafts Henry had sent. The manager led Henry out of the theatre and they walked side by side along the London Road.
‘The road to London – a good omen,’ Henry quipped.
‘I hope so,’ said Compton expressionlessly.
Henry waited for further comment, but none was forthcoming. ‘So, what is your first – what is your immediate impression, my dear Compton?’ he asked.
‘The play is too long,’ said the manager.
‘Too long?’ Henry exclaimed, genuinely surprised. ‘You didn’t say so when we met in May.’
‘You have added a great deal since then,’ said Compton grimly, striding on.
‘Well, perhaps a line here and there . . .’ said Henry.
‘Much more than that. I told you the play should occupy two hours and three quarters, including the entr’actes.’ Compton took out his fob watch from under the lapels of his topcoat, and examined it. ‘You started reading at eleven o’clock this morning. You finished at about three. That’s four hours.’
‘But I read all the stage directions as well,’ he pleaded in mitigation.