by Ann Thwaite
And I have on my table a glass full of wild crocuses, gathered in the Cascine, and a brown rosary bought from a brown old woman in the Piazza Santissima Annunciata—a rosary about two yards long and with carved beads as big as potatoes, and it is worth “quattro lire” and was evidently made and blessed for you because it is just your size—for of course you know you never could commit a little sin—you are too, too big, and consequently a little rosary would prove inadequate to any of your occasions . . .
I can only endeavour to console myself by writing a new book and taking unlimited French and Italian lessons. When I return, I shall be able to say to you in the most fluent manner, “Have you seen the pink umbrella of the baker, or the blue boots of the respectable aunt of the Russian General?” Then you will be so overjoyed that you will dissolve into floods of tears.
Yesterday we went to the Duomo and to Santissima Annunciata. How beautiful—how beautiful that Duomo! I must send you a picture of the new facade. The Piazza Santissima Annunciata is the one in which stands the statue of the Duke Fernando Browning has written of in “The Statue and the Bust”. There he sits on a great bronze horse, looking forever at the upper corner window of the Palace, and he is evidently quite capable of many things. I think, my friend, of that bronze face, always, always upturned through all the sunny days and moonlit nights to that window from which the beautiful answering eyes vanished hundreds of years ago. This is romance—this is Italy! They never did things like that in Wimpole Street.
The new book was “an English story”. It could have been The Fortunes of Philippa Fairfax. Mysteriously, although Scribner’s made an offer for it that year, it was apparently the only one of Frances’ books never to be published in America. It was published by Warne in England in 1888. My feeling is that this may have been a re-writing of an earlier story, which Frances, still smarting from the accusations, years earlier, of selling chaff after wheat, chose not to publish in America. Poor Philippa Fairfax is the daughter of “an adorable rascal”, who is always in debt. In desperation, he despatches her to Scotland to stay with a rich kinswoman and to try to induce the heir, “a handsome charming young fellow” called Wilfred Carnegie, to marry her. The plan works: Philippa and Wilfred fall in love. But then Wilfred discovers Fairfax’s plan . . . In spite of some strong scenes, it is difficult to believe that this was written after Through One Administration. The other “English” story of this period was Miss Defarge or A Woman’s Will, which was published by Warne in 1887, and by Lippincott in America the following year. This, although a brief uncomplicated story, is far more accomplished.
A new French governess, Térèse, arrives at a dilapidated stately home. Hugh, aged eight is the other side of Fauntleroy’s coin. He wears an “actually ragged suit of black velvet”. Everything is moth-eaten, threadbare, dusty, rusty. The children are all unmanageable. They “behave themselves like young savages”. The parents’ marriage is desperately unhappy. Sir Roderick Dysart is either drunk or absent; his wife, feckless and incompetent. Térèse’s acceptance of the challenges is impressive and convincing. She enjoys the subjugation of Hugh: “I am interested. It is like playing a difficult close kind of game.” She is in fact a remarkable young woman. Frances was to use her again, and many other threads in the story, in the much longer and more complex book, The Shuttle. Elizabeth, the Vicar’s daughter, is another excellent piece of characterization—a lazy, amiable, unquestioning girl.
The story seems, surprisingly, to have sunk without trace. Published only a year or so after her famous best seller, it must have been completely over-shadowed by it. It is never mentioned in any accounts of Frances’ work But another book, published soon after by Scribner’s on 29th February 1888, was again a great success. Sara Crewe, which Frances had finished before leaving Washington, was just what her public wanted. “The child Sara is as charming and admirable a character as Lord Fauntleroy. Like him, she has “wise old-fashioned thoughts” and like him she is a real child, original and individual. Where Cedric was undoubtedly Vivian, Sara was undoubtedly Frances herself. She imagined herself as she would have liked to have behaved, if she had ever been in Sara’s position. Sara, the rich indulged pupil at Miss Minchin’s seminary, is reduced to an attic and the life of a small drudge, when her father dies apparently bankrupt. What saves Sara from despair is her imagination. “You can make a story out of anything”, as Frances knew. When Miss Minchin is cruel to her, Sara, imagining herself a princess, can spare her the executioner’s block, knowing the teacher is a poor, stupid old thing, who doesn’t know any better. The moral is exactly as in Little Lord Fauntleroy: true nobility lies, not in outward trappings, but within oneself.
Sara Crewe was very short and Frances accepted an outright payment of three thousand dollars for it instead of royalties. Scribner’s were sorry to hear Frances had sold “Editha’s Burglar”, which had appeared in St Nicholas, “to Messrs Jordan, Marsh and Co, the dry goods firm of Boston”. They were very sorry for any of her books to go elsewhere. “Without seeing it, they were prepared to offer three thousand five hundred dollars for the serialization of her next full-length story, plus a 12½% royalty on the book. Both in England and America, dramatized versions of “Editha’s Burglar” had recently been staged. The American production at the Lyceum, New York, in October 1887, was chiefly distinguished by the acting of the child Elsie Leslie as Editha. E. H. Sothern, who played the Burglar, wrote to Elsie a few years later: “I still have some affection for the poor old burglar—although you took all the piece away from poor me—no matter how hard I cried nor how well I burgled.” “The little piece was very favourably received”, too, at the Princess’s Theatre in London, in a dramatization by a different writer, though one reviewer objected to “the partial undressing of the child on the stage” for its awkwardness, not its indelicacy.
With the boys settled at school and Kitty staying with an old friend in Rome, Frances took a companion, who had been recommended to her by the McNamees. The young woman was called Luisa (or Lisa) Chiellini and remained with Frances for a number of years, as a sort of secretary and general factotum. They moved from the pensione into an apartment on the Lung’Arno Nuovo, next to the Russian church. Sitting at her window, Frances would see Queen Natalie and the young Prince Alexander of Serbia arrive in their carriage to worship. On Sundays Frances and the boys passed them in the Cascine, the park by the Arno, as the military band played and fashionable Florence promenaded in the sun. Alexander was studying with the same masters as the Burnett boys. Frances followed his fortunes after his return to Serbia, after his father was deposed and the boy became King. It may well have been this glancing contact with Balkan politics which was the first seed of Frances’ children’s novel The Lost Prince.
Frances worked regularly that winter in Florence but she also met a great many people. She saw a good deal of Constance Fenimore Woolson, visiting her at Bellosguardo where Henry James had been staying only a few months before and where Hawthorne, the Brownings, Ouida and James Fenimore Cooper had all lived or visited at various times. Ouida was in Florence still and Frances visited her, but “it was not at all exciting. She did nothing whatever to me.” Vernon Lee (Violet Paget) was a different matter. James had called her “the most intelligent person in the place”. Maurice Baring went even further. He called her “by far the cleverest person I ever met in my life and the person possessed with the widest range of the rarest culture”. She was not happy that winter in Florence and she spent part of it in Rome, but when she was at home in the Via Garibaldi, she received daily between four and seven. She was interested in the author, of That Lass o’ Lowrie’s, if not in the author of Little Lord Fauntleroy. She had often stayed with the rich and philanthropic Fords at Adel Grange near Leeds, who were much concerned with the conditions of women employed in the mills. Just the year before, Emily Ford had taken her to visit a night-school, which had been started by the Fords, very like the one started by Paul Grace in Frances’ book. “The wealth of her ideas when s
he develops a theory makes her so elaborate as to be difficult to follow,” Lady Ponsonby remarked of Vernon Lee. But her stimulating company was just what Frances needed at this point, when too many of the people she met did little more than coo over Lord Fauntleroy.
His admirers were legion and among them Gladstone, who was visiting Florence that winter. James had recently called him “a dreary incubus”, mouthing platitudes. Frances found his words delightful. Would she have found them quite so delightful if they had been spoken by the grocer in Washington? In theory Frances was a passionate egalitarian. It had been her great strength, her concern for the people, the poor. R. H. Stoddard, writing an essay in the Critic in 1881, had praised her for “profound sympathy with and intimate knowledge of what English statisticians call the lower classes”. And certainly Frances continued to be always interested in ordinary people; but she was becoming more and more often seduced by labels and titles. For Henry James, Wilde might be fatuous and Gladstone dreary; to Frances their glamour and fame made them both inevitably delightful.
The Prime Minister had apparently asked his friend Janet Ross if she knew Mrs Burnett; he wanted to meet her. Accordingly, just as James had been the winter before, Frances was invited to the villa at Castagnolo. James had described Mrs Ross as “an odd mixture of the British female and the dangerous woman—a Bohemian with rules and accounts”. Certainly she was a lion-hunter. Frances sat next to Gladstone at lunch. He had strong views about education and asked her what she was doing with her boys. “Don’t give them too many modern languages,” he said. “They are excellent tools for work but a man needs something more than the things that are merely useful. I hold he should be given the ability to understand and appreciate the old classic wonders which will help him, to make his mind beautiful and develop his poetic powers. We are too utilitarian in these days. Let them learn their modern languages but give them the classics too.”
Frances described the meeting to Kitty Hall:
I find Prime Ministers agree with me. He is a fascinating old man, and said the most lovely things. Fauntleroy has charmed him—he told me he believed the book would have great effect in bringing about added good feeling between the two nations and making them understand each other. He and Mrs Gladstone and his son and two daughters and the Duchess of Sermoneta went out to the villa—which is seven or eight miles from Florence—in the train, which, finding itself overweighted with the Irish Question and so much Salesmanship, promptly broke down about two miles away from the house, landing the party in the road—at least, placing them there.
I am not fond of trains, and had driven out in a victoria with two horses, and so my carriage went to pick them up—all of them it could carry—the rest came in Mrs Ross’ donkey cart. Afterwards I took Mr and Mrs Gladstone home and it was a lovely drive. He was very much agitated because he thought they had taken possession of my carriage—and so was Mrs Gladstone. They were quite insubordinate at first and wanted to sit in the back seat, but I tucked myself into it and coaxed and beguiled them and related suitable anecdotes until they were soothed and resigned, and at the end of the drive he said, “I will no longer feel remorse, Mrs Burnett, I will only blush a little,” and, of course, I replied, “Then you will be very wicked—to blush at having given a pleasure.” Mrs Gladstone is coming to see me and she asked me to let them know when I arrive in London.
But there is no record of any further meeting. Frances returned to London much earlier than she had expected, and in circumstances which made it difficult to follow up even an acquaintance with the Prime Minister.
Frances joked about the situation but her blood was boiling. She had had an obsequious, flattering letter from a man signing himself E. V. Seebohm, who had made a play from Little Lord Fauntleroy. “I sincerely trust,” he wrote, “that I have written nothing that could cast a slur on one of the most beautiful stories it has ever been my pleasure to read.” His compliments cut no ice with Frances. It had been bad enough when unauthorized plays had been made from That Lass and “Editha’s Burglar”, but Little Lord Fauntleroy, her most valuable property, had to be fought for. She wrote to Owen Lankester:
50 Lung’Arno Nuovo,
Florence, 1887
Benevolent Giant:
Do something for me—I am a distracted little person—A thief has quietly dramatized Fauntleroy and I am engaged in fierce battle with him. A large young woman—possibly your size—is to play Cedric. Figuerez vous! Figurativi! (French and Italian ensembles. It is so difficult to speak English.)
Accidente! Brutta bestia! Some of that is swearing. I am very proud of it. Madonna Mia! O, Signore!—What I wish you to do is to be present at the first night of that play—if it has not yet been done—and take with you some other intelligent mind and feeling heart and then write to me in your most powerful language.
The brigand, whose name is Seebohm, knew he was doing a miserable, dishonest thing, and knew I thought myself protected by the “All rights reserved” on the title-page. He kept his plan most discreetly secret until he was ready and it was too late for me to hurry my play and secure myself—and then he calmly informed me that he had “dramatized my charming book”. Then, letters and telegrams and general excitement. Then I think he realized that he was in a rather glaringly ugly position and that public opinion would be against him, and after having told me I couldn’t help myself, etc. etc. he finally telegraphed that he would give me half profits if I would sanction.
But I will not sanction any profits if my dear little boy is spoiled. Will you go and see? Take your dear “Mamma”—Yes, your dear Mamma—in the midst of my agitation I pause to defy you. Oh! yes, and if you can allure the gentleman whom I loved in secret last summer—but whose cherished name I have unfortunately forgotten—the one with the nice eyes and the lovely demeanor—the one who was molto bellino-er than you—you will be able to pick him out by that, because there could not possibly be more than one. His opinion, combined with yours—would decide anything for me . . .
. . . Now I must dress and go and call on a Duchess, to whom I have owed a call for two weeks. She probably won’t let me in when I arrive, though she is a very nice duchess. You know the one I told you about, who may call the King “Cousin”.
I want to be a duchess myself. I think it would be nice.
Addio, Illustrissimo Signor
It was a joke, of course. She would never have written like that to Vernon Lee. She would never have spoken like that to the boys. But in one way it was true. How delightful it would be to be a Duchess . . . But if she couldn’t be a Duchess, she could at least, thanks to her books, pay calls on them, not too effusively or enthusiastically (“I have owed a call for two weeks”). And she could write about them too.
But now Frances had to concentrate all her energies on saving Lord Fauntleroy from the pirates. If it meant changing the law, then the law must be changed. In the letter to Dr Lankester, she seems mainly concerned about whether Seebohm has ruined her creation in dramatizing it, whether he has spoiled her “dear little boy”. But the more she thought about it, the more she resented his action. Why should he have even half the profits? The difficulty was that Seebohm was technically acting perfectly legally as the law stood at that time. He came to Florence to try to persuade her to let him go ahead, but she had just left on 12th March. He followed her and they met briefly on the railway station at Turin. It was their only meeting. Frances refused to accept any of his suggestions for collaboration and profit sharing. He hurried back to launch his play before Frances had a chance to produce a rival version.
If we are to believe Vivian (who with Lionel was left in Italy in Kitty Hall’s care) Frances travelled to England “with her companion Miss Chiellini and a generous supply of manuscript paper, pencils and ink”, and started her dramatization on the train. A good proportion of it was apparently done when she arrived in London. She had decided not only to see for herself what Seebohm had written but to follow it up as rapidly as possible with The Real Little Lord Fau
ntleroy.
Seebohm’s play was produced at the Prince of Wales Theatre, London on 23rd February 1888. Frances was already in consultation with Kaye and Guedalla, a firm of solicitors recommended by the Lankesters. The case, with Warne, the English publishers, named as plaintiffs, was heard in the Chancery Division of the High Court of Justice on 24th March. Not all the press comment was entirely favourable. The Era, the stage paper, said: “If Mrs Burnett thought that Little Lord Fauntleroy was worth preserving for the adaptor, why did she not secure it in the legal way? A copyright performance can be easily done for about £30, a mere trifle to a successful lady novelist.” Surely, they said, she could not really have believed herself protected by ALL RIGHTS RESERVED on the title-page? “We are not inclined to take a sentimental view of the grievances of adapted novelists, who get an excellent advertisement, by the way, out of the fuss over their sufferings. But we are willing to wax as indignant as their most enthusiastic champion could desire at the existing state of the law . . . Why do the novelists not all ‘pull together’, agitate fiercely and get the law altered?” But Seebohm lost any sympathy there might have been for him by claiming that his play was only “suggested” by Mrs Burnett’s book, whereas it turned out that plot, characters and dialogue had all been lifted bodily.
The novelists did not “pull together” to get the law altered. Frances— with her solicitors and counsel—did it on her own. The plaintiffs decided to base their case on an infringement of the Copyright Act of 1842, which forbade the making of copies of copyright material. Seebohm had admitted the existence of four copies of the play, one of which had been deposited at the office of the Lord Chamberlain. The play contained large chunks taken directly from the novel. A previous case (Reade v. Conquest) had held that the mere representation on the stage of a play did not infringe the Copyright Act, “but representation was one thing and copying another”. Seebohm might have the right, under the law as it stood, to represent the novel on the stage; but he had no right to make copies of any parts of the book.