Josephine Tey

by Jennifer Morag Henderson

  One of the most important people in Gwen’s circle of friends was her partner, the actress Marda Vanne. Later commentators on Richard of Bordeaux have emphasized the undercurrents of sexuality in the play; the relationship between John Gielgud as ‘Richard’ and his male friend ‘Robert’ – but any of these undercurrents came directly from John himself, as lead actor and director.27 In 1932, when Beth first met John, there was absolutely no discussion of Gielgud’s homosexuality.28 It was not something that could be discussed openly, and many of Beth’s new acquaintances would not even have referred to it in private. It was completely unlike the entertainment scene of today, where actors can openly come out as gay, and Gordon Daviot had no knowledge of it at all. Similarly, she did not at first understand that Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies was anything other than close friends with Marda Vanne. Indeed, Gwen had previously had serious relationships with men, and both she and John Gielgud were very careful of their public images, with articles in theatre magazines promoting John’s matinee idol status, and reinforcing Gwen’s femininity. However, many of Gwen’s circle of friends were either gay women, or sympathetic to lesbianism, including actress and director Peggy Webster, the artist and socialite Caroline (Lena) Ramsden, and writer and dedicated theatre fan Angela du Maurier. In their 30s, and members of the generation who had lived through the Great War, many of these women had taken a complex route in life to get to where they now were. They wanted to enjoy life to its full, not cutting themselves off from either love or a career. Gordon’s letters to her friends show a careful, yet growing awareness of how things were: it was, she explained obliquely, ‘something so foreign to my understanding that the chatter of Martians would be limpid sense by comparison’.29 Gordon did not really understand it, but she had no real problem with it. The friendship of these talented, creative, driven women was far more important to her than any consideration of their sexuality. Gordon wanted to write, and wanted to work with Gwen as an actress. In the mid-1930s, it seemed that Gordon could have everything: she had found the elusive balance she wanted, could discharge her family responsibilities in Inverness, have time to write, and yet still manage to be a part of a literary and artistic world in London, communicating by letter to her friends, and making regular trips to see them. It was one of the happiest times of her life.

  Chapter Eleven

  Queen of Scots

  When Gordon Daviot went to London, she usually stayed now in the Cowdray, a club for professional women in Cavendish Square.1 It was not a club for writers or ‘artistic’ women – unlike Dodie Smith and Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies’ beloved ‘Three Arts Club’ – and Gordon was actually a member because of her work as a VAD in hospitals – many other members were nurses. Gordon was pleased, however, to have a London address that she could use for business. Richard of Bordeaux had made Gordon a wealthy woman, and, unlike Gwen or John, she had no need to spend on property, since she was still living with Colin in Inverness. Gordon, like her father, was good with money and invested wisely; she wasn’t a big spender, but did like to buy quality.2 The Cowdray was a good base for her to meet people, and meant that she was in the centre of town, and able to come and go as she pleased, without relying on staying with her sister Moire, or any of her friends. Lena Ramsden remembered the pleasure she felt whenever Gordon Daviot called her up: Gordon didn’t like to phone on the crackly line from Inverness, so Lena knew that whenever Gordon called she was in the Cowdray Club and ready to meet up and have some fun.3

  Lena, like many of Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies’s circle, was a passionate supporter of the arts, a regular theatregoer and friends with actresses like Martita Hunt, and writers like Angela du Maurier and Marguerite Steen. Lena’s parties were legendary, both the ones that involved a lot of sitting around chatting and exchanging opinions, and the ones that got a little wilder: Lena did like a drink. The interwar years that Gordon had described in The Expensive Halo were full of parties: John Gielgud remembered an all-white party at the Motley’s design workshop, where everyone dressed in white and the food was all white.4 It’s a little difficult to picture Beth, the daughter of Colin, fitting in entirely at these parties, but she was there. Lena remembered her as more comfortable watching from the sidelines, ready with a droll comment, rather than the centre of attention as many of the actresses were, but always a part of what was going on.5

  Lena and Gordon began to develop a strong friendship, and Gordon made a trip with her to Manchester, Lena’s home town, to see a repertory version of The Laughing Woman.6 Bronson Albery, impresario and owner of the New Theatre, was very pleased with the performance: it was a financial success and he hoped that other rep versions would follow. Gordon was more interested in the idea of a touring version of the play, as had happened with Richard of Bordeaux, but she was now confident enough in her position as playwright to refer to ‘the cautious Bronny’ when describing this conversation to Gwen and Marda. Gordon was also more concerned with some of the details of the performance: both she and artist Lena had been horrified and amused by the actor’s depiction of Rene’s work as a sculptor: ‘It sounds incredible, but apparently no one in all the Manchester Rep. had any idea how one worked in clay [...]. And then when Rene graduated to stone he appeared with a mallet the size of a tar-drum and whacked away cheerfully and continually all through two scenes. That finished us.’ As usual though, Gordon was not involved in the production in any hands-on way, but used the rest of her time in Manchester to go to the races. Lena’s father was Chairman of the Manchester Racecourse Company, and Lena was a huge fan of horse racing, as well as, at various times, an enthusiastic horse rider and racehorse owner. Although Gordon never placed a bet, while the rich Lena liked the thrill of winning and losing money, the two women found they enjoyed each other’s company immensely, and Gordon had a standing invitation to Lena’s flat in Primrose Hill in London.

  In the 1930s, West End actresses could still afford to live near their theatres, and Gwen and Marda lived fairly nearby at Holly Place – an address that might sound familiar to keen Josephine Tey fans. Once Gwen and Marda had bought Tagley Cottage though, they started to persuade their London friends to make trips out to stay with them in the countryside. Lena described the long car journeys down what were still single-track roads, with Marda’s yappy little dog Snuffles annoying everyone in the back of the car.7 Gordon Daviot insisted on buying Gwen and Marda a tea set from Harrods for their new house – they had to choose it, and the saga of the purchase went on over several letters. Gordon began to write directly to Marda too, as well as Gwen.

  In early summer 1934, Gordon went on holiday with Gwen, Marda, Lena, and their friend the actress Peggy Webster, to Portmeirion.8 This planned village in Wales was a very popular holiday spot, visited by the likes of Noel Coward and Alfred Hitchcock, and is well known today for, among other things, being the set for the TV show The Prisoner. The run of Queen of Scots was about to start in June 1934, and the holiday was probably a last chance for Gwen to relax before playing her lead role, and a final opportunity to discuss the role with her playwright, Gordon. Peggy, who had had small roles in Richard of Bordeaux, was also in Queen of Scots, but had not long begun what was to be her main role: that of director. Peggy was to become one of the premier female directors, and the first woman to direct a major Shakespeare production on Broadway. In a way, Gordon Daviot had been responsible for her career too. During the run of Richard of Bordeaux Peggy’s part had been too small to give her much creative scope, but too large for her to take on another part in a different play, so she had turned to directing as a new outlet for her interest in the stage.9 Marda, a character actress, had a steady stream of fairly reliable jobs, while Lena was working seriously as an artist and sculptor. It was an astonishingly creative group of women, and the photo of Gordon relaxing with her friends on holiday is also a photo of some very powerful women in the arts world. In Beth’s family archive, there are a number of other informal snaps of the holiday: Gwen in her printed cotton frocks, Gordon in her inevitable twe
eds, Peggy in what looks like a leather jacket and gloves, Gordon in sunglasses, the three women all drinking, the sun shining in their eyes and their arms around each other.

  It was a hot summer. Queen of Scots opened on the 8th June 1934 at the New Theatre. While The Laughing Woman was the play that was to show off Gordon’s versatility to the critics, Queen of Scots from the start was meant to be a follow-up to Richard of Bordeaux, a star vehicle for Gwen, directed by Gielgud. It was written in the same way as Richard of Bordeaux, as a chronicle play moving through the story of Mary’s life, with humorous interjections from ‘common’ people breaking up the royal story, and a central doomed romance between Mary and her third husband, Bothwell. The casting of Bothwell caused some problems when the original holder of the part, Ralph Richardson, left the play only a week before curtain-up, saying he felt he wasn’t suited to the role.10 He was also not finding Gielgud’s direction helpful. A replacement was needed fast, and was found in the person of Laurence Olivier.

  Like Gielgud when Gordon Daviot first met him, Olivier was at that time a promising young actor, but not yet a household name. Daviot was very grateful to him for taking on the role at such short notice, afterwards inscribing a copy of the published play for him:

  Dear Larry, I may forget how well you played Bothwell. I may even forget the blue doublet and how you looked in it! But I shall remember always the gallant way you took over the part, the way you worked at it in those last crowded days, and the peace and reassurance your coming brought us. Bless you! Gordon Daviot.11

  Olivier was pleased to accept a role in such a prestigious play, which was an important stepping-stone for him in establishing himself as a leading man and gave him an early opportunity to meet and work with Gielgud. Gielgud and Olivier’s styles and personalities are famously opposite, and Daviot and Olivier never developed such a close friendship or working relationship as Daviot and Gielgud, though, as comments in The Daughter of Time show, Daviot continued to follow Olivier’s career.

  Other parts were easier to cast, with the important role of Mary’s second husband Darnley going to Glen Byam Shaw, Gielgud’s understudy in Richard of Bordeaux. Peggy Webster remembered that the rehearsals for Queen of Scots were particularly harmonious. She thought it was possibly the best cast of any play she ever worked on, before or since, with attention paid even to the casting of the smaller parts – Bothwell’s manservant Paris was played by a young James Mason.12 The only criticism over the final casting was that Laurence Olivier was too good-looking to play Bothwell – but this didn’t hurt the play’s publicity, as shots of Gwen in Olivier’s arms were prominently displayed inside theatre magazines, while Gwen’s image, in full make-up as Mary, was plastered over the front covers.13

  The tragic story of Mary, Queen of Scots is well known, and Gordon Daviot’s play began the action after the death of Mary’s first husband, the French king, describing her arrival back in Scotland as a young woman, and then her disastrous marriage to Darnley. Gordon then chose to present Mary as falling in love with Bothwell, who was to become her third husband after Darnley was murdered, and the play ends as Mary flees Scotland into what was to be captivity in England.

  Mary was Gwen’s dream part. Gwen, with all her charm and grace, understood Mary’s character, and could have played her perfectly; a tragic, romantic, beautiful woman whose story would have complemented Gwen’s biggest success as the doomed Juliet Capulet. Unfortunately, Gordon Daviot could not fully sympathize with Mary, an emotional, Catholic woman, who lived her life trying to follow the good advice of others and failed miserably every time she took her destiny into her own hands. Gordon Daviot was the later biographer of the principled, Protestant Claverhouse, and, however unfortunate Claverhouse turned out to be, his was a very different sort of tragedy from Mary’s. Mary was representative of a different sort of Scotland, and a different era of Scotland. Gordon Daviot tried to shape her play in such a way that it made the story acceptable to both herself and Gwen, and the two women researched the historical period avidly, but the audience is left with the strong impression from the beginning that Mary is unlikeable: we never really want her to succeed, and the driving force of the play is diluted.

  It’s hard to see whom Daviot does like in the sixteenth-century Scottish court: she could have chosen a character to sympathise with and built the play around them, but the commitment to historical truth that served her so well in Richard of Bordeaux or The Daughter of Time here leaves her unable to commit to any character completely. James Stewart, Earl of Moray, Mary’s half-brother who became an extremely popular Regent after Mary abdicated, comes close to being a sympathetic character, but even he, in the stage notes, is described with reservations. The only character Gordon Daviot might have managed to build the play around successfully is Bothwell, Mary’s third husband: Daviot herself was unhappy with the play, and admitted that she felt little sympathy with Mary. In later comments, she felt that it was her misunderstanding of the character of Bothwell which had caused some of the problem. If only Daviot had known more about the Protestant, principled Bothwell, he may well have become the sort of character who would have appealed and could have been written up well by her.

  ‘If I had seen Bothwell’s handwriting before I wrote Queen of Scots’, said Daviot, ‘I would have made him a very different man. The handwriting is a shock. Educated, clear-minded, constructive, controlled. The complete opposite of the man we have been led to believe in. More like Claverhouse’s than anyone else I can think of. And the handwriting doesn’t lie.’14 Bothwell apologists often feel an affinity with Richard III apologists, and Beth MacKintosh gave Richard III his best chance yet at justice in The Daughter of Time. (Opinions of Bothwell vary wildly. Robert Gore-Brown wrote one of the best studies, whilst acknowledging the darker parts of his character, in his book Lord Bothwell – which was published around the time of Daviot’s biography of Claverhouse, and in fact advertised on the dust jacket of Claverhouse.) Bothwell was played with great energy by Laurence Olivier, a style that probably didn’t help Gordon Daviot reinterpret his character. Jumping around on stage, Olivier broke his ankle and had to be replaced by his understudy.

  Character was Daviot’s great strength in writing, and with problems in her understanding of some of the roles, her other shortcomings, or idiosyncrasies, as a playwright began to stand out more. She preferred to emphasize dialogue, rather than action, but she made some strange choices about which events to show on stage. The murder of Mary’s secretary Rizzio, for example, would appear to be a gift of a set-piece for a playwright. Mary was six months pregnant and, late at night, unable to sleep, was playing cards with Rizzio and some of her other servants in her room, lit by a blaze of candles, when a gang of armed men – all of whom were high-born noblemen and known to her and who were led by her husband Darnley – ran into the room. One of them held a pistol to Mary’s pregnant belly while the others grabbed Rizzio, stabbed him more than fifty times then threw him down the stairs, leaving Darnley’s knife ostentatiously sticking out of his back. Daviot shows us none of this on stage. Instead, she gives us a scene with two serving men, one French and one Scottish, who are teaching each other dance steps before becoming worried about the noise coming from the Queen’s room. This is followed by a scene where Darnley tells a crowd of well-wishers outside the castle that there has been a bit of a disturbance because French and Scottish servants have had a disagreement, and yes, the Queen is all right. Daviot’s scene with the serving men dancing is a subtle, humorous exploration of culture clash, but there is a feeling of missed opportunity.

  John Gielgud thought that Gordon Daviot’s refusal to include anything about the Casket Letters – supposed love letters from Mary to Bothwell – weakened the play, but I don’t think they would have added anything, as the evidence in them is so discredited nowadays, with agreement that many of them were whole or partial forgeries.15 However this adds to the consensus that there was something in Daviot’s interpretation of Mary and her love life
that was not working. Daviot just did not appreciate the charm of Mary Stuart, and saw the story as a tragedy that could have been avoided, not a doomed romance (romance either of a country or between people). The audience, waiting for a strong partnership such as Richard and Anne’s in Richard of Bordeaux, were disappointed. Daviot herself, faced with a play that would have been a success by anyone’s standards but her own, began to feel frustrated, and resented the interference with her vision by her producer and even her actors. Gordon finally recognized her lack of control in the rehearsal period of the play, and began to object to any more suggested changes.

  Queen of Scots was not a failure – its cast was stellar, and it managed a respectable if unimpressive run of 106 performances, closing on 8th September 1934, three months after opening. It was reviewed well, and would probably have run for longer if it had not come up against one final hurdle in the weather. The summer that it opened was oppressively hot, and theatre audiences across the whole West End dwindled.16 Even in the particularly cold, snowy March when I visited the New Theatre the inside got uncomfortably warm, and it is a fair excuse to say that the weather could be a factor in a play’s success there.