After a period of touring the provinces and suburbs of London, he was taken up by the Stage Society, which gave performances of plays that the commercial theatre would not touch. The combination of personal charm and exceptional ability in Barker soon made him popular with the highbrows of that era, and he began to act and produce plays for the Society. One of the untouchable playwrights of that time was Bernard Shaw, whose Candida had been done on tour with Janet Achurch in the leading part. Shaw would not allow it to be seen in London until he could find the right young man for one of the chief characters. “I was at my wit’s end for an actor who could do justice to the part of Marchbanks,” Shaw told me; “when one day I dropped in to a matinee of Hauptmann’s Friedensfest, and instantly saw the very fellow for my part. I wrote to announce my wonderful discovery to Janet and her husband, who replied that they had frequently mentioned Barker to me as the ideal man for the part.”
The play was done by the Stage Society on Sunday, July 1, 1900. Barker made the hit of the piece and firmly established himself as an actor at the age of twenty-three. More important, he became friendly with Shaw, who liked his intelligence and enthusiasm.
For a while Barker continued to act for a living in popular pieces, but he was thoroughly dissatisfied with such work. “How high a pitch his resolution soars!” he had said as Richard II, and now it became true of himself. Filled with the idea of a National Theatre for the future production of worthwhile plays, he collaborated with William Archer in a book on the subject, and continued to work for the Stage Society on the immediate production of plays that were worthwhile. At last his great chance arrived. A wealthy Shakespearean enthusiast named J. H. Leigh took the Court Theatre, a small playhouse in Sloane Square, London, and asked his manager, J. E. Vedrenne, to arrange that Barker should superintend a revival of Two Gentlemen of Verona. Barker was willing if Vedrenne would join him in giving six matinee performances of Candida at the same theater. Vedrenne agreed, the matinees were given, and a profit was made.
Encouraged by this success, Vedrenne and Barker formed a partnership and put on a series of afternoon performances. A few friends guaranteed the venture but were never called upon for money, and the famous Vedrenne-Barker management of the Court Theatre, which opened in October 1904 and closed at the end of June 1907, was the most notable enterprise in the history of the British stage since the days of Shakespeare. The success of the management was wholly due to the plays of Shaw, in which Barker acted, though all of them were produced by the author. Barker himself produced the plays of other dramatists, including his own and those of John Galsworthy, John Masefield, St. John Hankin, Laurence Housman, Ibsen, Maeterlinck, as well as translations of Euripides by Gilbert Murray. The theatre held just over six hundred people, and though the comedies of Shaw kept it going the handsome profits of West End theatres were out of the question. Plays were put on for a few weeks and, when successful, revived at intervals.
As an actor Barker tended to underplay his parts, though he always gave them brains and poetry. He was highly successful as Marchbanks in Candida and Dubedat in The Doctor’s Dilemma, but he had not the rhetorical power for Tanner in Man and Superman, and in the opinion of both Shaw and Max Beerbohm he was definitely bad as Burgoyne in The Devil’s Disciple. As a producer of the realistic, intimate kind of play he was unrivaled. He managed to inoculate actors with his own intelligence, his method of doing so being peculiar. I heard him ask a player whether he had any conception of the past history of the character he was attempting to portray. The actor could make nothing of this, and gazed blankly into space. “Come, come,” said Barker encouragingly, “you are not, I hope, going to tell me that the fellow drops from the skies, ready-made, at the moment you walk on the stage?” Since the actor was still in the dark, Barker provided a full biography of the character in question, his object being to quicken the man’s understanding, to make him get into the skin of the part.
Barker once cast me for the part of Valentine in Twelfth Night, though another play was substituted for it after half a dozen rehearsals. Valentine makes a speech wherein he gives a message from Olivia to Orsino, beginning it with the statement that he has received the message through Olivia’s handmaid, Maria. I delivered it as well as I could, after which Barker took my arm in a friendly manner, walked me up and down the stage, and gently explained that the speech contained a good deal more than I had fancied. “Don’t you think, dear friend, that you are overlooking the character of Maria?” he began. I failed to catch his drift and he proceeded: “Well, let us see. You start off by saying that Olivia’s handmaid has given you the message. Now her handmaid is Maria. But Maria, as you ought to know if you have studied the play attentively, is a player of pranks. She may have invented the message, or perhaps Malvolio advised her what to say, or possibly Sir Toby Belch provided her with a hint or two; and we cannot overlook the possibility of a contribution by Feste the Fool, who usually manages to poke his nose into other people’s business. But it is quite in the cards, and you must not rule this out, that she gives a hotchpotch of herself—Olivia-Malvolio-Belch-Feste. Now study the speech with those possibilities in mind, and see what you can make of it.” Of course all this was not meant to be taken literally. Barker wanted me to think the speech, not merely to say it.
Naturally such novel mannerisms in the art of production were caricatured in the profession, and one story about Barker went the rounds of the dressing rooms. It was reported that at some rehearsal Barker had said to Dennis Eadie: “I want you when you enter to give the impression of a man who is steeped in the poetry of Tennyson.” J. M. Barrie, who was watching the rehearsal, overheard this and said to another actor: “I want you when you enter to give the impression of a man who has a brother living in Greenock.” Many years later I asked Barker if this were true. He replied: “I don’t remember it happening.
It sounds liker to something said by Barrie across the dinner table—me present—in chaff.”
His methods as a producer were not suited to the work of Shaw and Shakespeare, whose plays call for “ham” acting. “Keep your worms for your own plays,” Shaw advised Barker, “and leave me the drunken, stagey, brass-bowelled barnstormers my plays are written for.” But if it had not been for the Vedrenne-Barker management, Shaw would have had to wait several more years for recognition in England. At the Court Theatre John Bull’s Other Island, Man and Superman, Major Barbara and The Doctor’s Dilemma were produced, You Never Can Tell was revived and proved the chief money-maker of the concern, Ellen Terry appeared in Captain Brassbound’s Conversion, and within three years Shaw had become the leading playwright of Great Britain, though riches were not added to fame until Beerbohm Tree produced Pygmalion in 1914.
Shaw would not allow Man and Superman to be performed until he could get the right woman for the leading part, Ann Whitefield. He found her in Lillah McCarthy, who became his chief actress at the Court and Barker’s wife in 1906. Shaw told me that Barker “was always falling in love and getting engaged.” He probably married Lillah because they worked so well together in the theatre, and her statuesque beauty appealed to him. Also he was the sort of man who needed nursing. He had a weak constitution, suffered from indigestion, was careless about food, heedless about clothes, unable to save money, and subject to moods of exaltation and depression. Lillah looked after him well, and took a country cottage for his greater comfort.
Flushed with success the Vedrenne-Barker management moved into the West End, taking the Savoy Theatre, where Forbes-Robertson appeared in Caesar and Cleopatra, and The Devil’s Disciple as well as Arms and the Man were added to the Shavian cycle. But the rent was too high, and the general theatregoing public was not yet equal to brainy plays. The management was soon in debt and had to close down. To save the partners, Shaw footed the bill, losing between four and five thousand pounds. Then Barker went on tour in Shaw’s plays, but was stricken with typhoid fever at Dublin and nearly succumbed.
Next he took charge of a repertory season at
the Duke of York’s Theatre in 1910. J. M. Barrie had persuaded an American commercial manager named Charles Frohman to try a season of highbrow plays. With growing amazement Frohman witnessed such productions as Barker’s The Madras House, Galsworthy’s Justice and Shaw’s Misalliance. His amazement changed to horror when he studied the box-office returns, and although he was assured that houses averaging £120 were remarkably good for this class of work, he preferred the sort of show that averaged £300 a performance. Therefore, he speedily abandoned the enterprise and thenceforth lived on the profits of his successes, upheld by the memory of the noble work he had once done for the higher drama.
Barker’s own plays, The Voysey Inheritance, The Madras House and Waste, the last of which was banned by the censor, were interesting contributions to the intellectual movement of the time, but they were written in a precious, finical, quasi-natural style and gave the impression that he was trying to persuade himself of something while remaining uncertain of what it was. They do not wear well; in fact they now appear to be worn out; but it is possible they will be revived as period pieces when sufficiently old-fashioned.
Frohman having failed him, Barker got financial backing from Lord Howard de Walden to put on Shaw’s Androcles and The Lion at the St. James’s Theatre in 1913, and from Lord Lucas to stage Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale, Twelfth Night and A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Savoy Theatre. These three productions made a sensation. The plays were performed in their entirety, which meant that the actors had to speak a great deal faster than the pace to which they were accustomed, which also meant that the beauty of the verse was often sacrificed to speed and naturalism. The scenery and costumes brought a new beauty to the theatre, Barker’s taste being exquisite, but his dislike of traditional Shakespearean acting led him to some undercasting and underplaying. On the whole, a notable enterprise which made an end of the practice of cutting the plays to shreds to gratify the egotism and vanity of “star” performers.
All this time Barker was busy writing or trying to write plays, whenever possible at the farmhouse taken by Lillah, Court Lodge, Stansted, Kent. He was getting very depressed over his failure to establish a National Theatre or a system of repertory, though anyone else would have been delighted with the long runs of Shaw’s Fanny’s First Play and Arnold Bennett’s The Great Adventure, both under his management. When war started in August 1914 his depression increased; he thought the hostilities as preposterous as the commercial theatre; and after staging a version of Hardy’s The Dynasts he went with Lillah to America, where the Stage Society of New York wished him to produce several plays. One of the guarantors of the undertaking was Archer M. Huntington, whose wife Helen took an instant fancy to Barker, who took an instant fancy to her, their mutual feelings being soon obvious to Huntington and Lillah.
Archer Huntington’s father, like so many American millionaires, had made enormous sums out of railway speculation. Having a son but no wife, his fortune was divided between the former and his nephew, Henry E. Huntington, who founded the library of that name at San Marino, California. Unlike the nephew, Archer cared nothing for his father’s business but greatly for Spanish art, which he studied closely. He also wished to learn about Greek antiquities, and engaged a fellow named Criss as secretary to accompany him on a tour of the Grecian islands. Criss had a wife, Helen, much younger than himself. Archer Huntington liked Helen at once and asked her to join the tour as his guest, an arrangement that resulted in a divorce—Criss no doubt being handsomely recompensed—and the marriage of Helen to Archer in August 1895.
Twenty years after that wedding Helen decided to have another. She wrote poetry and stories of a rather precious kind, and entertained social as well as literary ambitions. Barker, besides being physically attractive to women, aroused their maternal instincts. He had made a great reputation in the world Helen aspired to vanquish and had the additional charm of being younger than herself. No one knew her age; she was probably a dozen years older than Barker, though she looked a dozen years younger than she was. We need not doubt that she loved him, because people often love the symbol of what they desire. He represented everything in the world for which she craved: intellectual eminence, imposing appearance, social prominence. That he loved her even more intensely need not be doubted, since she was emblematic of his hunger for comfort, security and devotion to his needs. He had always required a nurse, and here was one who could keep him in luxury as well.
At the beginning of 1915 he produced Androcles and The Lion, A Midsummer Night’s Dream and The Doctor’s Dilemma in New York, but absence from England made him feel uncomfortable and he wrote to Gilbert Murray that life in the trenches would come as a relief. But on reflection, service with the Red Cross proved a less agitating form of action, and after he and Lillah had returned from America in the middle of 1915 he crossed to France for ambulance work, having made it plain that his affair with Helen was a thing of the past. In a manner known only to those with friends in key positions, he got leave to lecture in America that autumn; and having assured Lillah that he loved her very much, he returned to the arms of Helen. He could no longer face a life of struggle. As Somerset Maugham perceived thirteen years earlier, “he lacked spiritual vitality,” and had not the guts to continue the fight for what he held dear. He asked Lillah to divorce him and begged his friends Shaw and Barrie to do everything in their power to urge her to that end. They did their best. Many years later Shaw gave me the facts, which had to be treated rather gingerly while any of the parties were alive:
Barker asked me to persuade Lillah to divorce him and to offer her £500 a year if she agreed. She indignantly refused to do anything of the kind, was tempestuously furious with him and extremely angry with me for our lack of decency in proposing such a thing. Barker went completely mad when I passed this on to him, and said that if ever he met Lillah in the street he’d strike her. He was infatuated to the point of silliness by Helen: he was no longer a rational individual, but behaved like a raving lunatic.
Having returned to the Red Cross after his lectures, Barker stayed several times with Shaw and Barrie, begging them again and again to make Lillah see the necessity of a divorce. She behaved like an outraged empress, stating her conviction that Barker would soon get over his trumpery affair with Helen and return to her. Barker behaved like a hurt child, and corresponded with Helen regularly. Then he again went to America, but when conscription was enforced in England he returned to serve with the Horse Artillery. But this was unpleasant, and through the influence of a friend he got a commission in the Intelligence Department. Let Shaw continue:
In a state of frantic desperation, Barker implored me to do everything I could to move Lillah; so I went to see her again, pressed his proposal on her, and said that if she agreed to divorce him she’d get £500 a year for life, but that if she refused she’d get nothing, as Barker was a poor man. This of course was pure blackmail. Her outraged vanity made her very crafty, and she remarked that Barker and her rival must be together. “No,” said I easily, “he is in Paris, but she is in New York with her husband.” “In that case,” she pounced, “how has he been able to make these arrangements at such short notice?” I was completely cornered, but sneaked out by saying that they probably corresponded by cable in cipher. I then left her to consider the question. But consideration like a devil came, and she promptly wrote to Helen’s husband telling him that Barker was sending cables in cipher to his wife. There was an almighty explosion at the other end, and Helen never forgave me for being, as she thought, solely responsible for Lillah’s letter. In addition she hated the Shavian influence on Barker. Never having got beyond 1865, everything that has happened in literature since then is anathema to her, especially the works of Shaw.
Anyhow the divorce went through, and Lillah got her £500 a year. Later she was told by an American lawyer that she could sue the other lady in the American courts for seducing her husband, and as Barker’s second wife was very rich the lawyer suggested action. Lillah sent
this information on to me, but I strongly advised her not to rake up all the mud that was then settling and to possess herself in patience for a while. I wrote to tell Barker of the latest development, with the result that Lillah got another £500 a year to keep quiet.
Helen also managed to get a divorce. Her husband treated her with extreme generosity and made her a handsome settlement. She became Barker’s wife in July 1918 at King’s Weigh House Chapel, Duke Street, Grosvenor Square, both of them making false entries as to age in the register. She made the most of her appearance with the aid of costume and cosmetics, and he looked very smart in khaki decorated with green tabs. Nearly two years later Lillah married an eminent biologist, Frederick William Keeble, who received a knighthood in 1922. Shaw told me:
Helen was incensed when Keeble was so honoured, and spent a day with Mrs. Thomas Hardy, my informant, storming about “Lady Keeble” and complaining bitterly that Barker had not been knighted. When the Labour Party came to power Ramsay MacDonald and the rest tried hard to find some supporters who would not disgrace them in the Upper House, and Barker would certainly have been given a peerage if his wife had not forced him to abandon Socialism, a reflection that must have been gall and wormwood to her.
Her ambition to make him a highly respected member of the community took the curious form of turning him into a country gentleman. She rented a picturesque residence near Honiton in south Devon called Netherton Hall, and entertained “the county” there. She made him hyphen his name because Granville-Barker implied an ancient family while Barker suggested a grocer. She provided liveries for the servants and instructed them in the art of deference. She studied Burke’s Peerage, which, as Oscar Wilde once said, was the best thing in fiction the English have ever produced. Guests who were not of the nobility had to be of exceptional distinction. Stage people were barred and very few authors were admitted. She cut her husband off from the theatre, though at the end of 1920 she allowed him to produce a play by Maeterlinck because he had signed an agreement to do so before their marriage, as well as a play they had both translated from the Spanish.
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