Never were two epithets so misapplied by a man with a genius for insight, for “Janus Weathercock” was a forger and had even then murder in his mind. He ceased to write. He went with his wife on a visit to his uncle. After a short illness the uncle died, and Wainwright inherited the property. It was not nearly enough to satisfy this high-flown gentleman’s needs. Moreover, it was held by trustees, so that only the interest reached his hands. He forged the names of his trustees to a Power of Attorney apparently with so much success, that for a long ‘while no suspicion was aroused. He apparently forged five such documents, but, even so, poverty was always at his door.
At what particular date he turned his thoughts to the possibilities of insurance we do not know, but it was in the year 1830 that the two young step-sisters of his -wife, Helene Francos Phoebe and Madeline Abercrombie, began to haunt the insurance offices of the City. Helene Frances Phoebe wanted her life insured for sums ranging from £2,000 to £3,000 for periods of not longer than two to three years. From office to office these young ladies went, and they were actually able to effect these insurance policies for an aggregate amount of no less than £18,000. The policies once effected, Wainwright had recourse to an ingenious device. Phoebe gave out that she was going abroad and made her will in favour of her sister, Madeline, with Wainwright as the sole executor. He would have, in the event of Phoebe’s death, complete control over the money paid by the Insurance Companies, although he would not stand in the suspicious position of one who had had the money bequeathed to him by will. He might still, of course, be suspected, but he would be a long step further from suspicion than if the crude method of leaving the money to him had been adopted. There can be little doubt that Phoebe, and probably Madeline too, under the spell of this man’s ascendancy, were parties to the plot — as they understood it. Phoebe was to disappear on the Continent. By means of forged papers Wainwright was to prove her death, collect the insurance money, and join her with the rest of the family on the Continent. This was no doubt the plan talked over of an evening in those shabby furnished rooms in Conduit Street to which the family had been now reduced. But this was merely the plan by which Wainwright had secured the help of the two young and attractive girls. Unspoken, at the back of his mind, lay a much more sinister project. The night after Phoebe Abercrombie had settled her affairs, she went to the theatre with the rest of the family. A lobster supper followed upon their return to their lodgings, and in the night Phoebe was taken ill. She died — Oh! prudent Mr. Wainwright! — at a time when he was out walking with his wife. The body was examined and a certificate of death was issued by the doctor in the ordinary way. Wainwright began to demand his £18,000 from the various Insurance offices. They declined to pay. Wainwright left England and commenced an action. But such a light did the Counsel for the Insurance Company throw upon Wainwright’s manœuvres that his claim was rejected by the Jury. The Bank of England apparently began now to look into that little matter of the Power of Attorney. Wainwright’s forgeries were discovered, and Wainwright wisely preferred to remain at Boulogne. He lodged there, by the way, with an English officer whose life he managed to insure for £5,000, and after one premium had been paid the English officer died. Wainwright seems then to have wandered for a while in France. He certainly was arrested by the French police and imprisoned at Paris for six months. Impelled by some interest of which we do not know, he returned to London for forty-eight hours; and during those forty-eight hours he made the one small fatal mistake which put an end to his activities. He stayed in an hotel close to Covent Garden, but, startled by some disturbance in the street, he for a moment drew the blind aside and looked out. By one of those coincidences which are not so uncommon as the pedantic would have one to believe, there was a man passing in the street who knew him. The passer-by caught a glimpse of the face peeping out from behind the blind and cried aloud “That’s Wainwright, the bank forger.” He was tried on a charge of forgery, sentenced to transportation for life, and died miserably, years afterwards, in Sydney.
CHAPTER VII.
THE CORPORATION.
AN EARLIER CHAPTER gave some account of the origin and beginnings of the Royal Exchange Assurance Corporation. It would not be in keeping with this note on the occasion of the Bicentenary of the Corporation to enter into those details of profits, advantages and benefits, which are more suitable to a prospectus. But certain landmarks may well be noted.
The year 1720 was, as we have seen, the difficult year in the history of the Corporation. It was the first year when the Corporation worked under its new Charter, and under its present name. It was the one year of all its two hundred in which for reasons which we have understood it paid no dividend upon its stock. Yet, during this one year of 1720, it gave such proofs of courage and vitality as must have inspired all intimately interested in its operations, with a very stout confidence; for although the threat of disaster was at the door, its Directors went blithely on their way, organising the extension of its business.
In 1720 it absorbed the Sadler’s Hall Company, which with a nominal capital of two millions was unable to obtain a Charter under which it could do business. In 1721, the Royal Exchange Assurance Corporation added to the Charter which it already possessed, another, granting it power to insure for life and against fire. In 1721, it appointed its first agent. Let us set down the actual date and record the name of the man, the fore-runner of so many thousands who were to carry on the torch, each in his turn, through the next two hundred years. On 22nd May, the Directors appointed Mr. Palmer, of Ockingham, in Berkshire, its agent.
After that day the Corporation set to work very quickly to extend its agencies, for on the 31st of the same month it agreed to appoint “as many country postmasters as are proper to be country correspondents”; and by the next year, so widely had the system been increased, that it resolved, by a formal declaration, to undertake no responsibility in any town of America where it had not already an agent appointed.
The Corporation’s machinery for dealing with fires was at this time, primitive as all such arrangements then were. It appointed one man whose business it was to fix the firemarks upon the houses insured, and in his odd times to run messages for the office. The firemark itself was an object of some discussion at the meetings of the Board. It was too heavy, and it seems there was too much gilding to satisfy the frugality of the Directors. Mr. Spelman, the Fire Clerk, was accordingly ordered to provide two new samples from which the Directors might choose; and he was especially enjoined to inform the Committee of the exact price of the mark “distinguishing what the lead will cost and what the gilding will come to.” It seems that the unfortunate Mr. Spelman, even with this sharp hint to remind him of his duties, could not restrain his passion for gilding. The Fire Committee accordingly took the matter out of Mr. Spelman’s hands and ordered “the Plumber that used to serve the Company to make a model of the mark with a large crown, and lay the expense before the Committee.” The Plumber understood his Committee better than Mr. Spelman, and the Firemark with the large crown, which to-day decorates some of the houses originally insured under a policy with the Royal Exchange Assurance Corporation, is the very same mark which was designed in 1721 by that economical and understanding plumber. Mr. Smith, who founded the plumber’s design, received 141/2d for each firemark. The ha’penny alone should have been sufficient by the confidence which it inspired in the economical management of the Company to have brought hundreds of annuitants on to those hone stones which paved the second Royal Exchange as they had done the first.
To the one fireman and messenger combined were shortly added others, and we find in the year 1752 that thirty-six firemen, nine porters and four carmen paraded the West end of the town — it is to be supposed as an advertisement for the Corporation. It was the custom of those days to employ as firemen, watermen who plied habitually on the Thames. These were stout and handy men, although since the Thames was the general highway of London, it looks as if their ordinary occupation must have suffered. They w
ore the liveries of their separate offices, and those employed by the Royal Exchange Assurance Corporation must have cut a fine figure when they paraded the West end of the town, in a livery of yellow lined with pink, with music playing in front of them, and five shillings in their pockets for their dinners. The custom by which each separate insurance company kept its own firemen was a bad one in the public interest. For it meant that if the house in flames bore the firemark of a different company, the firemen simply went home and left the building burning. It was not until January 1866, that the Metropolitan Fire Brigade, as we know it, came into existence.
The Royal Exchange Assurance Corporation stands to-day its own evidence and justification. It was the first Insurance Office to extend its work to the troubled country of Ireland, where fires were more than ordinarily common, for it opened its first office in Abbey Street, Dublin, in the year 1722: and it retains to-day by the activity of its agents and the extension of its business that pre-eminence which its priority in time first gave to it. Of late years it has undertaken much work which in other days would have been deemed quite outside the scope of an Insurance Corporation. It was the first Insurance Office in England to set up a Trustee branch. This was in 1904, when as yet there was no Public Trustee, and many a legatee’s affairs were plunged into confusion by the death or business inexperience of an Executor. Thus, though not a philanthropic institution, the Corporation has pursued its business by beneficent means. It has seen companies — such as that which was originated by the famed Mr. Montague Tigg — blaze for a moment in a false prosperity and then disappear. It has remained proud in its antiquity, faithful to its traditions, and yet alert to each new development of the machinery of life which could strengthen its foundations and extend its influence. It has survived the most momentous changes and the most difficult crises in the national life of Great Britain. Yes, but self-preservation is not everything. For a Corporation to five for two hundred years is very well in itself; but to five at the end of that time amidst the increasing confidence and good will of those who have entrusted their interests to its care is a greater matter of which the Royal Exchange Assurance Corporation may well be infinitely proud.
A. E. W. MASON.
Sir George Alexander and the St. James’ Theatre (1935)
CONTENTS
PREFACE
CHAPTER I
CHAPTER II
CHAPTER III
CHAPTER IV
CHAPTER V
CHAPTER VI
CHAPTER VII
CHAPTER VIII
CHAPTER IX
CHAPTER X
CHAPTER XI
CHAPTER XII
CHAPTER XIII
Sir George Alexander (1858-1918) was an English stage actor, theatre producer and manager.
PREFACE
I BEG HERE to thank Dame Madge Kendal for allowing me to print a letter from the late W. H. Kendal; Mrs Hughes for allowing me to print letters from the late Sir Arthur Pinero; Captain Vyvyan Holland, letters from the late Oscar Wilde; the Executors of Henry James, O.M., and all other Executors who have given me similar permissions.
There are two Appendices at the end of the volume. The first gives a complete list of all the plays produced at the St. James’ Theatre by Sir George Alexander, with the dates of production: the second a list, as complete as I could make it, of plays produced by other managements during Alexander’s tenancy.
A. E. W. MASON
CHAPTER I
The St. James’ Theatre — Alexander’s policy — Managers and authors in 1890 — Alexander’s birth, boyhood, and early career
THE ST. JAMES’ Theatre on the 1st of January 1935 entered upon its centenary; and until it had passed middle age it was a place as harassed and experimental as a post-war country. There were, to be sure, bright passages in its history. Ristori and Rachel trailed their tragic robes upon its boards. There Henry Irving, as Rawdon Scudamore in Dion Boucicault’s play, Hunted Down, under the management of Miss Herbert, made his first significant appearance in London. For eight years John Hare and the Rendais graced it with the lustre of their art. They produced there The Falcon, a one-act play by Lord Tennyson founded upon a story by Boccaccio, and the second of the Laureate’s works to be presented on the stage. They were responsible too for The Squire and The Hobby Horse, the first full-length comedies of Arthur Pinero, who at this same theatre was to confer and acquire such high distinction in after years. But apart from those periods, the doors of the St. James’ Theatre were as often shut as open. Managements went in and were shorn and went out. Strange entertainments called burlettas failed to entertain; and even the lions of Van Amburgh could not roar the public in. But in November of the year 1890, an actor thirty-two years of age, with no more than eleven years’ professional experience, took the theatre over, held it until his death twenty-eight years later, and gave to it a high and lasting place in any history of the English stage.
No doubt the adventure was more possible then than it would be in these days. There were not half a dozen sub-lessees, all wanting something for nothing, between the owner of the theatre and the man who did the work. Salaries and rates alike were lower. A play could be acted to houses half full and pay its way until a successor was ready. But none the less, the long management of George Alexander was an achievement which required, beyond the actor’s talents, the judgment and courage which go to the making of any prince of industry.
Alexander brought to his theatre a considered policy, but it would be wrong to infer that it had anything whatever to do with the kind of play which he meant to produce. A foolish and misleading phrase came into use in the Press. A play was or was not “a St. James’ play”. It generally was not, for the phrase was really only useful to a critic with an unacted comedy in his pocket — and there was a large number of such in the ‘nineties, as Alexander’s correspondence shows. It was a useful weapon to them, because it stroked the manager whilst it smashed the play. But in truth there never was such a thing as a St. James’ play. The theatre never specialised, and its repertory became wide enough to cover the whole catalogue of Polonius. Comedies, Shakespearian, modern and romantic, farces, dramas of the day and dramas in costume, tragedies in verse, and tragedies in prose, historical plays, plays of provincial life, pantomimes — all got their opportunity on the stage of the St. James’, if only they were thought to be good enough of their kind.
Nevertheless Alexander had a definite policy. In the first place what he strove for was the proper balance of the play and not the predominance of the leading part. The best acting which could be obtained to set the theme fairly before the public was obtained. It will be seen again and again throughout this Memoir with what care, with how minute an examination, the cast was fixed. An old friend of Alexander, writing to him upon the anniversary of his twentieth year of management, exclaimed: “You have not only done great things yourself but you have given others a great chance of distinguishing themselves. I cannot think of a manager so unselfish.” Irene Vanbrugh, Ethel Irving, Mrs Patrick Campbell, Fay Davis, Lilian Braithwaite, Henry Ainley, Harry Irving, Matheson Lang, Herbert Waring, H. V. Esmond, Sydney Valentine, C. M. Lowne, Allan Aynesworth, Alfred Bishop, Nigel Playfair, and a host of other actors of the highest ability were engaged to interpret a play and not to exploit a star. This star shone in a constellation.
A small incident occurred during the rehearsals of a play of my own called The Witness for the Defence, which illustrates more concisely than argument could do Alexander’s point of view. He was in the middle of a scene with Ethel Irving when he stopped and stood with that doleful, harassed look which used to overspread his face when the bottom was dropping out of his world. From the stalls, I asked him what was the trouble. He replied:
“We’re in the centre of the stage.”
I was a little staggered, for I had never thought of actor-managers as people liable to be distressed upon finding themselves in that position. As a rule they drift by some process of magnetism inevitably towards it
. But he explained.
“You see, we play to rather sophisticated audiences here, and if I’m in the centre of the stage they’ll say, ‘There of course is the actor-manager’, and the illusion of your play’s gone.”
Neither he nor any member of his company was stinted of his moment, but he must make his profit of it somewhere else than in the centre of the St. James’ stage. So the positions were altered and the scene played a little to one side. The audience, in a sentence, was to receive the full value of the play if it held value which good acting, thoughtful stage-management, and appropriate scenery could bring out.
There was a second principle in Alexander’s theatrical faith, and one no less important. In the farewell speech which Mr Hare, as he was then, delivered at the St. James’ Theatre on the dissolution of his partnership with the Kendals, he said:
It has been argued to our prejudice that we have favoured too much the productions of foreign authors; but I would ask you to remember that in the matter of plays, the demand has ever been greater than the supply and that the history of the English stage for many years has proved it to be incapable of being entirely independent of foreign work. I can safely say, however, that to England we have always turned first for the dramatic fare that we have placed before you. That we have not done more has been our misfortune; I would like to think not altogether our fault.
Complete Works of a E W Mason Page 837