MY DEAR ALEXANDER,
I take the first opportunity — now you are back — of writing to thank you for having made us so comfortable during our too brief season at your Theatre, and to say what a very pleasant time we had there — enhanced, not a little, by the uniform courtesy and attention of all the Staff both before and behind the curtain — and I took on all your old hands. I never had occasion to utter a single word of complaint in any one department — on the contrary, only words of commendation! And it gives me great pleasure to record this fact.
I am glad that everything was found satisfactory on our quitting the theatre and nothing to mar an altogether most gratifying little season — in more ways than one. And which has added another to the many pleasant memories we must always associate with the St. James’ Theatre.
§
After the failure of Mr Potter’s medley The Conquerors, a comedy by John Oliver Hobbes was put on, called The Ambassador. The date was June 2nd, 1898. It was a late hour of the London season for a new play. Moreover the theatre had been let to the Kendals for the autumn and Alexander had arranged a long tour for himself with a heavy repertoire. There remained, then, no more than seven weeks before the St. James’ would be closed. But during those seven weeks from June 2nd to July 22nd, the comedy so caught the taste of the town that it was played to an average taking of £217 a performance. It was the very play for the St. James’ Theatre. Its name alone, with George Alexander in the title-role, was almost a sufficient lure. A play of pink candle-shades and beautiful dresses and George Alexander as British Ambassador at Rome with the red ribbon of the Bath across his white waistcoat; the odds were four to one on that The Ambassador would be a winner in the steeplechase of a theatrical venture. Outer London would flock to it in any case. Inner London, too, if the authoress sustained in the theatre the reputation she had made for herself with her novels. And she did.
Mrs Pearl Mary-Teresa Craigie lived with her father, a wealthy American, in Lancaster Gate. She lived in a tall house and wrote short books. They were clever rather than profound, but she wrote very well in an epigrammatic and allusive style, with an economy of adjectives and dialogue in which the meaning was at once condensed and clear. She was in addition an intimate friend of the Alexanders and an enthusiastic admirer of his acting. She had, too, the advantage of one of those excellent casts which had come to be expected at this theatre: H. B. Irving, H. V. Esmond, Fred Terry amongst the men, Violet Vanbrugh, Fay Davis, Mary Jerrold, Kate Sargeantson, amongst the women. The story of the play was slight but strong enough. The characters represented by Alexander and Fay Davis bore a noticeable likeness to those which they had represented in The Princess and the Butterfly, but they were less superficial. The language which they spoke was more natural and direct and Fay Davis was not handicapped by a broken accent. Mrs Craigie, according to Sir Sidney Lee in the Dictionary of National Biography, was guilty of some incoherence in the plot and characterisation. The plot stood upon its feet well enough, but the party at the beginning of the third act in Major Lascelles’ rooms was a bewildering affair and Major Lascelles himself was a tangle of ragged ends. The dialogue, however, except in the case of this one scene, was witty without the appearance of effort. You were never left with the impression that the authoress had got her characters together at this or that given moment and adjured herself “Now they have just got to be witty. So what shall I make them say?” Scenes between men alone have no doubt been the salvation of many plays; and they have been written by men. Mrs Craigie, being a woman and an observant woman, took a leaf out of their books and rewrote it in a novel fashion. She introduced some scenes between women alone, and the amusement which they afforded did much at the beginning of the play to set the audience in a favourable mood. Alexander had a part to his liking. He was partly the raisonneur of the French comedies, and partly the man of the world stirred unexpectedly to a depth of emotion and romance of which he had not believed himself capable. Mrs Craigie dedicated the published book of the play to him, and ended her preface to it with a graceful tribute to his skill:
My permanent gratitude and friendship are due to Mr. George Alexander for the distinguished art he bestowed upon his rendering of the title-role, for the support, interest, and kindness he gave so generously from the first reading of the play, through the many anxieties of rehearsing, to the yet greater anxiety of its first production.
A charming scene with a surprise in the best vein of comedy brought the curtain down to laughter and unreserved applause. The critics were not impressed though it was impossible to say that this was not a St. James’ play, and the verdict of the public was repeated one hundred and sixty-three times in London and indorsed by the substantial signature of the Provinces.
The Ambassador was the last successful play produced by George Alexander at the old theatre. He had hoped, with his experience of The Prisoner of Zenda to encourage him, to put up Edward Rose’s adaptation of Stanley Weyman’s novel Under the Red Robe. But Rose argued that it offered too insufficient an opportunity for the leading actor and persuaded him instead to produce a costly piece of fustian, called In Days of Old, which was withdrawn after sixty-one performances. Alexander, then, that is in the summer of the year 1899, set out upon a provincial tour of eighteen weeks, whilst the theatre was handed over to the decorators and builders.
On February 1st, 1900, the St. James’ Theatre was reopened. Except for the colder scheme of colour upon the walls and the conversion of Alexander’s long room and the dressing-room which opened out of it, into offices, it is now much what it was upon that night. The play was Rupert of Hentzau, Anthony Hope’s own version of his sequel to The Prisoner of Zenda.
A first night at a theatre in the year 1900 was an event in the social life of the town. There are too many of them in 1935 to arouse more than a languid interest, unless something special in the way of a big drum is beaten cunningly for a long time ahead. Also there are too few men and women acting in their own theatres. The theatre is now accommodation for a play. In 1900 it was that and a good deal more. It was definitely associated with someone, an old friend as it were, who for good or ill had chosen the play which the audience was now to see, who would himself or herself shortly appear upon the boards. It was more vital on that account. It was less of a lodging-house. There was a thrill in the air as the auditorium filled. Would the old firm do it again? Was this new playwright going to make his mark? There was expectation, even a trifle of excitement before the lights went out and the overture began. The horseshoe shape of the auditorium contributed to produce that rapport between the actors behind the footlights and the spectators in front of them which is essential to the enjoyment of a play. There were people everywhere — people and warm colours. A spark passed from one to another and established a sort of fellowship which would last the evening through. Inconveniences no doubt existed. Certain seats at the tips of the horn of the dress-circle could not be or ought not to have been used. But the more recent theatres with their blank side walls and chilly colours beget a certain aloofness in the audience. It is more detached.
In the stalls of the St. James’ a distinguished company would gather. Lord and Lady St. Helier (then Sir Francis and Lady Jeune), Sir Hubert Herkomer, Sir Anderson Critchett the oculist, the Duke and Duchess of Fife, all looking to find their pleasure in the success of the play. There would be others who hoped to find their pleasure in the failure of the play. Captain Robert Marshall, the author of His Excellency the Governor, entering the supper-room of his club late one night amidst a burst of laughter said, “I see from the general hilarity that you have all been assisting at the first night of some appalling fiasco”. Such eager ill-wishers are still to be found in the stalls of any theatre on a first night. Their race, like the worm, dieth not. And aloof amongst them all, well-wishers and ill-wishers, sat the formidable phalanx of the critics. Each one solemn as the Doge of Venice and pledged, it seemed, that neither smile nor tear nor any expression of content or discontent should antic
ipate the judgment which his newspaper would reveal in the morning. And often would be noticed against the glow of the lighted scene the picturesque head and fine white hair of Sir Squire Bancroft as he crossed the theatre to his seat in the front row of the stalls just a fraction of time after the curtain had gone up on the opening of the third act. Sir Squire Bancroft was in his place at the St. James’ Theatre. For as Irving developed the example of a suitable decoration for the classic plays which had been set by Edmund Kean, so Alexander in his settings of his modern comedies followed and perfected the model and pattern of the Bancrofts. Sir Squire was not content, as his predecessors had been, merely to call a room a room, he built it on the stage; and though he retired from the management of the Haymarket Theatre at an age when most managers are beginning, he had already made a revolution in the theatre. No one did more to kill bombast and the heroics of Alonzo and Gonzago than the manager who gave an opportunity to Tom Robertson. Though he had long since ceased to act or manage in 1900, Bancroft was a known and noticeable personage. With his black-rimmed eyeglass on a black ribbon of watered silk, his mass of white hair and his broad flat-brimmed silk hat, he had something of the dandy in him. He lived at A. 1 Albany — where else could he have lived? — and when not bespoken, he lunched at the Garrick Club and dined at the Athenaeum. Every morning, tall and upright to the end of his long life, he would walk from Albany to his bank in St. James’ Street, hand a slip of paper across the counter to a clerk and ask, “Is that my balance this morning?” Assured that his figures were correct, he went upon his way. Stories so clustered about him that at times you could hardly see the man for them. But most of them were based upon some shrewd comment which he might have made. He and Pinero were great cronies, well aware of each other’s foibles and not slow to describe them; and rightly or wrongly, a good many of those not unkindly stories were attributed to the invention of Pinero. Of two, however, I know. Sir Squire Bancroft was a Victorian to the marrow of his bones. He had the Victorian passion for funerals; a wreath for his acquaintances, a wreath and his presence at the graveside for his friends. I met him one day wearing the habiliments of woe. He said to me with the due mournfulness: “I have just been to Golders Green. I had never attended a cremation before. The relatives were kind enough afterwards to ask me to go behind.” At another time — it was the day following the first performance of The Admirable Crichton, the fine comedy by Barrie in which the sentiment is so brilliantly mitigated by a healthful sharp touch of acid. I asked, having seen him at the performance, what he thought of the play. He was drying his hands on his towel in the lavatory of his club just before luncheon. He dried more slowly and shook his Head with melancholy. “It deals, my dear Mason, with the juxtaposition of the drawing-room and the servants’ hall — always to me a very painful subject.”
It seemed to me that I heard the whole of that era, the Manchester school, as well as the squires of the counties, the merchants of the City of London as well as the dames of Kensington and Mayfair, all epitomised and defined in that one unexpected sentence.
Apart from Sir Squire and the visitors to the stalls and the dress-circle and the patrons of the drama in the upper circle and the pit, there was another element in the fortunes of a play which, if no more powerful, was louder in giving an adverse verdict than it is to-day — the gallery. The gallery generally waited, as it rightfully should, to the end of the play, before it announced its high decision; and sometimes it was guilefully able to lure an unhappy author on to the stage unaware of the greeting which awaited him. I passed about this time the exit from the gallery of a theatre where Henry Arthur Jones had that night had a play produced which had failed. I heard one youth exclaim to his friends indignantly, “Why didn’t the fellow come out and take his punishment?” and I marvelled at the odd point of view. The youth had spent a shilling and I felt sure had enjoyed himself prodigiously. Henry Arthur Jones, on the other hand, had spent the best part of a year toiling over his play, and had seen all his work fritter away to nothing within the compass of three hours. Why, in addition, should he trot forward on the stage and bow to a storm of booing and hissing?
There was an epidemic of it at the time. It is quite true, of course, that an audience at a play has no concern in the troubles of authorship, the strain of rehearsals, the costliness of the setting, the difficulties of the company. There is no compulsion upon the author to write, the producer to rehearse, the manager to stage the play, or the actors to act it. The audience is concerned with the result. But also there is no compulsion upon the playgoer to attend the first performance. He can wait, if he likes, until he learns from the newspapers or his acquaintances whether he is likely to get enjoyment in return for his shilling or whether he is not. The theory of a vociferous punishment is untenable on any grounds of reason and justice; and the theatre to-day is the better for the disuse of it.
CHAPTER VIII
The New St. James’ — Rupert of Hentpau — A Debt of Honour — Plagiarism and Clement Scott again — The Likeness of the Night — Care of plays at the St. James’ Theatre — Profit and loss on the year 1900 — Casting of Paolo and Francesca — Stephen Phillips — Sidney Colvin — Henry Ainley — Alexander’s performance of Giovanni Malatesta
THE RECONSTRUCTION OF the theatre during the autumn of 1899 cost £7057: 14: 6, a large hole in the savings of a theatrical management however prudent the administration had been. But Alexander had the courage to spend money, just as he had had the courage to put on in a theatre which drew its patrons from the ordered society of the day a play which challenged its very code and made a moving tragedy out of the inflexibility of its conditions. He had hoped to reopen the St. James’ with a new play by Pinero, but Pinero, though still and always a great personal friend of Alexander’s, was in the mood to have nothing to do — no, not if he lived to the age of Methuselah — with the autocratic manager. “My dear Alec” and he couldn’t avoid a stately dog-fight when between them they produced a play. Alexander fell back upon Rupert of Hentzau, Anthony Hope’s own adaptation of his novel. Sequels, however, are ticklish things. The spirit has too often evaporated, the first fine flavour of enthusiasm as the story and its characters swam into view, altogether gone and beyond recapture. As it was with the book, so it was with the play. Old Sapt and Fritz von Tarlenheim had aged, Rudolf himself had grown sedate. The play ended with a requiem and Rudolf lying in state. It matched too well with the sadness of the times. It ran for eight weeks, and for the second time in the history of the management a play cost nothing and earned nothing. After the first three weeks, matinees of The Prisoner of Zenda eked it out and brought into the treasury a small profit.
Alexander substituted for it on March 28th a play by Walter Frith called The Man of Forty and it ran with moderate success until July 6th. Young Dennis Eadie, who was afterwards to become the manager of the Royalty Theatre in Dean Street, restore it to prosperity, and produce a notable play by Arnold Bennett and Edward Knoblock, Milestones, made on this occasion his first appearance at the St. James’.
That year of 1900 Alexander did not go out on tour. He closed his theatre early in July, took a holiday, and reopened in September. He held his lease directly from the proprietors of the theatre and paid a rent which allowed him the rest and change of scene which keep the body and mind of man at working pitch. Is there a theatre held to-day upon those terms? Profit rentals make such tenancies the legends of a golden age. If the actual proprietor receives £100 a week, the man or woman who puts on and acts the play will pay £250, or as much more as can be extracted out of his ignorance or his self-confidence; and that extra sum means that he can never lease a theatre for a term of years, give to it a character of its own, make his long plans ahead, and from time to time under the urgency of nature rest for a while from his labours. The drones won’t have that. “Work’s for the workman”, as Haddon Chambers made his tramp explain in Passers-By when he refused a job. On September 1st Alexander produced a play by Sydney Grundy called A Debt of Honour. And
at once a storm broke out in the theatrical Press. It was the old question of plagiarism. Mrs W. K. Clifford, a well-known authoress, had written a play called The Likeness of the Night, which had been accepted by the Kendals and was intended to form the chief feature of their autumn tour. Mr and Mrs Kendal were present at the first performance of A Debt of Honour and were astonished by the resemblance between the two plays. Their long experience of the stage, however, enabled them to take note of that resemblance with a philosophic calm. They brought no hurried accusation of plagiarism against Grundy, and were concerned, whilst expressing a hope to Alexander that the to-do might be of help to his play, with the question whether they should or should not postpone their production of The Likeness of the Night. Kendal quoted Lord Dundreary, “It’s one of those things no fellah can understand”, and left it at that. Mrs Clifford, gravely troubled though she was — for as she justly wrote, she made her living by her pen — was careful to absolve Alexander from any suggestion of double dealing. She had negotiated with him before on the subject of another play, and had seen enough of him to be certain of his honesty. It remained for Clement Scott to dip his pen in a potful of malice and insinuate — he dared go no further — a charge against the management. He revived the dispute concerning The Second Mrs Tanqueray for his share in which he had already eaten the humblest pie baked in the office of George Lewis, and misstated it — to misstate is the politer word of the two. Now came this second case. Why did these things happen always at the St. James’ Theatre? Was there a ghost there who whispered the plots of other authors’ plays to playwrights hard up for an idea? And so on.
Complete Works of a E W Mason Page 848