The insinuation was just as venomous as that picturesque journalist could make it; and it was probably also libellous. But Clement Scott was clever as well as picturesque; and there were saving sentences dropped into the invective which he would have pleaded to show that he was a mere seeker after truth. In any case Clement Scott was not worth a blank cartridge. One hears that there was a time when a column of his writing made or damned a play; so keen was his interest in the theatre, so romantically he wrote about it. But he had grown cantankerous, he showed too publicly his private antipathies, he was no longer the reliable guide, and perhaps A. B. Walkley was educating readers to look for a little more scholarship and a more delicate choice of words than were to be found in the flamboyant sonorities of Clement Scott. An action for libel could have served no purpose; except perhaps to prove with what unusual care the manuscripts of plays were handled in the St. James’ Theatre. When a play was received, the date of its arrival and its title were entered in a book. In its turn the play was read. If it was a play for which Alexander had asked, or one which for this or that reason aroused expectation, he read it himself. If he liked it and thought it suitable, he accepted it. If he was in doubt, he submitted it, before definitely making up his mind, to the judgment of someone else whose opinion he esteemed. Thus the play John Ferguson, by St. John Ervine, which later on was to make its mark at the little Hammersmith Theatre under the management of Nigel Playfair, was submitted to E. F. Spence, the King’s Counsel and at one time the dramatic critic of the Westminster Gazette. Both Alexander and Spence assessed it at its true high value, but both doubted the fitness of the times. It arrived in the thick of the war; and tragic realities were too common in daily life to be easily tolerable on the stage. The Bing Boys held the field. St. John Ervine has told me that he was deeply distressed to get his play back with the intimation that it could not be done. It was his first real bid for the wider public, and if you will show me a dramatist who is content with anything less, I will show you one who is less than second-rate. But he received a long and sympathetic letter from Alexander the next day which restored his spirits. There can be little doubt that both the King’s Counsel and the manager were right, and reserved for the play a happier fate than it would have met with in that year of gloom.
But the play was returned. And when a play was returned, the date of its return was entered in the book, with a few particulars as to its theme. The system was invaluable to authors whose plays were produced at the St. James’. Nothing is more common than a charge of plagiarism. Nothing is more difficult to disprove. The angry rejected read a favourable review. They sit down and dash off a letter. The manager has taken their beautiful plays and handed them over to this or that miserable scribbler who has got a name, God knows how, and he has mangled them until they can hardly be recognised. The book was then turned up and it was generally found that the beautiful play had been returned to its owner months or years even before the miserable scribbler had appeared upon the doorstep.
The case of Mrs Clifford, however, was on a different plane. She was a lady of high distinction and the centre of a cultured circle. Casual accusations were not amongst the possibilities. But — and here was the trouble — The Likeness of the Night had been published, a year before, in the Anglo-Saxon Review, an elaborate magazine published quarterly under the editorship of Lady Randolph Churchill. The Kendals had made a contract with Mrs Clifford for the rights of the play, after reading it in the Review. Mrs Clifford could have brought, no doubt, an action against Sydney Grundy, who was after all better known as an adapter than as an original playwright. But just as plagiarism is difficult to disprove, so it is almost impossible to prove. A very little ingenuity and a good deal of hard swearing and the plagiarist is safe. Happily both plays were successful. Sydney Grundy’s ran until half way through November. Eighty-three performances could yield some small profit to the theatre and more than £500 to the playwright. The Likeness of the Night was produced at the same theatre on October 28th of the following year, 1901, and gave to Mrs Kendal scenes of pathos and tenderness of which she made superb use.
Alexander brought one of his least successful years, the year 1900, to its finish with a comedy by Mrs Craigie (John Oliver Hobbes) named The Wisdom of the Wise. It was produced on November 22nd, and when the curtain fell the gallery made so obstreperous a demonstration that even the Press raised protests against this overweening assumption of authority. A question of concerted action on the part of the managers was raised. The proposal that critics should be invited to the dress-rehearsal was debated, and I believe that for a time one or two managers closed their galleries upon first nights. But exhibitions of so violent a kind have ceased even to be the exception nowadays. I expect that those who made up that small but vociferous portion of the audience prefer the dog-tracks nowadays. They can at all events get a dog-fight from time to time without having to take part in it themselves.
The Wisdom of the Wise lasted out no more than fifty-four performances and was withdrawn on January 12th of 1901. The play was designed on a well-tried notion of comedy — the effort of a group of discontented people to make mischief between two couples who, left to themselves, were entirely happy. The fault of the play was that the mischief-makers made no mischief. They were too incompetent, and the few misunderstandings which were their raw material were too flimsy to bear the weight of their endeavours and too theatrically conventional to create any illusion of reality in the audience. The one necessity in a play, the necessity of suspense, was completely absent and the action was not helped by the introduction of one of those fatuous snobs who used to figure as members of parliament in the social comedies of the day. Mr Bradgers-De-Lisle-Bradgers came not out of Mrs Craigie’s keen observation of men and women. He was a stuffed figure and the sawdust was running out of him long before she made him pay a midnight call at a house where he was unknown, to interview a duke whom he didn’t know.
Mrs Craigie took the lofty but human view that her best work was never understood by the critics. She had, however, a more legitimate complaint, which R. C. Carton had already put forward; that plays were not judged on their own merit and intention, but by comparison with some other play of the moment which had caught the favour of the Press. I remember reading the damnation of what was meant to be the lightest of light comedies on the ground that it wasn’t Strife. Strife was an intense drama by Galsworthy which Charles Frohman had produced during the Repertory Season at the Duke of York’s Theatre which almost ruined him. He himself uttered the most subtle and true criticism of Strife. He gave the reason why its hold upon the playgoer must be slight when he said, “It’s a play about strikes, not about a strike”. But nothing would satisfy the dramatic critic of the day but Strife. Farcical comedies, historical tragedies, drawingroom melodramas, all must be swept away. In a succession of Strifes was to be seen the new dawn of the Drama.
During this year of 1900 Alexander had produced and himself acted in four plays and had revived one for eleven matinees: Rupert of Hentau, The Prisoner of Zenda, The Man of Forty, A Debt of Honour, and The Wisdom of the Wise. Only one of these, The Man of Forty, had reached one hundred performances, and that one only a hundred and two. Yet on the year there was no loss. It may be interesting in an age of soaring costs to look at the details in the Profit and Loss Account of these plays.
Rupert of Hentyiu had fifty-one performances. Its share of the rent, rates, taxes, and insurance amounted to £1064. The salaries paid to the company, £225 3:17:4; to the staff in front of the House, £477: 7: 9; the wages, including the stage hands, came to £618:1:7. The wardrobe cost £143 116:2; the orchestra £386: 18: 10; lighting was responsible for £127: 16: 11, advertising and bill-posting for £818: 10: 2, printing and stationery for £32:16: 3. The author’s fees amounted to £429: 16: 5, those of the auditors to £38: 10: 9, and miscellaneous expenses to £77: 14: 1. Making thus a grand total of £6470: 6: 3, or £126: 17: 4 and a fraction of a penny a night. The takings, on the other hand, came
to £7701: 1: 6, a sum which was increased by the rent of the bars to £7781: 3: 6. There was therefore on the actual playing of the piece a profit of expenses after the tour, £184: 12: 10. Thus Rupert of Hentjau cancelled out.
The eleven matinees of The Prisoner of Zenda stand as follows. Rent, rates, etc., £226, artists’ salaries £421: 6: 6, front of the house £70: 7s., wages £86: 3: 1, wardrobe £25: 10s., orchestra £89: 9: 2, lighting £25: 9: 1, advertising and billposting £180:2:7, printing and stationery £5:1:7, author’s fees £86: 8: 1, auditors’ £7: 8s., miscellaneous expenses £16: 5: 2=a total of £1246:10: 3. The eleven matinees, however, brought in to the treasury £1727: 19: 6, increased by this play’s share of the rent of the bars to £1744: 17: 6. There was thus a profit on playing of
Against this profit had to be set a small cost of production, owing to renewals, etc., of £290: 8: 9, and half the reopening expenses after the tour, £184: 12: 10. The net result, therefore, on the eight weeks from February 1st to March 27th was a profit of £23: 5: 8.
The Man of Forty, produced the night after Rupert of Hentzau finished, ran for a hundred and two performances. The costs worked out: Rent, rates, taxes, insurance £2226: 13: 4, salaries of company £3094: 10: 10, of management and front staff £975: 7s., wages £885:11:9, wardrobe £155:2:11, orchestra £672: 8: 3, lighting £193: 14: 5, advertising and bill-posting £1340: 15: 2, printing and stationery £100, author’s fees £740: O: 10, auditors’ fees £74:16: 3,miscellaneous £303: 13: 2 = a grand total of £10,762: 14: 10. The returns from the box office, on the other hand, were £12,743:13: 6, increased by the rent of the bars £177, and royalties from the loan of opera-glasses £8: 10: 3, to £12,929: 3: 9. There was left, therefore, a profit on the playing of the piece for the fourteen weeks:
Against this profit is to be set the cost of production, which was not very high, £573: 4: 9. Deducting this sum from the profit on playing, we arrive at a net profit of £1593: 4: 2 on the completed run.
A Debt of Honour followed after the holiday season. Its total cost amounted to £8907: 15: 11, and it was acted eighty-five times, the receipts plus the rent of the bars and the royalties on the opera-glasses being £9946 115: 2. On the playing, therefore, there was a credit balance of £1185: 3: 2. But most of that sum had already gone on the cost of production, and the net result was a profit of £174:9:4-
The Wisdom of the Wise brought the twelve months to an end. It enjoyed only fifty-four performances. Its cost was £5945: 10: 10 and it took £5144: 9: 2. There was a loss on the actual playing of £801: 1: 8. To this loss must be added the cost of the production, £1268: 8: 9, so the loss on the run of the play reached £2069: 10: 5.
There is no form of words which can make a successful season out of a sequence of four new plays, each one needing its preliminary advertisement, each one presented with the finish essential at the St. James’ Theatre, and only one of them capable of lasting for a hundred nights. Even that imaginative Russian general who described himself in his despatch as advancing northwards when he was retreating from the Japanese, would be unequal to the requisite circumlocution. The year of 1900 was not a successful one for Alexander. Yet how did he stand at the end of the year’s work? He had made, £23: 5: 8 out of The Prisoner of Zenda matinees, £ 1593: 4: out of A Man of Forty, and £174:9:4 out of A Debt of Honour = £1790: 19: 2. He had lost on The Wisdom of the Wise £2069: 10: 5. He had therefore lost on the year £278: 11 13. But besides being the manager of the theatre he was its leading actor, and as an actor drew a salary, not so large a salary as his abilities and the high esteem in which the public held him entitled him to draw, or as that which he received afterwards at Drury Lane, but a reasonable one. It amounted to £2558: 6: 8 and converted his loss into an earning of £2279: 15: 5- From this earning he made an outlay on plays for the future of £1249: 10: 5. And with the resulting sum of £1030: 5s he would have been left as the return for his year’s activity, had he not established throughout the provinces a reputation for his touring companies. He sent out in August of 1900 a company playing Rupert of Hentzau and The Prisoner of Zenda to the smaller towns. This tour brought in a net profit of £473: 12: 5. He had shares in other touring companies, and especially in a tour of Magda with Mrs Patrick Campbell in the title-role which brought in a net profit of £1506: 19: 3. He hired out the scenery of As You Like It and sold some of the dresses for £207: 9: 9. So that at the end of an unsuccessful year he had laid out chiefly in the form of advances to authors £ 1249-odd, and had got besides £3217 and a few shillings.
It is worth while noticing in this summary of the year’s doings that he could make a profit out of a play which ran less than ninety nights with the seats less than half filled and yet conduct his theatre with dignity and with a thoughtful consideration of its patrons.
The first play produced in 1901 did not improve the balance-sheet. Haddon Chambers’ play The Awakening failed to arouse the slumbering playgoer, and it went itself to sleep after its sixtieth performance. However, a play by H. V. Esmond, The Wilderness, acted for the first time on April 11th, ran for fourteen weeks to houses of £170 a performance; and a very successful tour followed.
It was in keeping with that curious mixture of canniness and courage, prudence and audacity, which formed so large an element in Alexander’s character that on this tour he should try out a revival of The Importance of Being Earnest. He had never had 2 doubt that a time would come, and within a reasonable period, when this iridescent bubble of gaiet) and wit would dance in the air again to the delight of all men’s ears and eyes. His only doubt was how soon that time would come. He sought for an answer to his riddle from the oracle of the provinces. If they would take the brilliant comedy to their hearts, washed clean of its associations by the passage of the years, it would receive what it had not yet received, its deserved recognition at the hands of the London Press and public. Before, the man had eclipsed his work. Alexander gave fourteen performances of the play, but the oracle’s answer was obscure, as is the way with oracles. The Importance of Being Earnest did better than The Awakening, a failure in London, but not as well as those old warriors The Idler and Liberty Hall, or his new play The Wilderness. Nevertheless he revived it in London early in the year 1902, announcing the revival “for a limited number of performances”. The revival was fairly successful. The comedy ran for fifty-five nights to average takings of £110 and, eked out with matinees of Liberty Hall, kept the balance-sheet in order. But the confederate season had clearly not yet come.
Meanwhile Alexander had been preparing an ambitious enterprise. Some few years before he had given a commission to Stephen Phillips, the author of Marpessa and Christ in Hades, who wished to write a poetic tragedy. He wrote Paolo and Francesca for Alexander. But the remodelling of the theatre, the negotiations which had begun for a tour in the United States, and the difficulty of securing the star-cast which Alexander wanted, all hindered the production. Meanwhile, of course, the advance fees were renewed; Phillips had seen another play of his, Herod, staged magnificently by Beerbohm Tree at His Majesty’s before large audiences, and had yet a third play in rehearsal at the same theatre, a dramatisation of the Odyssey entitled Ulysses. Stephen Phillips, indeed, was, from the point of view of a dramatist, doing very well. But he was one of those people to whom even a large increase of income makes no difference. He lived obscurely in lodgings at Brighton or at a cottage at Ashford in Middlesex. He wrote his letters from a restaurant in East Street, Brighton, from the Marine Parade, from Great Yarmouth. But in spite of Herod, and Ulysses, and advances upon Paolo and Francesca there was always a need of money, or an acknowledgment of money received. For the rest he was the easiest author a manager could have to deal with, reasonable, ready to make and receive a suggestion and grateful for the efforts which Alexander was making to secure for the representation of the characters a cast of which London had never seen the like. To such a man Alexander was the most responsive of souls; and such a spirit of agreement and harmony was needed between them. For there were others
, kindly, well-meaning people quite quite sure they were right, who were pulling Phillips this way and that way, casting his play for him, arranging his scenery, and bombarding the St. James’ Theatre with advice.
Alexander’s aim was to secure Mrs Patrick Campbell for Francesca, Dame Madge Kendal for Lucrezia and to play Giovanni Malatesta himself. Stephen Phillips, who had been irritated by some irresponsible suggestion in a newspaper that his play was to be postponed in favour of one by Clyde Fitch, was delighted. He wrote from Ashford in Middlesex.
DEAR ALEXANDER, Mrs Campbell is of course ideal. Do make any effort in your power to get her. She would assure the success of the play from that peculiar glamour which is what the part wants. I should look forward to a long run if she will come. The proposal about Lucrezia is a stroke of genius which would never have occurred to me. Supposing these come off, and with yourself as Giovanni there remains only Paolo — for I leave Waller as still in doubt. I think on the whole Faber would be as good as any one. He leaves Tree very soon and goes elsewhere but no doubt could be got for January. What I feel about all these splendid possibilities is that as we have the advantage of a definite date — no dependence on the uncertainty of a run — it would be well to strike at once with these people so far as it is possible.... All my interests and hopes are now centred in your diplomacy — only do if possible press Mrs C. for a definite answer and agreement....”
The dream, alas! dissolved into regrets — Stephen Phillips’, Alexander’s, and now, I think, the regrets of all lovers of the theatre. What a representation the tragedy would have had! The glamour of Mrs Patrick Campbell — Phillips used the right word to express her — the sympathy and tenderness of Dame Madge Kendal, Alexander splendidly striking out in a new and unexpected character — was Stephen Phillips not justified in hoping for “not merely an art success but a real great popular triumph”? But Mrs Patrick Campbell’s help could not be obtained. Dame Madge Kendal was tempted but was debarred by the autumn tour of herself and her husband which had now become an annual institution. Alexander fell back upon Evelyn Millard for Francesca and Marie Brema for Lucrezia. Marie Brema, a prima donna of Covent Garden, had long preferred dramatic to operatic parts. Stephen Phillips was content. He had been thinking of Lena Ashwell, and Cissie Loftus, whom he had seen acting in The Children of the King, and Lily Brayton, but he had come to the conclusion that since Mrs Patrick Campbell’s glamour was not to add to the play its haunting quality, “Miss Millard alone can play the part”. The engagement of Marie Brema would take a weight off his mind.
Complete Works of a E W Mason Page 849