It was an odd habit of Alexander, when he came across a passage in a book which had a meaning for him, to have it printed and to carry it about with him in his pocket for a time. Here is one:
I have always taught, and do teach, and shall teach, I doubt not, till I die, that in resolving to do our work well is the only sound foundation of any religion whatever.
He was certainly following his precept out when he staged with so much beauty and care the play Paolo and Francesca.
CHAPTER IX
Alexander goes to Drury Lane — The death of Henry Irving — Pinero and Alexander — Quarrels on the stage equal stage quarrels — Casting His House in Order — The success of the play
ON SEPTEMBER 1ST of that year 1902, Alexander reopened the St. James’ with a romantic drama of France, written by Justin Huntly M’Car thy. It was founded, no doubt, upon a legend which Theodore de Banville had already used in a play of one act. Here the story was expanded into four acts. It was a suggestion developed, rather than a story expanded, by a hand very adept at extracting romance out of old stories. Alexander played François Villon the immortal rogue, Charles Fulton, an actor with a deep voice, the superstitious old Louis XI with the leaden medals dangling on his hat, Henry Ainley played a small part, and Alfred Brydone, and E. Lyall Swete, both distinguished recruits from the Benson Company, represented the Provost of Paris and the Grand Constable of France. Alexander with his slim figure and picturesque appearance was well suited to the period and the part. The play ran for twenty-eight weeks and was succeeded on March 19th in the following year, 1903, by one of the few foreign plays produced during the life of this management at the St. James’ Theatre.
Old Heidelberg was a version by Rudolf Bleichmann of a German comedy Alt Heidelberg, of which the author was Wilhelm Meyer-Forster. There are two outstanding characters amongst the males of the cast, Karl Heinrich the Hereditary Prince of Sachsen-Karlsburg, one of those imaginary German principalities which Stevenson’s Prince Otto had placed upon the map of literature if not of Europe, and Dr. Juttner, his tutor. Karl Heinrich was a lad in a pen of red tape and ceremonies; Dr. Jiittner, an old and bibulous scholar, cramped by the buckram of a petty Court, and pining for the bright lights of his old University. The enlargement of these two in the free comradeship of Heidelberg, the one learning youth for the first time, the other recapturing it; the Prince’s love-affair with the inn-keeper’s daughter; the old tutor’s death in the midst of a party; the Prince’s return to his little capital to take up his little sceptre, and the disillusionment which awaited him when a year or two later he sought to revive amongst his old club-fellows the spirit of their old conviviality — made up a story which never fails to draw the easy tear. The woes of Kings and Princes confined within the heavy decorum of a Court are always pleasant spectacles for the commoner. “How lucky I am”, he says on his way home to Surbiton. “I have only one paper to sign to-morrow.” And though the paper be the cheque for his income-tax he signs it with the less displeasure.
It was Alexander’s intention to play the part of the tutor Dr. Jiittner in this production. There was more vivacity in it, more opportunity for the actor in this rejuvenescence of an old man in the company of the young and in the underlying sense of shame it brought with it. But the Home-Front was mobilised against him at once. He resisted stoutly, and under swift direction from the Home-Front a flank attack, the attack of a Gallieni at the Marne, was organised by the theatre staff. Lady Alexander flew down to the theatre and gathered them together, C. T. H. Helmsley the business-manager, Whittaker and Horne the secretaries, Arnold of the box office, E. V. Reynolds the stage-manager. “Chief, you can’t do that! You must play Karl Heinrich!”
Alexander went home to Pont Street: “They’re all mad at the theatre”, he cried. “I’m over forty.”
“But you don’t look it, my dear”, said Mrs Alexander.
“They’re very experienced people and perhaps they’re right.”
Right or wrong, she had her way. J. D. Beveridge was cast for the part of Dr. Jiittner and gave an admirable performance. Alexander played Karl Heinrich, with the exception of the interval of a fourteen-weeks’ tour, until the middle of March in the following year; and though he was then in his forty-fifth year, he carried off this picture of student life without a sign of maturity. Sir Francis Jeune wrote to him on the day following the première’.
MY DEAR ALEXANDER,
I must send you my heartiest thanks and congratulations for the delightful play of last night. I confess I felt nervous for I had doubts whether the German Play was substantial enough to hold an English audience. But you conquered all difficulties — and certainly one of the greatest causes of the very remarkable success of the play was your own wonderful impersonation of the youthful, or rather boyish, Karl. And the acting was certainly excellent throughout.
During the autumn of 1905 Alexander acted for the first time in fifteen years under a management other than his own. The copious pen of Hall Caine had been used to adapt for the stage a novel of his, The Prodigal Son. Arthur Collins had accepted it for the autumn production at Drury Lane. Both he and Hall Caine were anxious to secure Alexander for the principal part. He had, as he so often did when he was away upon his tour, let the St. James’ Theatre to the Rendais, and he had pencilled in, as the technical phrase goes, a lengthy tour of the British Isles. But such arrangements were not so very difficult to cancel. Promises could be made for the future. Arthur Collins could lend his help in agreeing to send his Drury Lane drama to those provincial theatres which released Alexander. Alexander himself would be spared the fatigue and anxiety inseparable from a tour with a large company and a great load of costly scenery; and the salary which he was offered was within £1000 of the net profit which he might expect to make after all his travelling. He agreed, therefore, to go to Drury Lane at the salary of £250 a week, the total sum to be not less than £3500. In other words, fourteen weeks’ pay was guaranteed to him. Nevertheless it must have needed more than a little courage for a man so firmly established in his own theatre to risk an adventure in the strange and vast environment of Drury Lane. But want of courage was never one of his vices. He may have been attracted by the names of the famous men who had stridden those boards. Certainly Arthur Collins plied him with them. He may have found it amusing once more to act with no responsibility but his part. He went at all events to the Lane and played in The Prodigal Son. The piece was one of those flamboyant emotional melodramas, requiring crowds and large scenes, which were the speciality of Greeba Castle, and with Alexander’s help — not only as an actor, for he took a hand in the production — it ran easily during the appointed time.
It was as well that he was in London that autumn. For a few minutes before midnight of Friday, October 13th, his old chief, Sir Henry Irving, died in the hall of his hotel at Bradford. The body was brought to London on Saturday night and taken to his flat at 17 Stratton Street. At a meeting held on the Monday at the Hyde Park Hotel, George Alexander and Norman Forbes-Robertson were appointed as honorary secretaries to make the necessary arrangements for the funeral, which by the consent of the Dean, Dr. Armytage Robinson, was to take place at Westminster Abbey.
It is understood that Sir Anderson Critchett, the famous oculist, was chiefly instrumental in obtaining the Dean’s consent; and a curious and rather grotesque story is told and vouched for. Sir Anderson himself, a devotee of the theatre and a brother of R. C. Carton the dramatist, had recently operated with success upon the Dean’s eyes. Armytage Robinson, a great scholar, had been distressed beyond measure by the prospect of blindness, and in his gratitude promised Critchett that he would make him any return which he possibly could. Irving’s friends approached Critchett to help them. The Dean and Chapter of St. Paul’s had refused to allow the great actor’s interment in their Cathedral. Would Dean Armytage Robinson consent to allow the precedent of Garrick to be repeated at Westminster Abbey? It was known that the Dean’s sister, who had great influence with him, was vi
olently opposed to any such ceremony. The Dean, however, was in bed in a dark room, though with his sister in attendance. Critchett consented to use his influence, and whilst the chief amongst Irving’s friends waited in a room apart, Critchett penetrated into the darkened bedroom. He was greeted by a feminine voice from the gloom. “No! No actors!” But stout of heart he approached the bed, and reminding the Dean of his promise, appealed for the burial in the Abbey. But the voice from the shadows punctuated his every sentence. “No actors! No actors!” The Dean, however, stood by his promise, and Critchett coming out, informed Irving’s old friends and managers that the Dean’s consent had been given. So great was the relief felt by them that more than one burst into tears. The arrangements were made with all that care for detail which was natural to Alexander. He owed much to Irving — his debut in London, his regular and steady employment — and though no doubt he felt from time to time, as all in that company did, the sharp edge of their chief’s stinging tongue, he was none the worse for it. A great kindness existed between the two men, and Alexander paid what he could of his debt in the perfect ordering of those last rites.
He returned to the St. James’ Theatre in January of 1906 to enter upon the best two years of his career.
§
It will be remembered that after the production of The Princess and the Butterfly Pinero refused in the most unhesitating terms to contemplate any future co-operation with the manager of the St. James’ Theatre. Two dictators in one playhouse at the same time were equal to one ordeal of misery which no sensible man would be willing to accept for a second time. Quarrels on the stage, however, are, as a rule, as frequent and as short-lived as stage quarrels. The actor’s life promotes them. His work cannot be done in solitude, or with the help of a staff which has only his interests to serve. It is done in conjunction with other actors who have other interests at heart. Each being human is inclined to think that by making the most of his individual merits he is best serving the general cause. Hence come violent clashes and fervid reconciliations. Moreover, a kind of nervousness and sensibility seem inseparable from the actor’s calling, and show themselves in an exaggeration of trivialities. A storm in a teacup is easily magnified into a tornado in the Atlantic. An omission due to forgetfulness becomes an intended slight and a small success an achievement which the world will never forget. There is an actress who dates every event in the stirring history of the last thirty years backwards and forwards from the time when she sang her one song at the Gaiety. The date of the Coronation? Oh yes, that was so many years after The Soldiers on the Green. In this quarrel, however, it was the actor who did not exaggerate and waited his time.
It came in 1904. On October 12th of that year, a play by Pinero entitled The Wife without a Smile was produced at Wyndham’s Theatre. Why he wrote it will probably always remain a puzzle. It was not of course the first time that a distinguished author has suddenly run riot and lent his talents and his name to an eccentricity. The Wife without a Smile was a vagary, but a vagary which did its author a vast amount of harm. It threatened him with disrepute. It was received by the Press with unmitigated condemnation, and although for a few weeks it attracted to Wyndham’s Theatre the sort of audience which is tickled by a salacity, it collapsed altogether very shortly afterwards.
Some time during that autumn I met Alexander one morning when we were riding in the Row. He told me that before the withdrawal of The Wife without a Smile — at the moment in fact when Pinero was the object of all the shafts of vituperative criticism — he had approached Pinero with a request that he should write another play for the St. James’. It was more than a request, it was an urgent plea. Alexander was always concerned with the status of the stage. The stage was his profession, he was proud of it, proud of the high position he had attained upon it, and he was never guilty of the silly snobbishness which treats it as a side-line. The only letters which he ever wrote to the Press were written to repel some hasty reflection which seemed to diminish its dignity. Criticism of himself was in the day’s work and he took it with equanimity. But utter a slur upon the stage as a social institution and he flew to the defence of it. The high repute which it had acquired by the work of Henry Irving and the Bancrofts, and which the Kendals, and John Hare and Beerbohm Tree and the authors who wrote for them had sustained, was not to be impaired if he could help it. He was convinced now that if Pinero lost his high position amongst the dramatists, the status of the stage would be inevitably lowered. He discoursed earnestly to me under the trees as we walked our horses along the rails. Pinero brought to his work not only a supreme knowledge of the conditions under which a dramatist must work, but an intellectual equipment and a courage which few others possessed. The joke and the clever twist which falsified all the characters in order to bring down the curtain upon a comfortable conclusion were devices foreign to Pinero, impossible to him. He might have perpetrated a vagary. But you must not forget on that account the work which had gone before. It had an integrity and an aim which were not to be denied. Alexander had therefore put his theatre at Pinero’s disposal. His next play, and as soon as possible, his own subject, his own conditions! Pinero was willing, and through the year 1905 he worked at His House in Order. By July he was sufficiently advanced to write about the cast. Would “kind Mrs Alec” go and see a certain lady? “Swete and Lowne — good.” He regretted that Iris Hawkins could not be got to play the boy Derek Jesson. He wanted a real Frenchwoman for the governess Mademoiselle Thomé.
Miss — speaks French perfectly but, when it comes to broken English, that is an obvious assumption. No one can give you natural broken English but a foreigner. Forgive me if I have inconvenienced you in this matter. You could keep a hold on Miss — as a second string, but I should like you to find a handsome French lady of about 30.
In the month of September the play was getting on, but Pinero was still troubled about the difficulty of getting Derek Jesson properly acted. He wrote on the 22nd of that month:
MY DEAR ALEC,
Yes, the character is that of a boy— “a serious, wiselooking child of delicate physique”. He is eight years old. I doubt whether you could find a real boy to look it and do it. A girl is, as a rule, so much the more graceful, charming and receptive. A comic boy is to be got, but hardly the other sort. However, if you can put your hand upon the prodigy, Barkis “is willing”.
The dates you give me in your letter are most attractive. But can it be managed? You ask me if I have finished. Cruel! Heartless! Have I ever finished till about ten minutes before the first rehearsal? The position of affairs is this. Acts I and II go to the printers on Monday. Act III I am now engaged upon; and then there is Act IV to follow....
It would indeed be delightful if we could get the earlier production you propose and, once more, I assure you I will do all in my power to aid your altered plans.
Yours ever,
ARTHUR W. PINERO
P.S. I do hope you won’t be disappointed at the, apparent, simplicity of the play.
Pinero was, you will observe, altogether charming and amenable. On October 12th he was able to write:
MY DEAR ALEC,
Here is the proof of the print of Acts I and II. I wish I could have sent you Act III — which is progressing famously — at the same time, so that you could have seen at the first glance how every hint and every clue contained in the earlier acts are followed up and rounded off. However, I shall not, I think, keep you long without the concluding portions of the piece.
I hope you won’t allow yourself, at this stage, to be very seriously disappointed with the character of Hilary Jesson — who, necessarily, has to play somewhat of a waiting game.
He received a telegram and a letter by return of post. Here is the letter:
MY DEAR PIN,
The first two acts are all I expected them to be — lifelike and interesting from beginning to end. True comedy. Hilary could not be better or different in the earlier part of the play. It would be a great comfort to be able to begin re
hearsals on the 1st of December at latest and to do the play early in January. Perhaps you will be able to say “yes” to this during the next month.
Yours, ALEC
P.S. I shall make no definite plans for any play until we meet.
Pinero answered on the next day:
I need not tell you how pleased I am that you are satisfied with the work so far as it is in your hands.
I think there is no doubt that we shall be able to begin rehearsing on December 1st. Even if the last act is not by that time through the press, the three other acts will fully occupy us till it is.
No words could have convinced Alexander more completely that the play was smoothing out to its conclusion than Pinero’s willingness to fix a date for the first rehearsal before the last act was written. Herbert Waring had been suggested for Filmer Jesson, the too methodical and tidy Member of Parliament. There was in all the stage-work which Herbert Waring ever did, a curious touch of the pedantic — something in his voice, his walk, his very gestures — which made him more suitable to that character than any other living actor. C. M. Lowne, who played in so many of Pinero’s plays, was marked out for Pryce Ridgeley. As no one could better represent the unromantic lover, the middle-aged man with a tender heart carefully secluded from the public gaze, so no one could be more utterly insufferable when required so to be. I have vivid recollections of him in Lady Frederick as he described the dinner which he had enjoyed in the Riviera Express and again in the charming scene which ended that first comedy of Somerset Maugham. But in His House in Order, so completely did he identify himself with that superior prig Pryce Ridgeley, that one itched to inflict upon him in the words of Wilde’s Lady Bracknell “the worst excesses of the French Revolution”.
Complete Works of a E W Mason Page 851