The English Stage Part 6

_Naomi_: "Did they pay you much for fighting?"

_Jack_: "No, but then I didn't do much fighting, so that I was even with them in that respect!"

_Naomi_: ... "Are you fond of reading?"

_Jack_: "Ya-as. Middling."

_Naomi_: "Did you ever read Oth.e.l.lo?"

_Jack_: "Ya-as. But I don't think it nice reading for young ladies."

_Naomi_: "Oth.e.l.lo told Desdemona of the dangers he had pa.s.sed and the battles he had won."

_Jack_: "Ya-as. Oth.e.l.lo was a n.i.g.g.e.r, and didn't mind bragging."...

It would be but an ill service to Robertson to give an outline of his plays. A mere outline would give the impression that they were childish and absurd, and they were neither the one nor the other. He never invented a striking situation, so far as I am aware. He never settled (or even raised) a moral or social problem in any of his productions. He gave all his attention to the characters and the dialogue. A scribbled synopsis found amongst his papers reveals his method of character-drawing. He stuck down three words, one after another--a name, a profession, a ruling pa.s.sion, such as love, ambition, cupidity, pride. With these words he thought he had summed up the ordinary conventional man, as nature had formed him, and society had reformed or deformed him: a very elementary but very sane psychology, which he enriched, embellished, elaborated, with the flowers of his fancy and the fruits of his observation. I have given some specimens of the former. I may now give some specimens of the second, to justify the t.i.tle of half-realist which I have given him.

He wanted nothing better than to be a realist and to reproduce what he had actually seen. He knew nothing of great ladies, as one may well understand. When he had to portray them he was obliged to copy from bad models. His Lady Ptarmigant is a regular _bourgeoise_; his Marquise de Saint Maur, who learns bits of Froissart by heart and gives lessons in history to her son, is either a myth or an anachronism. His Hawtree, on the other hand, is as real as can be; Robertson had met him probably in the clubs which he frequented. In _School_ he introduced a foolish yet ferocious usher, who was, it seems, a reminiscence of his youthful expedition to Holland. His rancour had not become extinguished in the twenty years that had intervened, and he could not resist the somewhat brutal satisfaction of inflicting a physical punishment in the last act upon his old enemy. He used to ask his small boy, whilst walking with him in Belsize Park, what he would answer to such and such a question? How would he set about enraging his master? And the boy would receive sixpence or a florin according to the nature of his reply.

Soldiers, theatrical folk, artistic and literary Bohemians, are painted as they live, slightly idealised. In _Caste_ we have two specimens of the people--bad and good--in the persons of Eccles and Sam Gerridge. "Work, my boy," says Eccles to his future son-in-law; "there's nothing like work--when you're young." As for him,--well, it was some years since he worked (as a matter of fact he had lived on his daughters, and not touched a tool for twenty years), but he loved to see young folk at work. That did him good,--did them good too. He declaims against the upper cla.s.ses; but when a marchioness pa.s.ses his threshold, he bows down before her, and conducts her back to her carriage, only to return to his real self, insolent and venomous, the moment she has gone. When he makes his way to the public-house to drink, he gives a "business appointment" as his pretext--"a friend who is waiting for him round the corner." Always posing and aiming at effect, he uses big words for the smallest matters, and can produce a tear in his eye at will. He has a few garbled bits of literature at his command, and makes use of mangled quotations from _King Lear_.

And, wretched actor though he be, he is able, with the aid of filial affection, to produce an illusion in the mind of one of his daughters.

"Poor dad," says Polly, "he is so good at heart--and _so_ cute."

No money in the house! He has been left at home by himself to mind the child of his eldest daughter, married to an officer who was well-born and rich, but who, it is supposed, has perished in the Indian Mutiny. The old drunkard rocks the cradle, angrily puffing his tobacco smoke in the baby's face.

_Eccles_: ... "Mind the baby, indeed! (_Smokes and puffs angrily short cloud._) That fool of a ge'l to go and throw away her chances (_rises_) for the sake of being an Honourable-ess. (_Goes up centre._) To think of her father not having the price of an early pint, or a quartern of cool refreshing gin! Rock the young Honourable! (_Kicks the cradle._) Cuss him! Are we slaves, we working-men? (_Sings._) 'Britons never, never, never'--(_s.n.a.t.c.hes pipe from his mouth, throws it over the fireplace, takes chair front of table._) However, I shan't stand this much longer! I've writ the old cat!--the Marquizzy, I mean; I told her her daughter-in-law and her grandson were starving! That fool Esther is too proud to do it herself. I 'ate pride--it's beastly.

(_Rises._) There's no beastly pride about me! (_Goes up centre, clacks his tongue against the roof of mouth._) I'm as dry as a limekiln! Of course, there's nothing in the house fit for a Christian to drink!

(_Looks into the jug on dresser._) Empty! (_Lifts teapot on mantel._) Tea! (_Turns up his nose. Turns to table, looks into jug on it._) Milk! (_Contempt._) Milk for this aristocratic young pauper! Everybody in the 'ouse is saggrefized for him! To think of me, Member of the Committee of Banded Brothers, organised for the Regeneration of Human Kind by an Equal Diffusion of Labour and an Equal Division of Property!--to think of me, without the price of a pot of beer, while this aristocratic pauper wears round his neck--a coral of gold--real gold. Oh, Society! Oh, Governments! Oh, Cla.s.s-degradation! Is _this_ right? Shall this mindless wretch enjoy in his sleep a jewelled gaud while his poor old grandfather is _thirsty_? It shall not be! I will resent the outrage on the Rights of Man! In this holy crusade of cla.s.s against cla.s.s, of (_very meekly_) the weak and lowly against the (_loudly, pointing to cradle_) powerful and strong! I will strike one blow for freedom. (_Stoops over cradle._) He's asleep! This coral will fetch ten "bob" around the corner! If the Marquizzy gives anythink, it can be easy got out again! (_Takes coral._) Lie still, darling--lie still, darling! It's grandfather a-watching you! (_Sings._) 'Who ran to catch me when I fell? who _kicked_ the spot to make it well?--My grandfather!' (_Goes R._) Lie still, my darling!--lie still, my darling!"

These comedies reveal the date of their composition in every line.

Everybody cries out in them against money, but as against a master. Love cuts but a poor figure in comparison, though for form's sake it may triumph for five minutes before the curtain fails. Sam Gerridge, the virtuous plumber, who acts as counterpoise to the old wretch Eccles, has concocted a philosophy for himself out of the notices which he has seen on public conveyances--"First Cla.s.s," "Second Cla.s.s," "Third Cla.s.s," "Holders of Third-Cla.s.s Tickets must not enter Second-Cla.s.s Carriages." As for him, he proposes to establish himself, and, from being a workman, to become an employer. John Burns will tell you that this kind of democracy is a negation of true democracy; in 1868 the formula seemed wide and generous enough.

In such a manner was it that Robertson, who had wished that the world were a football which he could send into s.p.a.ce with one kick, that the same Robertson, who, as he quitted those nocturnal symposia at Tom Hood's, would bring down his stick upon the pavement with a noise that made the silent streets resound, as he held forth indignantly against society,--grew in time and unconsciously, though in a manner easy to under-stand, to be the interpreter of the feelings and ideas of this very same society. The former a.s.sailant now defended the social rank which he had attained against both the enemies above and the enemies below. The new strata which came into being in 1832 were now half-way through their evolution. In 1850 they had been content with melodramas, vulgar farces, and Hippodramas. In 1865 they asked already for wit, sentiment, satire, poetic feeling, all flavoured, it might be, with c.o.c.kneyism, but this demand was an indication of progress, and Robertson satisfied it by writing the middle-cla.s.s comedy.

The change which took place just then in the life of the dramatist convinces me that I am right. He hastened to take leave of his irregular life, and to feel after _bourgeois_ comforts. He worked out for himself a happiness which made him, like the poor vagabond in the fable, weep for very joy. The Eve of this new-opened Paradise was a fair German whom he had met at the house of the editor of the _Daily Telegraph_, whose niece she was. Robertson did not long enjoy the sweets of this happy land. His mental and physical powers seemed to die away together. Mrs. Bancroft, who accompanied him to the first night of _The Nightingale_, saw him, livid with rage, shake his fist at the hissing members of the audience, muttering, "I shall never forgive them for this!"

The doctors ordered him to Torquay, where, however, he grew worse. I have read a letter which he wrote thence to his young wife,--a pitiful letter, all in little jerky sentences, set in rhythm by the sick man's pants for breath. Pitiful, yet gay, for he could not give up being facetious. On his return to London he experienced a literary misfortune of which it was the lot of little Tommy, then thirteen or fourteen years old, to bring the news. Father and son looked upon each other with tearful eyes, and grasped each other's hands. "If they had seen me thus," said the writer sadly, "they would have had pity." Robertson was wrong. The public should know nothing of these things. There are no extenuating circ.u.mstances for literary mistakes.

He died some days later. He was only forty-four. A friend who attended the funeral remarked, lying in the death chamber, its limbs dangling and disjointed, a doll whose injured stomach gave out sawdust through a wide opening. It was a doll with which he used to amuse his little girl to the very end. As for the puppets with which he had so long amused the world, they were to have a longer life. His comedies were destined to be continually revived, applauded, and imitated. Out of the six thousand performances given by the Bancrofts in a period of twenty years which formed one long success, three thousand belonged to Robertson. He alone furnished half their repertoire, and that the better half. From the depths of the out-of-the-way district which it had brought into fashion, the Prince of Wales's company sent colonies into the heart of the metropolis.

It was by actors who had been brought out in it, as in a _conservatoire_, that the Vaudeville, the Globe, and the Court Theatres were founded. The inexhaustible success of _The Two Roses_--of which there will be question further on--placed the name of James Albery almost as high.

Byron, in his turn, took a leaf out of the book of his old comrade, and succeeded, in _Our Boys_, in producing a comedy without (or almost without) puns. _Our Boys_ resembles Robertson's comedies just as a cook resembles her mistress when she is decked out in her mistress's hat and gown, or as Cathos and Madelon resemble the Marquise de Rambouillet and Julie d'Angennes. Even in this unintentionally caricature-like form the Robertsonian comedy continued to please, and it looked as though _Our Boys_ would never leave the bills.

The exacting, the fastidious, those who had begun to dream of a purer and more penetrating art, dubbed Robertsonian comedy "Cup and Saucer" comedy.

The school accepted the nickname, and gloried in it. For the tea-table, fifteen or twenty years ago, was still the centre of the home, the symbol of the family, the core of English life, such as it had been formed by the combination of the spirit of Puritanism with that of middle-cla.s.s Utilitarianism.

The name of the Bancrofts remained a.s.sociated with the "Cup and Saucer"

comedy as long as the movement lasted. As soon as they became sensible of their favourite author's decline in the eyes of the public they called Sardou to their a.s.sistance. By 1880 the Prince of Wales's had become too small for them and they emigrated to the Haymarket, which Mr. Bancroft had reconstructed as it is now, after a new plan, without the conventional proscenium, with the orchestra out of sight, the stage encased in a gilt frame like a picture, and no pit.

This last innovation is characteristic. The pit from having composed the whole arena of the hall, had been moved back bit by bit, until at last it was confined to a few back benches behind the dress circle. To suppress it altogether was not so much an act of authority as of emanc.i.p.ation. It has been said that Mr. Bancroft thought too much of his gentility, and that he seemed anxious to reserve his theatre for the _elite: Satis est equitem mihi plaudere_. But even then? After all, it was only a case of an extremely able man keeping pace with the democratic generation to which he belonged, in his rise towards fortune and its accompanying enjoyments. He raised the price of stalls from six to seven shillings, and then to ten-and-sixpence. The public was evidently able to pay, for the stalls were always full.

It should be added that, under the management of the Bancrofts, the rise in salaries was out of all proportion to the rise in the price of seats.

The weekly salary of one actor, continuing to play in the same role, went from 18 to 60, and that of another from 9 to 50. Mrs. Stirling had created the role of the Marchioness in Caste at the "Prince of Wales's,"

and received seven times as much for appearing in it at the Haymarket.

Douglas Jerrold said to Charles Mathews: "I don't despair of seeing you yet with a good cotton umbrella under your arm, carrying your savings to the bank." Many years afterwards Mathews, presiding over the Theatrical Fund, recalled this remark, and added, "The first part of Jerrold's wish has been fulfilled. I have bought an umbrella." Thanks to the Bancrofts and the managers who came after them, the bank has been in receipt of the savings of many actors who previously would have been content if only they might earn their daily bread.

Mr. and Mrs. Bancroft saw the time approaching when the monopoly they had secured of the works of Robertson would cease to exist; they felt at once that the vein was being exhausted, and that the new generation would have new needs. Able and far-sighted, they determined to retire at the zenith of their success, and if not in their youth, at least in their prime and in the full activity of their intellect. Neither of them was forty-five when in 1885 they gave their farewell performance at the Haymarket.

Amongst the innumerable tokens of esteem which conduced to the triumph of this withdrawal, I shall cite only one. It is a letter from Arthur W.

Pinero, who had belonged as an actor to the Bancroft Company, and who has taken since then a foremost place amongst English dramatists. He wrote to his former manager:--

"It is my opinion, expressed here as it is elsewhere, that the present advanced condition of the English stage--throwing as it does a clear, natural light upon the manner and life of the people, where a few years ago there was nothing but moulding and tinsel--is due to the crusade begun by Mrs. Bancroft and yourself in your little Prince of Wales's Theatre. When the history of the stage and its progress is adequately and faithfully written, Mrs. Bancroft's name and your own must be recorded with honour and grat.i.tude."

I took it into my head not long ago to pay a visit to the little theatre in which Frederic Lemaitre appeared, in which Napoleon and Count d'Orsay rubbed shoulders with d.i.c.kens and Thackeray, in which there was difficulty once in finding a seat for Gladstone, and in which Beaconsfield received a memorable ovation. The Salvationists have succeeded to the comedians, and, whether or not it be that their trumpets have the virtue of those of Jericho, these historic walls are crumbling to ruin. The place is empty, cold, and desolate. It was on an evening of last winter that I stood pensively under the porch--the porch through which had flowed like a stream all the elegance and talent of a whole generation. The light of a gas jet shone mournfully on the notice, mouldy already, "To be let or sold"; and the rain trickled down on me from a gaping hole whence the electric light used once to glare upon pretty women issuing in all their finery from their carriages. My curiosity was not satisfied. In order to obtain admission inside, I gave myself out as a lecturer in search of a hall, but the ruse failed. I was told that I should have to pay 4500 or 6000, and was asked whether this trifling outlay would interfere with me.

I did not pursue the negotiations, and the door remained closed.

CHAPTER V

Gilbert: compared with Robertson--His first Literary Efforts--The _Bab Ballads_--_Sweethearts_--A Series of Experiments--Gilbert's Psychology and Methods of Work--_Dan'l Druce_, _Engaged_, _The Palace of Truth_, _The Wicked World_--_Pygmalion and Galatea_--The Gilbert and Sullivan Operas.

When Marie Wilton's company, during their first holiday, went on tour to Liverpool, they happened upon the autumn a.s.sizes. The young London barristers who followed the circuit made haste to fraternise with the theatrical folk, and a sort of little colony came into being in which everyone rejoiced and made merry. Grotesque trials were represented in which Marie Wilton, got up as the Lord Chief Justice in wig and gown, gave forth admirable verdicts; she tells of these frolics in her Memoirs, adding pleasantly: "We were all young then, and the fun perhaps appeared greater than it would now, but it was a very happy time."

Among these young barristers there was one named Gilbert. He was soon to throw aside his gown in order to devote himself to the calling in which he was to achieve a reputation as great as Robertson's,--a reputation which still lives. The contrast between the two dramatists is striking.

Robertson is a craftsman, brought up in the theatre, amenable to outside influences; he collaborates with his actors, with the public,--one may say, with his entire generation. The ideas of his time, good, bad and indifferent, exude from him at every pore. He becomes, therefore, unconsciously, a representative man and the leader of a school. Where Robertson is a natural product, a symptom, Gilbert is a freak, an accident. He might have "occurred" at any time in the century, or indeed in any century. One can neither trace his ancestry nor imagine his posterity. Born and bred a gentleman, he loved the theatrical world without being of it. Actors have accused him of being cold in his manner to them, high and mighty, even disdainful. So much for his personal character;--in discussing a living writer, more than this would be improper. As to his bent of mind, its originality was evident from the first, but that originality was at all times somewhat shallow and liable to run dry; and instead of widening it, he scooped it out.

He exploited his talent by a kind of mathematical system, to its utmost limit, to the point of absurdity, in fact, and even further. His literary career may be described as containing three periods: in the first he felt his way; in the second he achieved brilliant and legitimate successes; in the third he met with even more fruitful triumphs, but of a kind which arouse little sympathy in a critic, and of which, I think, even he himself grew a bit tired. But he is so true an artist, and at the same time so typically English, that a French critic may well study him, even in his errors, without feeling that it is waste of time.

It was some verses which he contributed from week to week to _Fun_ that first attracted attention to him. He reprinted them under the t.i.tle, _Bab Ballads_, and as the public seemed to want them he followed these up with _More Bab Ballads_. Some of them were set to music and are still popular as songs, but these are not the ones which have the most flavour. It is difficult to describe this flavour; it consisted in a kind of nave irony, expressed in a form that was sometimes extravagant, sometimes studiously careless,--a blend of the deliberately prosaic with amazing fantasy. Some of these ballads finished up with a surprise, the others did not finish up at all,--which was a surprise too.

Gilbert offered to his friends at the Prince of Wales's a pleasant little comedy ent.i.tled _Sweethearts_. A young man is about to start for India, where he is to make a career for himself, but he is in love with a young girl who lives near his country home. She has but to say a word and he will not go, or will not go alone. She does not say this word. What prevents her? Is it timidity, bashfulness, pride, or that strange spirit of contradiction or of coquetry which sometimes keeps the tongue from obeying the dictates of the heart? However that may be, she lets him go.

Thirty years ensue. The lover returns, grey haired now,--a lover, indeed, no longer.

Distance in time, as in s.p.a.ce, makes things look small. His "grande pa.s.sion" seems to him now a boyish fancy. He merely wishes to see the spot again; that is all. She, too, is there, seated under the shade of the tree which they planted together, retaining still the flower which he had given her, faithful to the memory of the love she had seemed to scorn. The old boy's scepticism gives way to tenderness. They marry. But will they ever find the thirty years that they have lost?

Here is one of those pleasingly fanciful ideas that a man like Octave Feuillet may work out delightfully. Sadness and gladness should alternate in it like mist and sunshine on an autumn day. Now, Gilbert is a cynic, though a refined cynic, and he could deal only with half of his subject.

In his little comedy, one or other of its two characters is always carping at love. In the first act it is the woman, in the second the man. Gilbert speaks, and very cleverly, through the mouth of this railer, but, alas!

there seems nothing to be said on the other side. From the moment of this first attempt of his, the young author had to face the fact that he had a great disqualification for the writing of dramas; he could neither depict love nor reproduce its language. Is it out of a kind of revenge that he has continued to rail at love ever since?

Nevertheless, he made some further efforts during the years which followed. He wrote _Broken Hearts_, a fantastic drama in verse, and made it clear even to himself that he was unequal to such high flights. He aimed at freeing Goethe's Margaret from all that philosophy which surrounds and obscures her, and he discovered that the idyll thus disenc.u.mbered, and naturally told, became flat and commonplace. He was then inspired by history, and the idea entered his head--probably after some reading that had moved him and awakened in him some dormant atavistic instinct--that his misanthropy would have a new force in the mouth of a puritanical peasant of the seventeenth century. But how difficult it is for a university man, a Garrick Club man, to feel and speak like such a character! As far as mere language is concerned, the author was fairly successful; _Dan'l Druce_ is a pleasing mosaic of archaic phrases, an ingenious transcription of the speech of those days. (But was the public which applauded _School_ and _Society_ sufficiently advanced in its artistic education to enjoy these things?) Can one say the same, however, of the ideas? Had one submitted, for instance, to a contemporary of John Fox or of Bunyan the moral question on which Mr. Gilbert's drama turns, would he really have solved it after the fashion of _Dan'l Druce_? Surely not.

It is an interesting problem, though, of course, not new. To which of the two does the child belong--to him who begat but abandoned it, or to him who took pity on it and brought it up? It is the modern conscience that decides in favour of the second; the Puritan conscience of former days would have feared to interfere with that natural order of things in which it saw the guiding hand of G.o.d. As all things in this world and the next were pre-ordained, the father must remain the father in spite of everything, just as the chosen remained chosen, and the evil evil; the heart might bleed, but Divine Providence must have its way. This, it seems to me, had been the Puritan solution. But while we are reflecting upon these things, this problem, by a characteristic Gilbertian stroke, is turned upside down through a series of utterly incredible complications, the real father becomes the adoptive, and the adoptive father the real.

Thenceforth we tumble from psychology into melodrama, and there remains no problem to solve.