The Secrets of a Savoyard Part 6

I wrote about eight of these pieces altogether. The libretto and the scores are still in existence, and for better or for worse, they may be produced even yet. One of them is written round the well-known picture, "The Duel in the Snow." This depicts a beautiful woman rushing between the two swords in a duel, and my object was to fill in the dramatic significance of the picture, representing how it came about that the men were fighting in those wintry surroundings for the hand of the lady.

"For one night only" I appeared with the Follies. I was at the Palace in "My Cosy Corner," and Pellissier asked me to come on, garbed as the poet, in their burlesque on Shakespeare. Leaning from my pedestal, I had to reproach them for daring to take such liberties, and we finished up with a boxing match. Our jokes on that occasion were mainly extemporised. n.o.body in the audience knew that I was acting deputy, but those in the wings had heard that a conspiracy of some kind was afoot, and they entered heartily into the spirit of the burlesque.

It is far easier, I think, to improvise on the stage than it is away from the footlights, and I well remember my dilemma when I was once invited to an "at home." It was a children's party, and my hostess had told the youngsters that they were going to see _Ko-Ko_, the "funny man"

in "The Mikado." No doubt if I had come in my Oriental costume it would have been less difficult to act up to the part, but it was quite another thing to arrive in an immaculate frock-coat and silk hat, to be escorted at once into the circle of children, and invited then and there to act the clown in the circus with "jibe and joke and quip and crank." For some moments I stood almost tongue-tied. Luckily, as it happened, my hostess handed me a cup of tea, and in my nervousness I dropped it. The children giggled hugely. With that trivial incident the ice was broken.

Enjoyable as it is to meet so many people in the social sphere, our good friends who see us from the auditorium, and then shower their invitations upon us, are at times a little embarra.s.sing. Kind as they undoubtedly are--and we do appreciate the hospitality so readily offered to us wherever we go--they are perhaps forgetful that every week we have to get through seven or eight hard performances. With rehearsals taken into account, we have not over-much leisure for social enjoyment, and certainly no great reserves of energy. A Scotch lady was once most pressing that I should attend a dance she was arranging. Now, much as I love dancing on the stage, I have never had any taste at all for the conventional ball-room dancing, and really how could one have after doing, say, the courtly gavotte in "The Gondoliers?" "I never dance," I told my Scottish friend, "unless I'm paid for it." Evidently she mistook my meaning, for with her invitation to her dance she enclosed me--a cheque for 5. I returned it with my compliments.

From time to time on these social occasions we are prevailed upon to give one or two of our songs from the operas. Songs from the Gilbert and Sullivan operas, nevertheless, seldom sound well away from the stage and their familiar surroundings, and long ago most amateur vocalists dropped them from their repertory. I, personally, have found that the most suitable of my numbers for private circles are the _Lord Chancellor's_ "Dream Song"--it is so dramatic that it goes quite well as an unaccompanied recitation--and _King Gama's_ "I can't tell why." Here I must note a remarkable fact. When I am on the stage, I know not only my own lines, but the lines of everyone else, but away from the stage and the atmosphere of the play my otherwise excellent memory is not always so amenable to discipline. Indeed, I can recall an occasion when, at a garden party, I was asked to sing "t.i.t Willow." I cheerfully undertook to do so, but half-way through I stumbled, and try as I would even with the promptings of obliging friends, I could get no further than the middle of the second verse. And yet on the stage I have sung "t.i.t Willow" without a fault many thousands of times.

I think I was only once in any danger of forgetting my lines on the stage. It happened in "The Mikado." Behind the scenes, unknown to me, _Pooh Bah_ had fainted, and one of his entrances had to be made by _Pish Tush_. Well, I was on as _Ko-Ko_ at the time, and the sound of an unexpected voice was so strange, so bewildering, that for a moment it seemed to me that my reason had gone! "Get off! It's _Pooh Bah_" I whispered, excitedly. _Pish Tush_ managed to give me a hint that something had happened, and we continued our comedy scene, though in my frame of mind this might easily have come to grief!

Speaking of memory, I am reminded that my first recollection in life was that of listening, as a very small child, to a lad playing a quaint little tune on a banjo. I never heard that tune again, but it has ever since remained in my mind, and only a few years ago I was talking about it to a man who had spent nearly all his life in Australia. When we were children we were neighbours in the same village. "Yes," said my long-lost friend, "I was the lad who played that tune on the banjo, and you were lying in a cot in the garden!" Between that incident and our mutual recollection of it nearly fifty eventful years for both of us had pa.s.sed.

Before I close this chapter of random reminiscences I feel I must pay my tribute to the best, the oldest and the truest of all my friends--my helpmate in life, "Louie Henri." As Albert Chevalier would put it, "We've been together now for (almost) forty years, and it don't seem a day too much." Louie Henri, as I have already told, secured me my first engagement, and from that time to this she has been the intimate sharer in whatever troubles and successes have fallen to me in what is now a long and eventful career. Optimistic as I may be in temperament, there were times when her encouragement meant a great deal, and to my wife I pay this brief tribute (as brief it is bound to be). Our family has consisted of three sons and two daughters. Our two elder sons served during the war in the Royal Air Force, and one of them was lost whilst flying in a night-bombing raid in France. I well remember the time when my boy was first reported missing. With that anxious sorrow weighing on my mind, it was no small trial to keep alive the semblance, at least, of comedy.

Oh, a private buffoon is a light-hearted loon, If you listen to popular rumour.

_Jack Point's_ song appealed to me with peculiar poignancy during that time of heavy anxiety. But to return to my wife.

Louie Henri, as the older generation well remembers, is able to count herself amongst the distinguished Savoyards. Before she retired she had probably played a greater number of parts--soprano, contralto, and soubrette--than any other lady connected with the company. I am sure it will be of interest if I enumerate here the roles she has played:--

"Trial by Jury" _Plaintiff._ "The Sorcerer" _Constance_; _Mrs. Partlet_.

"H.M.S. Pinafore" _Josephine_; _Hebe_.

"The Pirates of Penzance" _Edith._ "Patience" _Lady Angela._ "Iolanthe" _Iolanthe._ "Princess Ida" _Melissa._ "The Mikado" _Pitti Sing._ "Ruddigore" _Mad Margaret._ "The Yeoman of the Guard" _Phoebe._ "The Gondoliers" _Tessa._ "Utopia, Ltd" _Nelraya._ "The Grand Duke" _Julia._

Mrs. Lytton, apart from her success as an actress, has always been an accomplished musician, and in that respect I owe much to her for the way in which, during the preparation of my new roles, she has helped me, "a lame, unmusical dog, over the stile." Our pianoforte at home is the one on which Sir Arthur Sullivan first played over his music for "The Mikado." It is a handsome satinwood grand, designed for Mr. D'Oyly Carte by the late Sir Alma Tadema, R.A., and this most interesting and valuable souvenir was presented to me by Mrs. D'Oyly Carte.

VII.

FRIENDS ON AND OFF THE STAGE.

Lessons to the Prince on the Bagpipes--A Charming and Lovable Personality--Queen Alexandra's Compliment--An Afternoon with Fisher--Stories of the Great Seaman--George Edwardes and His Genius for Stagecraft--His Successes on the Turf--"Honest Frank"

Cellier--A Model Conductor--Traditions of the Savoy--Rutland Barrington--An Admiral in Disguise--Fred Billington--A Strange Premonition--Our War-Time Experiences--Caught in the Toils of the Dublin Rebellion.

It was my great privilege and pleasure, when we were at Oxford on one occasion, to be introduced to the Prince of Wales, who was then in residence at Magdalen. Nothing impressed me more than his sunny nature and the wonderful knack he had of putting everybody at their ease immediately. Since then it has been just those qualities which have made him so immensely popular in his tours of the Empire.

Our first meeting was in His Royal Highness's own rooms, where he was accompanied by his tutor, Mr. H. P. Hansell. I remember that as I was speaking to him the members of a college team were brought in to be presented. "Ah!" exclaimed the Prince, "that's the best of being a celebrity, Lytton. I could not draw a muster like this." It was just a little pleasantry, this suggestion that it was myself who was the attraction, but it was an example of his happy knack of putting everybody at their ease immediately. I recall, too, that the Prince at that time was learning the chanter, with which one proceeds to the full glory of playing the bagpipes. Greatly to his surprise, I took the chanter and proceeded to give him a lesson, to which he listened most attentively, and then played a skirl, with which he was delighted. It so happens that, although I am no musician, I do know how to handle the bagpipes, and once a group of Scottish yokels who were listening to me stood open-mouthed with astonishment that such skill should be possessed by a trousered Englishman. This was when I visited my old colleague Durward Lely's place in the Highlands. The Scotties were enjoying a homely dance in a barn, and as the piper had been hard at it and seemed tired, I volunteered to act as his deputy. I don't want to be boastful, but my performance was regarded as a _tour de force_, at least for a Saxon.

The Prince came to the theatre frequently during our stay, and one night he came round to our dressing-room, where once more one fell irresistibly under the spell of his lovable and attractive personality.

He invariably addressed me as "Ko-Ko." The Prince told me then, as he had done on other occasions, how really delightful he thought the operas were, and he said he looked forward to seeing them again and again. Then he asked to be introduced to a member who, in more than one sense, is one of the stalwarts of the choristers, Joe Ruff. Seeing that Joe had been with us so many years, I thought this special "recognition" was particularly happy, and it was a very great pleasure to me to be allowed to introduce my colleague to the Heir-Apparent.

From time to time, both during my connection with D'Oyly Carte and when temporarily away from the company, I have played before Royalty.

Especially do I recall a night when Queen Alexandra occupied a box at the Savoy. It was in the "Yeoman of the Guard" revivals and my role was _Shadbolt_. Her Majesty was kind enough to send Sir Arthur Sullivan to my dressing-room to compliment me on the clearness of my enunciation, and I need hardly say how gratifying such praise was to me.

Seldom was "H.M.S. Pinafore" staged during the 1920 season without Lord Fisher coming to chuckle over Gilbert's clever satire on the "ruler of the Queen's Navee." He revelled in that opera. It was not only, I think, that it smacked of the sea, but he loved the gibes at the politicians and the hearty loyalty of the honest salt who, "in spite of all temptation," firmly resolves to "remain an Englishman." It was after he had seen me several times as _Sir Joseph Porter_ that he invited me to bring a few of my colleagues and spend an afternoon with him at his home in London. I reproduce his very typical letter on another page. My recollections of that afternoon are very delightful. Lord Fisher was a wonderful veteran, and it was difficult afterwards to realise that a fortnight later he was stricken down with his last illness, to which he succ.u.mbed in the following July.

I remember that we did not have to do much of the talking. Lord Fisher walked up and down, up and down the room as if it were the quarter-deck, and he was telling us all the while such capital stories that we forgot that we, too, were still standing up! Of his yarns there were two that were very typical of the man and his ways.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A LETTER FROM THE LATE LORD FISHER.]

"One day," he began, "I was walking through Trafalgar Square, and as I always do, I looked up at the statue of the greatest man that ever lived. Then a woman who was munching a bun came along. 'Here, master,'

she said, 'who's 'e?' 'That's Lord Nelson,' I answered. 'Is it?' she returned, 'and who's 'e?' Fancy! Never heard of Nelson! Such ignorance!

'Well,' I said, 'if it had not been for him, that bun would have cost you, not a halfpenny, but fourpence. Good day!' And I walked on. I suppose she thought she had been talking to a lunatic."

Then Lord Fisher spoke of the exertion needed in our dances on the stage. "Energy! Energy! That's what we want," he declared. "Why, I was fed by my mother until I was quite a big baby. I refused to be weaned--I was so determined even in those days! You must have good natural food when you are born. It means everything. It gives you stamina--it makes a man of you."

From that interview I brought away a signed portrait of the great seaman. "I'm an ugly blighter, aren't I?" he reflected, sadly, as he handed it to me, "but I'm good." Candour would have compelled one to admit that he was anything but strikingly handsome, but in that small, intensely sallow face there was, after all, something that was extraordinarily kindly and strong. In that sense his face was the faithful mirror of his character.

"Jackie Fisher's" candour reminds me of a frank admission made to me by a statesman who still wields a leading influence in present-day politics. I think I had better not mention his name, although he is numbered amongst my friends, and he has often been exceedingly kind in his appreciation of my work on the stage. He told me he once met a lady whom he had not seen for several years, and having cordially greeted her, he said, "I'm so delighted to see you, Sybil." That he should have remembered her, and still more, that he should have remembered her first name, pleased the lady immensely. She said she was charmed that he had not forgotten her name. "Oh," responded the statesman, with the best of intentions, "I've a remarkable memory for trifles." The next moment he realised he had committed an awful _faux pas_. What was more, he saw that he, though a politician, could not explain it away.

Not many people remember now that Mr. George Edwardes, who created the vogue for musical comedies as we now know them, and who made a fortune out of his connection with the Gaiety and Daly's, was in his early days Mr. D'Oyly Carte's manager at the Savoy. When he became a producer his flair for stage effect amounted to genius. He could decide in a moment to make the most revolutionary changes in a production. For instance, I have heard him give orders that the first act should be made the second one and the second the first, because he saw that it would better work up the interest in the play. He would transpose a certain scene from here to there because he knew instinctively that there was its proper place. "I don't like that man singing that song," he said once, just before a new comedy was due to have its first performance, and when even the dress rehearsals were almost complete, "We'll give it to a lady."

"But," it was objected, "it's a man's song--a military song." "Never mind," he answered in that familiar drawling voice of his, "we'll dress her in a red coat, and we'll bring the chorus on as soldiers too." And his judgment was absolutely right. That girl's soldier song was the great hit of the piece.

George Edwardes was a generous, kindly-natured man, accessible to everybody, and a splendid companion. Keenly interested as he was in his theatrical ventures, he never made these his sole and only pre-occupation. Upon the Turf, as every sportsman knows, he was a shining light, and many horses from his stables won the biggest prizes of their year. He often invited me to join him at the races, and never failed to tell me the winners--"well, hardly ever." One day he gave me three running. Just then I was arranging to play under his management for a term of three years, and he said those three winners proved that we could make money together both on and off the stage, and that we must sign up the contract, which we did the next day.

One of my closest friends was Francois Cellier, of whom it would be literally true to say that he devoted his life, his talents and all his enthusiasm to the operas at the Savoy. For thirty-five years he served them as conductor, to the exclusion of all the fame he might have won in a wider field, for he was a musician of surpa.s.sing accomplishments. He was the younger brother of Alfred Cellier, who was the composer, amongst other delightful comedies, of "Dorothy." Both men were Bohemians, and both of them might have been the architects of their own fortunes if they had put only their own goal in front of them, and pursued it steadily.

Francois Cellier--Honest Frank they called him, and the name suited him well--was a prince of good fellows and a most charming and helpful companion. I can never tell the debt I owe to him for all the advice he gave to me regarding our performances. He knew Gilbert's and Sullivan's ideas to the minutest detail, and, with all his love of the operas, he wanted those ideas carried through exactly on the stage. Even with the audiences he had a magnetic personality. Unlike most conductors, who feel they must allow just as many encores as the audience demands, he could indicate by some strange method to those behind him that an encore would be unreasonable or inconsiderate, and immediately the applause would subside and the play would proceed.

Cellier had his heart and soul in every performance, and what that means is known only to those who work on the stage, and who do sometimes become dull and listless because of their very familiarity with the parts they are playing or because the audience cannot easily be aroused to "concert pitch." What brightness they may give to their acting is of a superficial and mechanical kind that can give them no pleasure. It is at just such times as these that a real conductor is worth his weight in gold. Notwithstanding that he may have seen the piece hundreds of times--and might with reason be more bored than the princ.i.p.als themselves--he comes to each new performance with an enthusiasm which shakes the company out of themselves and makes everything go with a will.

Some conductors I have known have shown so little interest in their work that they did not even attempt to conceal their boredom. This is very unfair to the players. Can anyone expect there to be any spirit in the singing of a chorus when the conductor is just listlessly waving his baton, or when he shows such little respect for the artistes that, during their dialogues, he either yawns sleepily or leans over for a chat with the strings? Cellier was never guilty of that discourtesy.

From the time he picked up his baton for the first bar of the overture the "play was the thing." During a chorus you would see him alert and awake and stirring on the company to give their best, and during your own solos or dialogues you would see him listening intently so that, like a friendly critic, he could afterwards praise you for what you had done well or give you hints where there was cause for improvement. It is a great thing to the artistes to see a genial face at the conductor's desk, and the operas go with a great spirit and nerve whenever the conductor, seconded by the orchestra, is doing everything to help us along. Our company's record has been a very fortunate one in this respect.

Everybody who plays in Gilbert and Sullivan makes it a point of honour to do his or her best to preserve what we call the traditions of the Savoy. If I were asked to name the secret of the charm of these operas, I should have to answer that there was not one secret, but many, but that one of the chief is their sense of "repose." Gilbert, like the master playwright he was, would never have two situations running together. If, that is to say, the leading character was going to offer his hand to the heroine, the whole company must look on eagerly and expectantly. It would never do for them to be indifferent and uninterested. Still less would it do for subsidiary characters to do something that might attract the audience's eye to them in some other part of the stage. Everything must be focussed on the central incident, and to this end every member of the company must think first and all the time of the play, and not indulge in those hateful individual touches of "pantomime."

What I mean is best seen in what happens quite frequently in ordinary plays. Nearly every minor actor and actress seems to take, or is allowed to take, licence to put in a little bit of "business" on his or her own account, and so draw kudos to himself or herself by being supposed to be "funny." It is really only "supposed." Generally it is not funny at all, and it mars the effect of the play by making the entire atmosphere restless and perplexed. Eyes are strained here, there and everywhere, and the poor audience in trying to catch this, that and the other point, is probably missing what is the chief point of the play. Well, if refinement is not the keynote of a production, this may possibly not matter so much, but it is certainly foreign to the tranquil atmosphere of Gilbert and Sullivan.

No one, I think, could have done more by his example on the stage to encourage refinement in these operas than my good friend, Rutland Barrington. During his playing career--now at an end, unhappily--he was an artiste to his finger tips. He had also a great a.s.set in his fine presence and personality. Our friendship has been of the closest, and I call to mind an incident when we were at Portsmouth and when there was something important occurring at the Royal Dockyard. "We can't get in without a pa.s.s," I said to him, but he only smiled and said that, at all events, we could try. "Watch me," he commanded. Straightening himself up, he walked to the gates as if in the manner born, took the salute from the sentries, and entered the yard. It looked ridiculously easy. So I decided to follow suit. The sentries would not let me through. "Can't come in without a pa.s.s," I was told, and let me through they would not on any account, however much I tried to "flatter, cajole and persuade."

Barrington always did have "a way with him." I imagine the sentries were impressed by his bearing, or it may be that they had mistaken him for his brother, Admiral Fleet.

This naval reference serves to recall a most interesting story bearing on the subject of "make-up." Now, "make-up" has always been a fascinating study to me, and many kind friends tell me that I have a special gift for it, instancing how completely I transform my appearance for parts so different, for example, as the hunchback _King Gama_ and the martial old _General Stanley_. Certainly I do spend more time than most actors do over the arts and deceptions of the dressing-room. For _King Gama_ the make-up of the face alone takes an hour, apart from all the physical deformities that have to be contrived when playing this ugly, ungainly character in "Princess Ida." But all this by the way.

What I was going to write about was an incident when a worried young naval lieutenant came to see me at the close of our show at the Savoy.

He was at the romantic age then, a trifle oblivious to the pa.s.sing of time when there was a charming lady at his side, and at the theatre he overlooked that by a certain hour he should have been back at the Naval College at Greenwich. Lieutenant X came round to see me in a terrible state. What was he to do? If he went back, he told me, he would be stopped at the gates by the sentries and he would have to give explanations, of which none he could think of would be adequate. If, on the other hand, he did not return there would be a court-martial, and he would be dismissed from the Service. Before him, whichever way he turned, was the blank ruin of his career and he disgraced in the eyes of his family. Well I don't know which of us actually suggested it, but it occurred to us that if only he could be disguised as an Admiral, he might easily get into the college! An Admiral had to keep no strict hours when absent from duty, and if only he could look and act the part, the sentries would let him pa.s.s and ask no awkward questions. So in a very few minutes I was busy treating him with all the arts of "make-up."

Certainly the addition of a pointed beard made a most effective disguise, and it answered splendidly, for at Greenwich he marched boldly through the gates to the dutiful salutes of the sentries. The situation was saved. For my own part I felt that I had done something to save a career, and as it happens, the romantic young friend of those days is now a real Admiral, and a very well-known and popular one, in his Majesty's Navy.

Numerous are the stories told about my friend and colleague for so many years--Fred Billington. In temperament and character we were entirely opposites, but there was scarcely one disagreement throughout our long companionship, during which we played together almost continuously. He was a Yorkshireman, and before he joined the company, with which he remained for thirty-seven years, he was in the office of the Water Board at Huddersfield. The whole of his stage career was spent with these operas.

It was not everybody who understood Billington. Sometimes he could be uncommonly moody and gruff, and if he did not feel in the mood to talk, he would make it clear that he wanted no introductions to one's own acquaintances. But under the rugged surface he was a fine-hearted fellow, who lived life heartily and lived it well, and nothing pleased him better, apart from a game of golf, than to sit and gossip with those whose society he liked.

One day he invited three of us to a round of golf, and it being a cold morning, he told us that he was ordering "a good beef-steak and kidney pudding." Well, when we had finished the game and returned to the club-house, in came that steaming pudding. Billington looked at it long and earnestly. "It won't do for four," he reflected. Then a pause. "It would make a poor meal for three. There's scarcely enough for two. I'll tell you what. I'll have it--and you three can have chops." And that is just what we did.

Billington had a gift of robust eloquence, and unless one was accustomed to it, the freedom with which it flowed from his tongue was most embarra.s.sing. He was playing a clergyman one day at golf. The cleric, whenever he made a bad shot, invariably relieved his feelings by exclaiming, "Oh, Pickles! Pickles!" Language of this kind in Billington's ears was exceedingly trying, and as if determined to give the parson a lesson, he came out with a string of oaths of the richest and most vivid description. "Thank you very much, Mr. Billington," said the clergyman, smilingly, "thank you very much!" Evidently those were the sort of words which, but for respect for his cloth, he wanted to say!

One day he went out for a match with a bishop. The club officials, knowing how exuberant his language could be, were on tenter-hooks of anxiety all the time they were out, and on their return the secretary hastened to take the episcopal visitor apart. "Mr. Billington, the actor, you know, my lord," he explained. "I hope his language didn't shock you." "Oh, no!" responded the bishop, diplomatically, "he did once call on the Almighty, but otherwise his language was beyond reproach."