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CHAPTER IV

First Performance of Society– Success of Ours, Caste, and School– How Robertson turned to account the Talent of his Actors, John Hare, Bancroft, and Mrs. Bancroft – Progress in the Matter of Scenery – Dialogue and Character-drawing – Robertson as a Humorist: a scene from School– As a Realist: a scene from Caste– The Comedian of the Upper Middle Classes – Robertson’s Marriage, Illness, and Death – The “Cup and Saucer” Comedy – The Improvement in Actors’ Salaries – The Bancrofts at the Haymarket – Farewell Performance – My Pilgrimage to Tottenham Street.

That evening of the 14th of November has been described to us by several eye-witnesses, so that we are able to realise the feelings that prevailed both on the stage and amongst the audience. The first act seemed gay and lively, with a sort of mordant raillery in it with which the audience was unfamiliar. Then came an idyll, evolving amidst the trees of a London square. What! love – youthful, tender, tremulous love – in the very heart of this city of mud, fog, and smoke! Love, so near that you might touch his wings! This was the kind of impression it evoked – an impression that pleased and moved the more, that the public, always over-curious concerning the private life of its favourites, was acquainted with the tender relations of actor and actress. It was a real “honeymoon” – the full moon which shone on this love duet from over the shrubbery of coloured canvas. The hearts of the audience went out to them, and all was well.

But no one could say what sort of reception was in store for “The Owls’ Roost.” This “roost” was a picture from the life of the clubs which I have already described as the principal resorts of Bohemia. Now, the “Savages” – the members, that is, of the Savage Club – as well as the frequenters of the Garrick, the Fielding, and the Arundel, were all there in force. How would they take this caricature of themselves? The laughter which broke out in uninterrupted peals soon reassured the anxious ears behind the scenes.

There is a point at which one of the chief characters is at a loss for half a crown wherewith to pay for the hansom in which he is going off to a ball. Having no money in his pocket he asks a friend for the sum. “I haven’t got it,” the friend replies, “but I’ll see if I can’t get it for you.” He asks a third, who makes a similar reply; and so the appeal makes the whole round of the club, until at last a half-crown is found in the depths of a pocket, and is passed on from hand to hand, borrowed and lent a dozen times, to the man who had asked for it in the first instance. The incident was taken from actual life. Thus reproduced upon the stage, it seemed indescribably comic, and proved the turning-point in the fortune of the play – the happy crisis after which everything was greeted with applause. It was a trivial illustration, but it was thoroughly characteristic. It was Bohemia in a nutshell – to have nothing and give everything.

As the “owls” were so much diverted by the faithful portrayal of their resorts and of their customs, thus presented for the first time upon the stage, there was no reason to expect that Society would take offence over the extraordinary and incongruous proceedings at the establishment of Lord and Lady Ptarmigant. This kind of comic libel was not unknown; – Bulwer, for instance, had set himself to depict the union of the old aristocracy with the new, the naïve veneration displayed by Riches for Rank, and on the other hand, the prostration of Rank before Riches. No one showed astonishment at seeing Lady Ptarmigant smilingly take the arm of old Chodd, though his language and his manners were those of a costermonger, and though his lordship’s valet would probably have hesitated about letting himself be seen with him in a public-house. As for Lord Ptarmigant himself, he was just what we call a panne. The whole character resolved itself into a mere eccentricity, as monotonous as it was far-fetched and extravagant, – a habit of dragging about his chair with him wherever he went, and of falling asleep in it the moment he sat down, with the result that everyone who came in or went out could not fail to tumble over his stretched-out old legs. Who would have imagined that such a rôle as this would be one of the causes of the success of the piece, and would be the means of revealing to London an admirable actor? His name was John Hare. He was still quite young, and he had wished for this strange rôle in which to make his début. Profiting by the example of Garrick, Hare had realised that an actor does not make his name by giving out a witticism or telling phrase with effect, but by putting before us a live human figure, if only a silent figure, in all its eccentricity of brain. His facial expression was wonderful, and his mimicry excellent; – he had in him the genius of metamorphosis; he has it still, and gives evidence of it in a hundred different rôles. By a sort of intuition not easy to explain, there was hardly a spectator who did not divine the future great actor from this one performance.

The success of Society– it lasted for one hundred and fifty nights – was followed almost at once by the success of Ours, which lasted still longer, and filled the theatrical season 1866-67. Then came Caste in 1867 and 1868. School in 1869 surpassed its predecessors in popularity, being played nearly four hundred times. In the intervals between these four great triumphs there were two pieces which, without achieving so long a run, still maintained in the fortunate little theatre the same joyous atmosphere of success.

When the “Prince of Wales’s,” however, had recourse to any other than its regular caterer, a check in its fortunes was sure to come, and there was no alternative to falling back on Robertson. And when Robertson tried his fortune elsewhere, even when supported by a popularity so well established as that of Sothern, the result was invariably but a succès d’estime, when not a disastrous failure. From these circumstances a certain superstition grew up. Superstitions are rife in the theatrical world. Marie Wilton, it was felt, had her lucky star, and Robertson had his, but the two had to be in conjunction for their benign influence to be exerted. Perhaps the coincidence may be explained without having recourse to the stars. Tom Taylor, on the day after a new triumph, wrote to the young manageress: “The author and the theatre, the actors and the rôles, all seem made for one another.” This was quite true, and it may be added, that the public and the time were in harmony with the spirit of the pieces and the talent of the performers. Everything had come about as it should; so it was called chance!

Robertson was not much of an actor, but he was a wonderful reader. When you heard Robertson read one of his comedies, Clement Scott tells us, you understood it in all its details. Under the sway of his moving elocution the actors laughed and cried. The author knew their weaknesses and their gifts better than they themselves; he knew, therefore, how to make the most of the peculiar constitution of this small company which formed a kind of family, closely united by common interests, ambitions, and affections. Until then a piece was often nothing more than a star actor planted well in the front of the stage, taking his time and prolonging his effects, and behind him a dozen or so nonentities mumbling mere odds and ends of dialogue and addressing themselves to the back of their more famous colleague. For the first time there was now at the “Prince of Wales’s,” an ensemble moulded by assiduous rehearsals and perfected by the practice of every night.

In Ours, John Hare, who played the rôle of Prince Perofsky, had only to utter a dozen sentences – hackneyed and affected compliments – yet he made out of it a really striking portrait of a Slavonic Grand Seigneur, with a smouldering passion in his heart veiled under the most perfect manners. Besides his impressiveness there was something enigmatic about him that set one speculating as to the part he was to play in the plot, – an enigma to which there was to be no solution.

At length, in Caste, Robertson gave him a real rôle, that of Sam Gerridge. I imagine, indeed, that author and actor contributed equally to the creation of this character. The same might be said, perhaps, of that of Captain Hawtree, created by Bancroft in the same play. Seldom, surely, has the use of this big word “created” (so often applied in the papers to the most insignificant performances) been warranted so fully as in these cases.

Before Sothern’s time the man of the world used to be represented on the English stage as an absurd figure treading on tiptoe while in ladies’ society and ogling them à bout portant.

The type had been changed as regards costume, but not as regards language, from that of the Macaroni of 1770. The dandy of 1840 does not seem to have found his way on to the stage until 1865.

It was a complete change from this type to the character presented by Bancroft as Captain Hawtree, humorous but not ridiculous; not in the least essential to the play, yet attracting a large share of interest and sympathy. An elegantly languid air, which yet spoke of weakness neither of muscles nor of character; a blind acceptance of the social code, which was not incompatible with generous feelings and a sense of humour; a mixture of soldier-like cordiality and worldly cynicism, which amounted to an état d’âme if not to a philosophy: these were some of the features that went to make up the character.

When circumstances – quite simple and natural – lead to Hawtree’s taking tea in humble East End lodgings, between a little dancing-girl and an old plumber, nearly all the fun of the scene comes from his mute expression of continual astonishment. Hawtree presents a curious combination of awkwardness and goodwill in the scene in which he brings the plates to Polly Eccles in the pantry to be washed. At bottom it is the attitude of the English gentleman towards the social question, – somewhat scornful, somewhat amused, but ready to turn up his sleeves and put a shoulder to the wheel at need.

As for Marie Wilton, with what wonderful insight Robertson had made out the real genius of this little woman, whose talents were so real, if all her ambitions were not attainable! She looked back with horror at her successes at the Strand; she wanted never again to play a gamin’s part (as we should call it) or to appear in burlesque. Robertson wrote her a succession of gamin’s parts and burlesque scenes. But the gamin was petticoated and the burlesque scenes set in a comedy. I am not referring to Society, which was not written for the “Prince of Wales’s.” But what is it she has to do in the three other pieces? In School she climbs a wall. In Ours she takes part in a game of bowls, mimics the affectations of the swells of ’65, plays at being a soldier, bastes a leg of mutton from a watering pot, and as a climax makes a roley-poley pudding, adapting military implements to culinary uses for the purpose. In Caste her operations are still more varied – she sings, dances, boxes people’s ears, plays the piano, pretends to blow a trumpet, puts on a forage cap, and imitates a squadron of cavalry. If this is not burlesque, what is it?

Some months ago I saw her in a revival of Money, in which she plays the rôle of a woman of the world, and in one scene of which – a scene which owed much more to her than to Bulwer – she shows the steps of a dance. At this moment I seemed to see the legs of Pippo moving under the skirts of Lady Franklin, – those legs which five and thirty years before had made so lively an impression on the brain of Charles Dickens.

Whether he was conscious of it or not, Robertson made her play Pippo all her life. These fantastic rôles, sketched on to the margin of domestic dramas, were to have a remarkable and twofold success; they were largely responsible for the good fortune of Robertson’s comedies, and in the reading of these they constitute, as it were, appetising hors d’œuvres. If I say to the admirers of Caste that Polly Eccles is an excrescence spoiling the artistic merit of the piece, they reply at once that, on the contrary, she is its life and soul; and from the point of view of stage effect, they are quite right.

The Bancrofts – they married shortly after the opening of the theatre – were the complements of each other. She was all fun and fancy, harum-scarum, irresponsible, indescribable. He was chiefly notable for thought, taste, careful observation, and truthful representation of real life. One of his first acts, as soon as there was some money in the exchequer of the “Prince of Wales’s,” was to introduce a certain amount of intelligent realism into the scenery. He felt the need of doors with locks instead of the wretched folding-sashes, which shook before the draughts from the wings. In Caste he gave ceilings to the rooms. The last Act of Ours takes place in Crimean barracks during the winter of 1855; every time the door was opened a gust of snow came into the room with a whirl and whistle, which produced so strong an illusion that the audience shivered. In the gardens, real flowers were introduced, and living birds. Charles Mathews was thought very enterprising because he had ventured to have some chairs placed in a drawing-room upon the stage. Bancroft went so far as to assign a different character to different suites of furniture. Thus in a revival of the School for Scandal, Joseph Surface’s furniture was different from that of Sir Peter Teazle; his furniture, hypocritical as himself, seemed to make a pretence of being plain and simple, lied for him and bore out his lies. As for the actresses, instead of being made guys of by the theatrical costumiers, they had real dresses made for them by real dressmakers.

Robertson approved of these innovations, but he was never more than half a realist, and this from several causes. Like all Englishmen, he delighted in the warfare of words; he shared with them all, big and little, ancient and modern, that liking for brilliancy which is perhaps evolved from the liking of savages for brilliants. Once he began concocting repartees he forgot all else and gave his pen its head. He made his characters play a game of verbal battledore and shuttlecock. He dragged in by the nape of the neck, as it were, tirades whose proper place had been in a leading article. When he went too far, however, in these directions, he was often the first to make fun of the result. “What has that got to do with what we are talking about?” asks a character in Ours. “It has nothing to do with it, that’s why I said it.” And in the same piece another character remarks of something that has happened, “If an author put that into a play, everyone would say that it was impossible and untrue to life.”

Thus it was he would forestall gaily, with a sort of impudent frankness, the objections of the critics. The public enjoys this kind of thing. What it enjoys most of all, in England at anyrate, is the grain de folie, the lurking, unlooked-for quaintness, which characterises some of their humorists, Dickens, for instance, and Ben Jonson. It is this quality which is responsible for their creation of strange types whose ideas and conversations are all topsy-turvy.

It was in School that Robertson poured it out most plentifully. It was the most frivolous of his plays, and in this perhaps may be found the explanation of its success. The heroines are boarding-school girls; they are just at the age and in the situation in which no absurdity would seem too great or out of place. By a convention which the spectator agrees to willingly, they are girls in Act I. and women three weeks later in Act III. In these three weeks they have learned the meaning of life.

“What is love?” asks one of the youngest in the first scene. “Why, everyone knows what love is,” Naomi tells her. “Well, what is it then?” asks another, and the first speaker insists that no one seems to know.

Then comes the time for them to pass from vague theory to real experience. It is the evening, in the orchard. There are two flirtation scenes, one following the other, full of childishness, but full of naïveté, freshness, and charm. There is question of the distance from the earth to the moon, of the play of light and shade, of a little milk-jug which it takes two to carry, of the Crimean War, and of Othello. Of love there is no word, but it underlies their every feeling, hides behind every word, peeps out through every glance, mingles with the very air they breathe.

Naomi: … “I like to hear you talk.”

Jack (bows): “The fibs or the truth?”

Naomi: “Both. Have you ever been married?”

Jack: “Never.”

Naomi: “What are you?”

Jack: “Nothing. It’s the occupation I am most fitted for.”

Naomi: “Oh, you must be something?”

Jack: “No.”

Naomi: “What were you before you were what you are now?”

Jack: “A little boy.”…

Naomi: “Mr. Farintosh was saying at table that you had been in the army. Were you a horse-soldier or a foot-soldier?”

Jack: “A foot-soldier, – a very foot-soldier.”

Naomi: “And that you were in the Crimea?”

Jack: “Ya-as, I was there.”

Naomi: “At the battle of Inkermann?”

Jack: “Ya-as.”

Naomi: “Then why didn’t you mention it?”

Jack: “Not worth while, there were so many other fellows there.”

Naomi: “Did you fight?”

Jack: “Ya-as, I fought.”

Naomi: “Weren’t you frightened?”

Jack: “Immensely.”

Naomi: “Then why did you stay?”

Jack: “Because I hadn’t the pluck to run away.”

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 Othello?”

Jack: “Ya-as. But I don’t think it nice reading for young ladies.”

Naomi: “Othello told Desdemona of the dangers he had passed and the battles he had won.”

Jack: “Ya-as. Othello was a nigger, 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 passion, 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 title 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 classes; but when a marchioness passes 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’ – (Snatches 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, Class-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 class against class, 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 Class,” “Second Class,” “Third Class,” “Holders of Third-Class Tickets must not enter Second-Class 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 space 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 assailant 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 Cockneyism, but this demand was an indication of progress, and Robertson satisfied it by writing the middle-class 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 circumstances 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-class Utilitarianism.

The name of the Bancrofts remained associated 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 assistance. 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.