Complete works of a e w.., p.847
Complete Works of a E W Mason, page 847
His fault was that he laboured overmuch upon the words which he put into his characters’ mouths. Whether it was that he was minded to give them a literary varnish, who shall say? The most likely explanation is that he went back and rewrote and went back again and rewrote, until his judgment was lost and drowned in the ocean of his vocabulary. What was simple began to look flat and to need ornament. His methods of work suggest that the reason is to be found in them. He took the air in the morning and withdrew to his study in the afternoon, and thence the hours until bedtime were given more often than not without a break to his play. The habit of overloading his sentences grew upon him. In the earlier farces and plays the dialogue was as direct as dialogue could be. When there was exaggeration it was the comic exaggeration proper to the kind of play. But in the later plays, Letty for instance especially, this one blemish of making his characters speak ornate periphrases which no mortal man would use, and no actor could deliver without becoming artificial, did a lot to obscure his great qualities as a dramatist.
The Princess and the Butterfly, which followed As You Like It on March 29th of the year 1897, dealt, in its author’s words, “with the struggle of middle age with love”. It dealt a little over-importantly with a not very important theme. Alexander played one of those parts of men in the forties which he was beginning to make his own. Sir George Lamorant was easy work compared with Aubrey Tanqueray. The part required dignity, tenderness, humour, anger, but it made nothing like a strong call upon his emotional power. It was, moreover, rather sententious, and his consciousness of his age was so dwelt upon in his speeches that it needed all the actor’s skill to avoid an impression of trifling egotism. Julia Neilson played an Hungarian Princess who was equally but with more semblance of reason distressed by the flight of her youth, and Fay Davis, in the character of a wayward half-Italian untutored waif, had an opportunity of which she made full use.
The play makes strange reading to-day. Middle-age is an obsession. The introduction of a woman with a past into a group amongst whom is Sir George’s ward is matter for a duel. The woman with a past has poured the burgundy into her finger-bowl. Actually she has done that! The girl, Fay Zuliani, slips out of the house, having no latchkey, with another girl and goes off dressed as a Harlequin to the masked ball at the Opera House. It is an escapade so disreputable that it must be hidden even from the servants. We are presented with a picture of the times as remote from these days as those middle ages which were not the theme of the play. One cannot but ask oneself, “Are these the naughty nineties?” But even at that date it was considered that the author’s picture of the times was over-coloured and the moral overstressed. There were to be sure effective scenes and some diverting satire upon the youth of the day; and what with Pinero’s reputation and the high position which Alexander had won both by his acting and his management of his theatre, and the proficiency of his company, the play ran for nearly a hundred nights. Although the cast was very large and strewn with the big names of the day, H. B. Irving, H. V. Esmond, A. Vane Tempest, Julia Neilson, Patric Bell, Julie Opp, Fay Davis, Rose Leclercq, a hundred performances were enough as a rule to ensure a reasonable profit at the St. James’. But the play was in five acts and needed elaborate scenery, whilst many of the characters with only a line or so to speak had to speak them in costly uniforms. The expense of the production, which exceeded that of As You Like It by a couple of hundred pounds, swallowed up as much again as the profit on the actual playing and ended in a loss of nearly two thousand pounds.
The rehearsals of this play did not run smoothly. The crowded stage during the second and third acts must have taxed even so resourceful a producer as Alexander. Differences of opinion between Pinero and Alexander became acute, not for the first time, but the personal friendship between the two men was not spoilt.
Part of the literary jargon of that day was the phrase, “a human document”. It was thinned out to extinction by over-use. But it describes very fitly the correspondence which follows here. It seems to me that anyone who keeps in mind that after all this smashing-up for ever and ever of old associations, actor and author were to combine in making the greatest success of their lives, cannot but read it with amusement or indeed with a warm friendliness for both of them. Pinero was so determined, Alexander so remorseful. Never again were they to work together on the stage of the St. James’. No, never! And nine years actually did elapse before His House in Order was produced.
The first’ letter was written by Alexander on December 21st, 1896, from Ovingdean:
MY DEAR P., I hope you got my brief wire of delight on reading the play. It is wonderful — simply wonderful, and exceeds my highest hopes; interesting — absorbingly interesting, especially in the last three acts. That fourth act — for direct humanity, perfection of workmanship, and sheer brilliancy of intellectuality and power equals anything you have ever done.
The last act, too, is startling in its genius, with its manipulation of “the fairy tale happy for ever after” ending — it fairly takes one’s breath away: it is so delicate, so profound and so limitlessly human in its analysis.
Do you care to come here with me for a Sunday in January? If so I should be delighted — any Sunday except the 17th.
I’ve seen Telbin and arranged with him for the last scene; he will have the model done early in Jany., when I’ll get you to look at it.
Every good wish to Mrs Pin and yourself: we are here till Friday.
Yours, ALEC
To this Pinero replied:
MY DEAR ALEC,
I was pleased to receive your telegram (which I ought to have acknowledged) and am more than pleased to read this morning, in your kind letter, the very warm expressions you employ in reference to The Princess and the Butterfly. There are no pleasanter moments for the playwright than those in which he finds his manager in full sympathy and accord with him.
Could gratitude be warmer, or the reply to it more cordial? With day-to-day rehearsals letters are not to be expected, but one which Pinero wrote during the course of them suggests the turn which things were taking.
I am sure you are quite wise to take it easy to-morrow. And, anyhow, you need have no concern for your strictly personal share in the forthcoming new show; your rehearsals convince me that Sir George Lamorant will be a very striking figure and a most charming fellow into the bargain.
The play, however, was not enthusiastically received, and though it played to houses averaging A160 a night, it only did so because Alexander took it off when the receipts began to drop. Alexander, when the rehearsals were over, seems to have been unaware that they had left a sting in Pinero’s sensibilities which ached even three years afterwards. For he wrote to Pinero from Cromer in the autumn of 1899 without a suspicion that any misunderstanding existed:
MY DEAR PINERO,
Would you care to have the autumn opening date for a play at the new St. James’ next year? If so I would give up my tour, and begin work at whatever time you thought best. I think you will like the new theatre — it will hold about a performance more, and still, I hope, be small enough for any play. The de la Rues write me that you are expected at Maloja. I have had a delightful holiday and am quite well again. I return to London on the 15 th and could see you if you thought anything of this proposal.
Yours sincerely,
GEORGE ALEXANDER
This innocent letter called forth some pleasant friendly phrases first and the thunderbolt afterwards:
MY DEAR ALEC,
I am glad to hear from you and to know that you have had an enjoyable and restful holiday. For myself, business has kept me in town much later than I care for; but we are off on Saturday morning to our old haunt — Maloja. Somewhere about Sept. 12th we shall drop down to Cadenabbia; thence I go to Turin, (to assist at the production, in Italian, of Quex! an odd experience) and finally, to amuse my stepdaughter, to Venice. All being well I shall be home again by the middle of October.
Accept my hearty thanks, dear Alec, for your suggestion that I should write a play for the opening of your remodelled theatre. I have such pleasurable associations with the old house that I cannot reconcile myself to the title — the New St. James’s. May it, at any rate, resemble the old in the fame and fortune it brings its tenant.
Coming to the dry bones of your proposal, I consider it best to be quite open and candid with you. If my words bear a curt and abrupt look pray ascribe it to the limitations imposed by a hurriedly-written letter. Frankly, dear Alec, I don’t think that you and I go well together in harness; or, rather, I do not feel happy in running tandem with you, myself as wheeler to your lead. I know you take a pride in being an autocrat in your theatre; it is a natural pride in a position which you have worthily won for yourself. But I also have won — or have chosen to usurp — a similarly autocratic position in all that relates to my work. I hope I do not use my power unfairly or overbearingly, but I do exercise it — and any other condition of things is intolerable to me. In my association with you on the stage I have always felt that you have resented my authority. In the case of our last joint venture the circumstances which led up to it were of so unhappy a character that I resolved to abrogate this authority — to reduce it, at any rate, to a shadow. But, at the same time, I did not relish my position and determined — even before I started upon a campaign which I foresaw could not be otherwise than full of discomfort and constraint — that I would not again occupy it. To put the case shortly, there is not room for two autocrats in one small kingdom; and in every detail, however slight, that pertains to my work — though I avail myself gratefully of any assistance that is afforded me — I take to myself the right of dictation and veto.
In face of this explanation, my dear Alec, (longer than I intended it to be) I trust you will forgive me for declining your offer, and will believe that this prompt candour on my part is exhibited in a spirit of fairness to yourself as well as from a desire to explain my own attitude.
Notwithstanding the foregoing, I am, I assure you, none the less obliged to you for your proposal. By making it you pay me a compliment, one I appreciate thoroughly.
I am, my dear Alec,
Yours always truly,
ARTHUR W. PINERO
Thus with every expression of friendship and goodwill — and no one who knew anything of Pinero’s reticence and his warmth of heart could doubt the sincerity of that expression — Pinero in 1897 had finished with the St. James’ Theatre. The memory of the rehearsals of The Princess and the Butterfly still rankled after two years. The two men who together had done so much to lift the theatre to a higher place in the estimation of intelligent people, were henceforth to go different ways. It was a great pity. Or rather, it would have been a great pity for them and for the public had the decision stood. It is possible that Alexander did not take it so tragically. He was well acquainted by now with the irritable race of authors. Had he not remained on happy terms with the most violent of them all, Henry Arthur Jones? He had the patience of his Scotch blood, and could wait even thrice two years. He wrote in reply to Pinero on August nth:
MY DEAR P.,
Thank you for your very kind letter. I appreciate all you say, and you worthily deserve the position you “usurp”. My new theatre reopens in Jany and it was of the autumn 1900 that I wrote. I now quite understand what you demand in regard to your work and should be willing to welcome you at the St. James’ under that understanding. I daresay I did not realise this before, and indeed you did not ask it of me. Please pardon me for this. I am sure we could work together should you feel willing to give it a trial. Don’t bother to answer this, but sometime I hope to have a line from you saying “Yes”.
Give my love to the de la Rues: I have not spoken to them about this matter.
Our united regards to Mrs Pinero and yourself. Even if we never work together again believe me I value your regard and am —
Always yours sincerely,
GEORGE ALEXANDER
In the autumn he replaced The Princess and the Butterfly with R. C. Carton’s play The Tree of Knowledge, which ran successfully for sixteen weeks.
These were pleasant years for the Alexanders. They had a host of friends, old and new; amongst the new the Duke of Fife, Lord and Lady St. Helier, Wylie Mathews the Government Prosecutor, Field-Marshal Sir Evelyn Wood, Sir Hubert Herkomer, Sir George Lewis, and an ample social life of which Mrs Alexander bore the weight. They had an unclouded home and a theatre which had become known outside England for good plays, good acting, and scrupulous attention to detail. Henry Irving in a speech at a supper party in the Beefsteak Room at the Lyceum had lectured the young couple for rushing into management before they had learned to do more than totter; and afterwards with the kindness he had for them, he promised to keep Alexander’s place in the Lyceum Company open for him for eight months. They had been established now at the St. James’ for eight years. Alexander was still under forty, and with all deference to Sir George Lamorant, rather approaching the full opportunities of his life, and the fullness of his power to use them, than on the threshold of his decline; and he had the pleasure of exercising a wide and private generosity. At one time an author ill and down on his luck, who never had done and never was to do any work for the St. James’ Theatre, obtains his first glimpse of the Rhine; an old friend finds the world the easier for having the annual premiums of his life assurance guaranteed; a journalist is helped by letter and spoken word to a high position on an important newspaper. Authors who were hard pressed found their advance fees repeated. Loans which were never to be returned were made and written off. Alexander was on the councils of the Actors’ Benevolent and Royal General Theatrical Funds. His own art and the Associations which supported it were always foremost in his thoughts and plans. He was later on to be a Vice-President of the Actors’ Association. When he became a knight he received a telegram of congratulation from Israel Zangwill. But that sea-green Incorruptible was careful to state that the telegram did not come from any recognition of Alexander’s merit, either as actor or producer, but was due entirely to the fact that he was President of the Actresses’ Franchise League. His craft stood first with him, and when at the beginning of the war a brilliant publicist and editor compared the Kaiser to an actor-manager, Alexander protested with so firm and quiet a dignity that the publicist, on the verge of pleading that there was a flamboyancy common to both which justified his parallel, found it more reasonable to admit that his words were unfair.
These middle years were busy ones and pleasant ones. He had his troubles, of course, like other men. He was very sensitive and easily hurt; and when he was hurt, something had got to be done about it. If Pinero, who hated parties, slipped away from one without greeting Alexander, he had to explain at length that it was not any coldness in his affection which had made him bolt. If H. V. Esmond left the theatre on the last night of his successful play The Wilderness, without saying good-bye to Alexander because Alexander was the centre of a crowd, that too had got to be made clear. If Sutro read to a friend a play which Alexander was going to produce, without letting Alexander know, this was — not a breach of etiquette, but a neglect of friendship. If at times Alexander showed a certain aloofness, as he undoubtedly did, it was the aloofness of a man who was easily hurt, and cultivated a manner of reticence in consequence.
In the theatre he had his failures. But they came inevitably to make up the complete chequer-board of life: The Conquerors, a bad affair by Paul M. Potter, dramatic carpenter-in-chief to Charles Frohman, who fudged it up out of a couple of short masterpieces by Guy de Maupassant; Rupert of Hentzau, which with its conclusion in death and requiem accorded too poignantly with the first months of the Boer War. Do people remember now, with the experiences of 1914-1918 behind them, how a casualty list of a thousand killed and wounded at the end of a battle, made people gasp with horror and amazement? Or how the orderly grief-stricken throng gathered at night about the notice-boards outside the War Office in Pall Mall? The Royal Automobile Club stands now where those notice-boards with their lists of killed and wounded were hung. And Rupert of Hentzau was amongst the casualties. On the other hand John Oliver Hobbes, as Mrs Pearl Mary-Teresa Craigie preferred to be known, wrote for the St. James’ a delicate, effective and successful comedy in The Ambassador; H. V. Esmond, who never quite realised all of his great promise, hit the mark with The Wilderness’, Walter Frith, son of the famous artist, added A Man of Forty. Alexander put on perhaps the best of all Shakespeare’s comedies, Much Ado About Nothing. I say “perhaps” in deference to W. P. Ker’s preference for As You Like It, already quoted. Much Ado was not as well suited either to Alexander himself or to the company, as had been As You Like It, and fifty-three performances exhausted its popularity. But the management was never at a loss now for a bill to replace a failure. The times were not yet ripe for revivals of Lady Windermere s Fan or The Importance of Being Earnest. But Liberty Hall, The Idler, The Second Mrs Tanqueray, The Prisoner of Zenda, were always ready at the shortest notice. And even those plays which did not gain the suffrages of the London playgoers had the verdict reversed on an appeal to the provinces. Rupert of Hentqau, who gained nothing and cost nothing upon the London venture, made nearly £3000 on the tours. And The Princess and the Butterfly, which resulted in London in a net loss of seventeen hundred and ninety-eight pounds-odd, ended with a profit of seven hundred and ninety-four. To use a simile more than usually appropriate, what Alexander lost on the swings, he made on the roundabouts. His theatre was seldom shut on these autumn tours. He had a devoted staff to leave behind, so that those who hired the St. James’ from him during his absences could be certain that their plans would be carried out with the same smoothness and the same meticulous care as the lessee insisted upon for himself. Thus at the conclusion of the run of The Elder Miss Blossom, which the Kendals produced at the St. James’ Theatre on September 16th, 1901, W. H. Kendal was able to write:
