“I'm so sorry,” said Hawtrey. “I thought it was Monday.”
His first wife told me that, the night before their wedding, his best man had—unknown to him—put his watch on an hour and a quarter, with the result that he got there five minutes too soon; and in the Bankruptcy Court he used to be known as “the late Mr. Charles.” But he was always so charming about it that one generally forgave him.
He told me that he liked my little play immensely. There was only one fault he had to find. It was too short. I record the fact as being the only known instance in the history of the stage of a manager suggesting to an author that his play was not long enough. I promised to write in an extra scene.
“My brother George will see you about terms,” he concluded as we shook hands. “He will want you to sell it outright. Take my tip and don't do it. It's just the sort of thing to catch on with the amateurs.”
The “producer” had not then arrived. He was an American invention. The stage manager, together with the promoter and the author, used to just worry it out. I have never been able myself to detect any difference. “Dot” Boucicault was one of the first, and for straightforward work is still among the best. If anything he is too painstaking. His method at rehearsal is to play all the parts himself, leaving the actor to copy him. On a certain occasion, he had been coaching Gertrude Kingston after this manner for about a fortnight; and then one morning, taking her aside, he asked her how she liked her part.
“What part?” asked Gertrude Kingston.
“What part?” repeated Boucicault, astonished. “Why, your part—the Countess.”
“Oh, that,” answered Miss Kingston. “I thought you were playing that.”
I take it Du Maurier's dictum really sums up the matter: that a play that is worth producing, produces itself.
Cissy Grahame was my Barbara. She has not changed much, and I love her still. But she will never be quite as handsome as her mother. Their Sunday evening supper parties at Hammersmith make pleasant memories. I fancy that, when young, I must have had a face expressive of more sympathy than, perhaps, I really felt. People used to suddenly confide their troubles to me. The first time I met there Henley the actor, brother to W. E. Henley the poet, he beckoned me into a corner and poured out to me the secret history of his private life. What he wanted me to decide for him was: Should he strangle her or simply leave her? Weighing the matter as a whole, I chose for him the second alternative. He went off unexpectedly to America a short time afterwards, so I like to reflect that maybe I was of service to both parties. I have always wondered what became of him. He was a brilliant actor. He could get more passion over the footlights than any other actor I have known. McKinnel comes the nearest to him. Charles Whibley was another frequent guest there. I was a die-hard Tory at twenty-five, and Whibley was an anarchist of the reddest dye. We had some grand sets-to. John Burns was preaching revolution and the British Constitution was in danger. Whibley wanted to go a-rioting in Trafalgar Square. We had difficulty in restraining him. To make things safe, I joined the special constables and learnt to form fours and to turn my eyes right and left. Now I am a Vice-President, I believe, of the Oxford University Labour Party; while Whibley has become a pillar of the State, and writes for stodgy old Blackwood.
“Barbara” ran, on and off, for years, and amateurs still play it. Following Charles Hawtrey's advice, I had refused to sell it, though his brother George went up to a hundred pounds, and the temptation was sore. Another one-act play, “Fennel,” I wrote for George Giddens, who had taken the Novelty, now the Kingsway—or rather adapted it from the French of François Coppée. Managers clamoured then for adaptations from the French. Sydney Grundy, one of the most successful authors on the English stage, never wrote an original play. He was quite frank about it. “Why should I cudgel my own brains,” he would say, “when I can suck other men's?”
“Fennel” was chiefly remarkable for introducing Allan Aynesworth to the London stage. He played Sandro, the lover. I see that I describe him in the script as “a fine, dashing, good-looking young fellow.” Aynesworth was all that right enough; but on the first night he got stage fright. I was watching from the wings. I could see him getting more and more nervous; and when he came to his big speech, his memory snapped. I had prided myself upon that speech. I had done my best to put Coppée's poetry into English blank verse. It was all about music and the sunrise, and Heaven and love: some two pages of it altogether. I could have forgiven him forgetting it, and drying up. But, to my horror, he went on. He had it fixed in his mind that until the old man returned home he had to stand in the centre of the stage and talk poetry. And he did it. Bits of it, here and there, were mine; most of it his own; a good deal of it verses and quotations that, I take it, he had learnt at his mother's knee. I shouted to Stuart Dawson, who was playing the old man, to go on and stop him. But he would finish, and threw such fervour into the last few laps, that at the end he received a fine round of applause.
“Sorry I forgot the exact lines,” he said to me, as he came off. “But I was determined not to let you down.”
“Woodbarrow Farm” was my first full-sized play. Gertrude Kingston produced it at a matinée, playing herself the adventuress. The trial matinée was a useful institution. I think it is a pity it has dropped out. The manager would lend the theatre in return for an option on the play; and the leading parts could generally be arranged for on a like understanding. At the cost of about a hundred pounds, a play could be put before the public and judged: in the only way a play can be judged—through the test-like tube of an audience. Three out of four, in spite of friendly stalls, were seen to be no good: the fourth won the prize. Charles Hawtrey lent us the Comedy. Frederick Harrison, now the doyen of London Managers, was in it. He played a gentlemanly villain. And Eric Lewis made the small part of a valet the chief thing in the play. John Hare bought it. He wanted a play for young Sydney Brough, son of old Lal Brough, a bright handsome lad, full of promise then. He had been a pupil of mine when I was a schoolmaster at the “South Lambeth Road Academy. For Sons of Gentlemen.” I forget how it came about, but eventually Tom Thorne took it for his opening piece at the new Vaudeville. He played the valet. Bernard Partridge was the hero.
Conway had been cast for the part originally. That was another sad story. He had made his name as Romeo to Adelaide Neilson's Juliet: the best Juliet I have ever seen, though Phyllis Neilson-Terry, some years ago, ran her close. It was plain, before rehearsals were a week old, that poor Conway would have to be replaced; and the grim task of breaking it to him fell upon me. I called upon him early in the morning at the Adelphi Hotel. He was standing with his back to me when I entered the room, leaning his head against the mantelpiece.
“I know what you've come for,” he said, without turning round. “It's my own fault. I thought I'd pulled myself together. I must have another try—later on.”