“Do you know,” says the author, “I think he's right? It does seem to come better from there.”
The rehearsal proceeds. Five minutes later, the argument whether a father would naturally curse his child before or after she has taken off her hat, provides a new crisis.
In ancient times, the fashion was for movement. The hero and heroine would be seated, making love, one each side of the piano. At the end of the first minute, the stage manager, as he was then, would call out:
“Now then, come along, my dears, break it up. Put some life into it. You're not glued to those chairs, you know.”
The hero and heroine would rise and change seats.
Nowadays the pendulum has swung too far the other way. I remember a rehearsal where the leading actress suddenly jumped up and began stamping about the stage.
“Whatever's the matter?” asked the producer.
“I'll be all right in a minute,” she answered. “I've got pins and needles.”
My own worst experience was over a musical play I wrote for Arthur Roberts, then with Lowenfeldt at the Prince of Wales'. Lowenfeldt was an Austrian who had made a fortune out of Kop's ale. It was a popular temperance beverage, twenty years ago, until the Revenue authorities discovered it contained more alcohol than the average public-house beer. His grievance against the London critics was that they didn't take cheques. “Why not?” he argued. “A good notice in a respectable paper is worth a hundred pounds to me. I give the critic ten. It pays him, and it pays me.” He thought the time would come.
Arthur Roberts took me aside.
“I want you to write me a part with a touch of pathos in it,” he said. “You know what I mean. Plenty of fun, but not all fun. I want them to go home saying, 'Well, I always knew Arthur could make me laugh, but damned if I thought he had got it in him to make me cry.' See what I mean?”
I retired into the country and worked hard. It seemed to me an interesting story. There were moments in it when, if properly played, a chocky feeling would, I felt sure, manifest itself throughout the audience. But it all came right in the end. I made him a licensed victualler, of the better sort. An uncle died and left him an hotel. Roberts had not attended the reading. At the first rehearsal he took me aside. He said:
“I've got an idea for this part. I'm a young farmer——” He gave me an imitation of a Somersetshire yokel. It was an excellent performance. “You know,” he continued, “a Simple Simon sort of part. In the second act——”
“But you can't,” I said. “You're an hotel proprietor at Maidenhead.”
“Good,” he answered. “All you'll have to do, is to knock out the hotel and call it a farm.”
I tried reason, but he was just mad to be a farmer. He sketched out the part. It would be novel and amusing, I could see that. I sat up for a night or two, and turned him into a farmer. We struggled through one or two rehearsals; and then he had another inspiration. He wanted to be a detective, disguised as an Italian waiter.
“Where's the difficulty?” he demanded. “Somebody steals the old girl's jewels. I'm in love with the daughter. The police are no good, I take the job on for her sake.”
It meant re-writing half an act. I did it. Three days later, he wanted to be a French Marquis, reduced to giving English lessons in Soho.
“Don't you see, my dear boy?” he explained. “Gives me an opportunity for pathos. I've been making them laugh, now I make them cry. Variety: that's the thing we want.”
I never saw the play myself. I was told that he got them all in; and the critics spoke highly of his versatility. Adrian Ross (Arthur Ropes) took it off my hands and finished it. He was a wonderful worker. He would write a scene—quite a good scene—while Arthur Roberts walked up and down the room and acted it. The next morning, Arthur had forgotten all about it; and Ropes would write him another.
I wrote “The Passing of the Third Floor Back” for David Warfield. I worked it out first as a short story. It was John Murray, the publisher, who put the idea into my head of making it into a play; and when I saw Warfield in “The Music Master,” it seemed to me he was just the actor to play it. He would not have had the dignity and compelling force of Forbes-Robertson. He would have made the character win rather through tenderness and appeal. I was on a lecturing tour in America; and I got my agent, Miss Marbury, to put me into touch with Belasco, Warfield's manager. It was in a Pullman car between Washington and New York that I sketched out the idea to him. It got hold of him. We were both doubtful as to how the public would receive it. I thought I could do it without giving offence. Belasco agreed to trust me, and on my return to England I got to work upon it. It was not an easy play to write: one had to feel it rather than think it. I was living in a lonely part of the Chiltern hills with great open spaces all around me, and that helped; and at last it was finished. I had arranged to return to America to produce “Sylvia of the Letters,” a play I had written for Grace George; and I took “The Passing” with me. I read it to Warfield and Belasco late one night at Belasco's theatre in New York. We had the house to ourselves; and afterwards we adjourned to Warfield's club for supper. It was about three o'clock in the morning, and the only thing we could get was cold beef and pickles. They were both impressed by the play, and we found ourselves talking in whispers. I fancy Belasco got nervous about it, later on. We fixed things up next morning at Miss Marbury's office, and he asked me to see Percy Anderson, the artist, when I got back to England, and get him to make sketches for the characters. It was while he was drawing them, in his studio at Folkestone, that one morning Forbes-Robertson, who had a house there, dropped in upon him. Forbes was greatly interested in the sketches; and Anderson showed him the play.
Forbes-Robertson wrote me telling me this; and saying that if by any chance arrangements between myself and Belasco fell through, he would like to talk to me. His letter arrived the day after I had had one from Belasco, making it clear that he did not want, if possible, to be bound to his contract; so for answer, I called upon Forbes-Robertson in Bedford Square; and read the play to him and his wife. He also was nervous; but Gertrude Elliott swept all doubts aside and ended the matter.
We got together as perfect a cast as I think any play has ever had. Ernest Hendrie as the old Bookmaker, Ian Robertson as the Major, Edward Sass as the Jew, Agnes Thomas as Mrs. Sharpe, and Haidee Wright as the Painted Lady were all wonderful; and Gertrude Elliott played the Slavey. I was afraid, at first, that her beauty and her grace would hamper her; but she overcame these drawbacks and, even at rehearsal, invested the little slut with a spirituality that at times transfigured her. My daughter played the part in the country and afterwards in London during the war, and they two were the best Stasias I have seen. Lillah McCarthy was to have played Vivien. Granville Barker was in America, and she consulted Shaw, who read the play and told her to grab the part and hang on to it. She had an engagement she thought she could get out of; but it was not so, and we had to seek elsewhere.
“We must have someone supremely beautiful,” said Forbes. “There are six women in the play; four of them have to be middle-aged, and my wife has to disguise herself. It's our only chance.”
I thought of Alice Crawford. Time was pressing. We sent her a wire. She had just left for a ball at the Piccadilly Hotel.
“You must go to the ball,” said Forbes.
I went as I was, in a blue serge suit, brown boots, and a collar that I had been wearing since eight o'clock in the morning. I made a sensation in the ballroom. I gathered that the people round about took me for a policeman in unnecessarily plain clothes; but I spotted Alice Crawford, and beckoned her outside. A gentleman came up and asked if he could be of any use. I take it the idea of bail was in his mind.