XVIIILONDON THEATRES AND THEATRE-GOERSWhy English and American Plays do Best at Home.—The Intelligent Londoner Takes the Theatre Seriously.—Play-going as a Duty.—The High-class English Theatre a Costly Luxury.—American Comedies Too Rapid of Action to Please the English.—Bronson Howard’s “Henrietta” Not Understood in London.—The Late Clement Scott’s Influence and Personality.
Why English and American Plays do Best at Home.—The Intelligent Londoner Takes the Theatre Seriously.—Play-going as a Duty.—The High-class English Theatre a Costly Luxury.—American Comedies Too Rapid of Action to Please the English.—Bronson Howard’s “Henrietta” Not Understood in London.—The Late Clement Scott’s Influence and Personality.
I believe I can explain why most English plays have failed to please American audiences, and that I have discovered the reason of the appalling apathy with which Londoners usually receive an American play.
When I say “Londoners” I refer to the better class. The common people flock to the comedies, farces and burlesques, of which London is full; they laugh at whatever is placed before them and demand a lot more of the same kind. But the educated, well-bred Englishman makes a serious matter of theatre-going. He goes to the play with the same face that he displays in “the city,” as the business section of London is called. He changes his clothes, for it is bad form not to be in evening dress when one goes to a London theatre of the better class. But he does notchange his face. Play-going is as much a duty with him, as business is, and I am inclined to believe it is quite as much of a bore. However that may be, it is a matter of his serious daily routine. He goes to the theatre to think; goes as solemnly as an American on his way to church.
Indeed, the talk one overhears in the lobby and stalls of a high class English theatre recall some church experiences to an American. The play is analyzed; so are its parts, as if the whole thing were a matter of conscience or morals, as occasionally it is. A “problem” play which would drive Americans out of a theatre, unless in Boston, where they would doze through the performance, trusting to the morning papers for points enough to talk about, will make its way to the profoundest depths of the English heart and head.
It must not be inferred that English gentlemen and ladies do not enjoy good comedies. They are grateful for anything that is humorous and witty, but they regard such performances as mere relishes or dessert; thepièce de rêsistancemust be solid.
The best London audiences are drawn from the fashionable set—the “smart set,” all members of which attend the theatre whenever their evenings are unoccupied by social duties. There are no matinées—by name; the English say “morningperformance,” which means the same thing; and of course “morning” means afternoon, for the fashionable set turn night into day so successfully, that the old fashioned morning is gone before they get out of bed.
“He reads what the papers say about it.”
“He reads what the papers say about it.”
Only a man of good income can afford steady theatre-going on the English plan. His seat costs him about $2.75, and his program twenty-five cents more; to these expenses must be added cab fares both ways, for your Londoner won’t walk more than a block after dark, if he can help it. After he has seen and heard the performancehe talks a lot about it, and thinks it over, and next day reads what the papers say about it, and these say as much and say it as seriously as if the playhouses were of as much importance as the House of Parliament. Only recently have American literary weeklies taken up the theatres, but the Englishman has seen solemn critiques of plays in theAthenæumandAcademyever since he began to read those papers.
The well-to-do American wants change, relaxation and fun when he goes to the theatre. He is fully as intellectual as his English cousin and has quite as keen comprehension of the best dramatic work; this is proved by his enthusiastic support of all productions of Shakespeare. But a coldly correct drama with a sad end does not appeal to him, no matter how good the acting.
American plays are usually too compact and too rapid of action to succeed on the English stage. Bronson Howard’s brilliant “Henrietta” was highly praised by the London press and Londoners loyally try to like whatever their newspaper tells them to. Yet “The Henrietta” did not quite suit. The audience simply could not understand the character of “Bertie” the millionaire’s indolent, cheery, stupid son who pretended to be a devil of a fellow at his club, but really had no head for liquor and tobacco nor any heart for the society of chorus girls.London society has many young men with some one of Bertie’s peculiarities, but the combination—why, as one Londoner said: “No chap can be so many things, don’t you know.”
Even Mr. J. L. Shine, the accomplished actor who played the part, did not seem to understand it. Another mistake was with “The little English Lord,” as he was called in the play—a lordling whom a rich American girl had married. Here he was a fussy little fellow, an undersized dude—a caricature, in fact, and made no end of fun, but on the London stage he was the real thing, and taken seriously. The management seemed to be afraid to travesty so sacred a personage as a noble lord. I imagine this was a mistake, for at least a portion of the British people had been so far emancipated as to appreciate fun poked at the “hupper classes.”
I have mentioned London’s respect for dramatic criticism. Let us admit for a moment that London is the centre of the universe—the great wheel that sets all the rest in motion, and that what is successful there ought to succeed everywhere else—even if it doesn’t. Then, in logical sequence, let us understand that the greatest critic of the metropolis can make or break any “attraction,” and that this commanding position was held by the late Clement Scott,—poet,littérateurand playwright, for morethan a quarter of a century and have we not practically admitted that Mr. Scott was theatrical dictator of the universe?
Even logic is sometimes at fault. I remember being taught at school that dry bread was better than heaven, because dry bread is better than nothing and nothing is better than heaven—see? This is not cited to imply that what I have said of Clement Scott is wrong, but to convince the skeptical that all men cannot be expected to reason alike.
There was no doubt of the greatness of the LondonDaily Telegraph’scritic, for nothing was easier of comprehension. He was a master of word-painting; the grace and truthfulness of his word-pictures were evident to the most careless reader. There was nothing vulgar or flippant in anything he wrote, and irrelevant witticisms, such as many would-be critics indulge in, were entirely lacking in his work. Slow to condemn, when he corrected a player the work was done with gracious gentleness, although his satire, when needed, was biting and deep. In the righting of wrongs he proved himself utterly fearless, and regardless of consequences to himself. By this course he made many friends and more enemies. Indeed, one of his peculiarities was his readiness to make an enemy, if by so doing he could win a friend.
Mr. Scott was truly a friend to the friendless, a helper of the helpless and a clever adviser to all. Both he and his wife were very active in charitable work, but his greatest energies seemed to have been exerted in securing employment for needy actors and aiding aspiring ones by word and deed, for he did so much for both classes that his friends wondered how he found time for anything else. His kindness knew no bounds of nation or tongue, and the antagonism supposed to exist between Englishmen and Americans found no echo in his big heart.
In appearance Mr. Scott resembled a rugged oak-tree that has grown so vigorously in all directions that any part seems fully as strong as any other. He was rather tall, with broad shoulders that drooped slightly, and was quite fleshy although not obese. His ears were set far back on his head and his face, though intellectual, was largely modeled—high forehead, heavy eyebrows, kind and thoughtful gray eyes, a large nose and mouth and in his later years a white moustache. His hands, though large, were so shapely as to command attention.
In manner he was emphatic but never dogmatic, as some members of his profession are. His prominence was greater than can be imagined in the United States, where the people seldom know the names of the dramatic critics whose workthey most admire, yet he was as modest and unaffected as any of his admirers. There was nothing of theergo egoabout him, nor anything pretentious. Yet there lurked behind his mild, quiet manner an enthusiasm for work and a scholarly application to work, that were absolutely remarkable. At the theatre he was the last man whom a stranger would suspect of being a critic, for the bored look and the feigned weariness that some of the dramatic reviewers affect were entirely lacking in him. He did not even make notes on his programme. Men like Scott do not have to affect wisdom or the resigned look that is supposed to result from it. I know a young whipper-snapper with a nice, fast-black bored look that cost years of effort to cultivate. He is said to wrap it in a silk handkerchief and keep it in a bureau drawer when not in use, but he never forgets to dust it and have it properly adjusted when he calls on a lady or attends the theatre.
Clement Scott was not that kind of man. He had some little peculiarities, like all men of genius but they were neither affected nor obtrusive. The most noticeable of these was a habit of saying “yes, yes,” and “what?” continually. Some of his gestures were a bit odd and he had an amusing way of belittling his own work. He said to me one day,
“I make no money from my books. It is all I can do to give them away.”
“A nice fast-black bored look that cost years of effort to cultivate.”
“A nice fast-black bored look that cost years of effort to cultivate.”
He had the coziest possible little home at 15 Woburn Square, London, and a wife who would reflect honor on any mansion in the land. Her portrait hangs before me while I write—the face of an intelligent, refined, charming English lady, and on its margin is written “Yours in all faith, Margaret Clement Scott.” That describes her perfectly—“in all faith” she was the best possible helper to her husband, aiding him in his correspondence, taking proper care of his memoranda,writing at his dictation and assisting him in many other ways.
In Mr. Scott’s study were many hundred valuable books, some of which are very rare, and a great collection of curios. One of the walls was hung with old prints of noted theatrical people of earlier generations; another with fine china. The room was richly furnished and had an air of oriental luxury which, combined with picturesque disorder, was more than charming—it was bewilderingly bewitching. In one corner was an interesting souvenir in a frame; his first letter of credential as dramatic critic, and was given by theSunday Times, with which he was first connected; he went to theTelegraphin 1872.
Mr. Scott was playwright as well as critic and had several plays successfully produced—“Tears, Idle Tears,” an adaptation from Marcel; “Peril,” taken from Sardou’s “Nos Intimes,” “Diplomacy,” written in collaboration with B. C. Stephenson; “Sister Mary,” of which Wilson Barrett was part author; “Jack in the Box” (with George R. Sims); “The Cape Mail,” “Serge Panine,” adapted from Georges Ohnet for Mrs. Langtry, “The Swordsman’s Daughter,” in which Brandon Thomas had a hand and “Denise,” in collaboration with Sir Augustus Harris. Among his published books are “Round About the Islands”; “Poppyland”; “Picturesof the World”; “Among the Apple Orchards”; “Over the Hills and Far away”; “The Land of Flowers”; “Thirty Years at the Play”; “Dramatic Table Talk”; “The Wheel of Life”; “Lays of a Londoner”; “Lays and Lyrics”; “Theatrical Addresses” and his famous “Patriot Songs.”