HOME LIFE AND DRAMATIC CRITICISM

These latter incidents occurred some time after 1873. When we got back to England after our Dresden wedding we took up our abode almost immediately in the old Adams house in Great Russell Street. The two rooms which Mr. Jameson sub-let to us were all that we could at first obtain above the Dispensary, but they were large and quite sufficient for the Bohemian life which was all that we could then afford; anyway no subsequent home of ours was pleasanter and nothing was ever again so little burthensome.

At a long table by the door of the one large dwelling-room the old couple who had been our predecessor’s factotums served our meals; and around the handsome Adams chimney-piece at the other end, or in the panelled window-seats looking on the restful faÇade of the British Museum, we gathered Joe’s friends—they were all Joe’s friends—for a “pipe and a chat.”

And what chats they were!

James Sime, the historian, kindliest of men with his Teutonic philosophies and his deep Scottish sentiment and enthusiasm; Churton Collins richly capping his host’s poetical quotations and sometimes boldly challenged for an inaccuracy; W. Minto, afterwards Professor of Literature at Aberdeen, who was just starting his Editorship of The Examiner, and pressing Joe into the ranks of his contributors; Camille BarrÈre, now French Ambassador in Rome, but then a Communist refugee earning a living by London journalism, and of whose friendship and instruction in French Joe tells himself; Frederick Jameson and Beatty Kingston with their friends at piano and violin, to say nothing of the colleagues with whom my husband had just become associated in his work on The Globe and of whom he again tells in his Eminent Victorians.

Dare I recall the evening when my husband proudly named me to Minto as the writer of a little descriptive article which he had read in the Pall Mall Gazette and the consequent suggestion that I should do the series of Italian sketches for The Examiner which were afterwards reprinted in a volume with Randolph Caldecott’s illustrations.

Of course I should never have done even as much without their kindly encouragement, but to the end of his life I think a good review of any small effort of mine pleased Joe far more than one on his own serious work. But I must admit criticism affected him little—never when it was adverse and, in fact, only when it showed real insight.

In his own merry manner he would say: “People always mean blame when they talk of criticism. But I can blame myself; all I want from others is praise—fulsome praise.” And so it was! He had the need of it which came of the Celtic blend of self-confidence and apprehensiveness. Often have I heard him say of another of like blood: “He couldn’t swim across the stream if he hadn’t our native conceit.” And then add gravely: “Believe me, praise is the only sort of criticism that ever helped a man on his road.”

And in his own opportunities as critic and editor he always acted up to this belief.

In these rosy days of our early struggles and joys, the “first nights” at which Joe was due in his capacity of dramatic critic were red-letter days to me.

The occasion when Ellen Terry first played Portia under the Bancroft management of the famous little House in Tottenham Court Road was one of them; I can see her again in her china-blue and white brocade dress with one crimson rose at her bosom. Neither the fashion of the dress or of the coiffure were perhaps as correct to the period as the costumes which I designed for her later on for the better remembered run of The Merchant of Venice at the Lyceum; but how lovely she looked and how emphatically Joe picked her out as the evening’s star beside Coghlan’s Jew! Our hearts beat with pride at the laurels often gathered by our friend, even in those early days before her long list of triumphs with Henry Irving; and Joe, as we made our way home, took some credit to himself for the vehement advice as to her resuming her temporarily suspended career, which he had given her a short while before. There were never any first-nights quite like the Ellen Terry ones to us; but there were many pleasant and exciting evenings—notably the nights of Irving’s remarkable performances at a time when he was playing under the Bateman management in The Bells, The Two Roses, and many other of his early successes; also the famous runs of Robertson comedies at the little Prince of Wales theatre, where the charming Marie Bancroft was at the top of her long popularity and John Hare’s delicate impersonations vied with his manager’s carefully studied portraits of the dandy of the day. Mrs. Kendal was also then at the height of her brilliant career, and last but not least, the first performances of the Gilbert and Sullivan operas were nights when the privilege of seats was not easily won.

I can recall the first performance of Iolanthe, and the laughter that shook the house when the wild applause at the close of the chorus: “Oh! Captain Shaw, true type of love kept under,” at last brought the Head of the Fire Brigade to the front of his box for an instant.

Yet all our first nights were not “great nights,” when—as a fellow-critic once remarked to Joe—“Strong men shook hands with strangers.” Sometimes they were even dull; on one occasion so much so as to draw from one of the critics an unusually caustic bit of advice: “We are told that so-and-so is a promising young actor,” he wrote, “personally I don’t care how much he promises so long as he never again performs.”

For my part I confess that the theatre was still so new to me that I looked forward to any first night with pleasant palpitation, though my best frock was no doubt reserved for the choicest prospects. But to Joe, possibly the duty of writing the prescribed amount on a thoroughly poor piece grew irksome; and when, as on the occasion of the production of F. C. Burnand’s The Colonel, his friends and their serious work were the butt of boisterous hilarity, I know his loyalty found it difficult not to retort, as he apparently did in the article alluded to in the following correspondence.

It must have been written at the moment when the campaign against so-called “high art” was at its zenith, and had amused the public as it would probably not do to-day; I should not quote it, but for the urbane humour of Joe’s rejoinder to the (temporarily) incensed author.

Here my copy—the rough one of the letter sent—comes to an end; and I have not F. C. Burnand’s further reply.

But it is good to remember that there was never any breach between the friends; I find a scenario by Burnand for a children’s Christmas play—evidently sent to Joe about the time when he produced Buchanan’s version of the Pied Piper of Hamlin at the Comedy Theatre with Lena Ashwell—still a student at the Royal Academy of Music—acting and singing the girl’s part.

And from a much later period I can quote the following further proof of unimpaired friendship in a letter written to thank Joe for having been largely instrumental in getting up the dinner given to Burnand on his withdrawal from the editorship of Punch.

Apropos of Lena Ashwell, I may say that Joe was then so much struck with her talent for acting that he persuaded her to leave the musical profession, for which she was being trained, and gave her the part of Elaine in his King Arthur, shortly afterwards produced by Henry Irving at the Lyceum Theatre.

I set down these trivial memories as they recur to me, sprinkled over many a year of work and of anxieties, but of much merriment and many joys. But, taking up the thread of the first year of our married life, I recall an amusing incident which bore some pleasant consequences.

Joe, as was often the case, had sat up writing his dramatic criticism after I, tired with the still thrilling excitement of some “first night,” had gone to bed.

He had posted his article and was sleeping the sleep of the just, when our hoary retainer mercilessly awakened him early next morning with the words: “Gentleman on business, Sir!”

He donned a dressing-gown and went down none too willingly, to find an unknown little Scot below, who briefly stated that he was empowered by the proprietors of some Encyclopaedia to offer him a goodly fee for a short life of—I think it was—Rossetti; but that owing to another writer having disappointed the Editor at the eleventh hour the copy must be delivered in three days.

Joe was full of work, but the sum was too princely to be refused by a man who knew that shortly he would have to feed an extra mouth; the impossible was achieved, there was not even time to see a proof—and I well remember Joe, when telling his tale to a friend, confessing his relief that he had never come across that volume, and could only hope that no one else ever had either.

The cheque, at all events, he did see, and with a part of it we went to Derbyshire for our first country holiday. And a wild, happy holiday it was!

We lodged in the roughest of cottages in a tiny village near the Isaac Walton Hotel, where Joe had contrived to get some fishing rights. With what enthusiasm did he show me the haunts of his boyish holidays, the scenes of fishing adventures and of great walks with early comrades!

But that cheque from the Scottish publishers contributed to other things besides a holiday. In the November of that year our son, Philip, was born. Strange now to think that he, who was in France throughout the Great War, should have had a German for his first nurse, and that before he could speak he could hum many a Volkslied—an accomplishment which his proud nurse and mother made him show off to our musical friend, Mr. Jameson, who indeed even insisted on testing his intonation on the piano.

Other distinguished folk gathered around his cradle in the big studio. I can see Ellen Terry nursing him in one of the wainscoted window-seats and so apparently carelessly in one arm while she made wide gestures with the other to emphasize some point she was discussing with my husband—that I, nervous young mother, was forced to cry out at last: “Oh, Nell! Take care of my baby.”

Upon which she, in a tone of commiserating reproof, replied: “Now, Alice, do you suppose I need teaching how to hold a child?”

Anyone who has seen her do it—even on the stage—knows very well that she did not.

So the discussion went on and I even remember the subject: for it was just when she was weighing the offer of a fresh engagement on the stage, upon which she had only then appeared in extreme youth. Joe gave his advice emphatically, though he had never seen her act then and did not know upon what a future that door would open.

The opportunity was to be the production of her old friend Charles Reade’s Wandering Heir. The caste was not strong, and it was not wonderful that “Nell” scored a success; but I think Joe saw more than most people in that first night at the Queen’s Theatre when he rushed out between the acts and returned with a rather damaged bouquet, the only one left in Covent Garden, which he presently threw at her feet.

It was the first of many a “first night” when he watched her—critical, as it was his business to be, but sympathetic and enthusiastic always. There was no limit to his praise, for instance, of her pathetic portrayal of Ophelia: nor of his immediate appreciation of that moment in her otherwise tender impersonation of Olivia in The Vicar of Wakefield when she strikes the young Squire on discovering his treachery. But these were only two out of many thrilling “first nights” of her earlier engagements when I sat beside him, my perfect enjoyment not even hampered, as in later years at the Lyceum, by my anxiety respecting the proper finishing and donning of the dresses which I had designed for her.

But that day in Great Russell Street, even Joe, always nervous about the children, thought more of our first born. To me her reproof had been convincing; I never again feared Ellen Terry as the safe and tender guardian of my children; indeed she first taught me much delicate observation of infants, but Joe—often terrified about them—believed in no advice save that of his mother, who had borne thirteen and reared eleven; yet upon one point my shrewd Irish mother-in-law, with her always wise but sometimes wittily caustic advice, and the more indulgent artist were agreed, viz. that—as our country butcher delighted Joe by saying about his live “meat”—babies, though disciplined, should be “humoured not druv.”

Although nervous in moments of crisis Joe was, however, always calm and competent; but he generally managed to relieve the situation with his own irrepressible spirits at the earliest possible moment, and many a comic tale hangs round the strange doings of an incapable old Gamp who tended me at the birth of my second child.

He would lure her with the seemingly innocent question: “Sweetened or unsweetened gin, Mrs. Peveril?” knowing well that the spirit was needed for friction and that “Peveril of the Peak” (otherwise hook-nosed) as he had named her, would “rise” every time and answer demurely: “I’m sure I don’t know, Sir. I never tasted neither.”

Luckily the old lady was neither sharp enough to see nor thin-skinned enough to mind; but who ever minded Joe’s wit? Though it was keen enough at times, the urbanity behind it shone through too well.

Even his wife was a willing target—and a good one. As Edward Burne-Jones used kindly to say when they had both tried me on their favourite theme and taken me in over a Dickens quotation: “There never was anybody who rose better than the dear lady.” Yet I maintain that it needs a profound student of the master to know that he has created an obscure character named “Pip,” other than the human boy in Great Expectations.

Well, many is the bon mot to which I helped my husband.

When I declared myself nervous over my part in private theatricals at my father’s house in Canterbury, I can hear him say: “You are surely not bothering your head about two half-pay officers and a rural dean?”

And one day at a picnic, commenting on a criticism of a sturdy Irish uncle as to “not wanting these slight figures at all, at all,” Joe gave me the sound advice not to sit upon a rock “lest diamond cut diamond.”

We were all young then and things that may seem truly foolish now made the company laugh; it is more remarkable that the radiant personality, the inexhaustible animal spirits and rare sense of humour should have survived years of hard work and still have shone forth after the prostration of illness.

When scarcely recovered from a serious attack, Joe told me one morning of a dream that he had had, which—as Mr. W. J. Locke has remarked—contained such a “lightning flash of characterization” that it is hard to believe it came to him in sleep.

“I dreamed,” he said, “that Squire Bancroft brought me some grapes,” and as he removed the paper from the basket he said, “White, Joe; when the case is serious I never bring black.”

All through his illness, when increasing weakness and the inconveniences arising from the Great War forced him to an uncongenial life at sea-side resorts, his wit still bubbled up unbidden, as the following letter testifies. The boarding-house in which it was written did not afford exactly sympathetic society, yet on the Christmas Day that we spent there he offered to give the company a little “talk” if they cared to listen; and from his armchair, he chatted for half an hour to a crowded lounge on the eminent men whom he had known, interspersed with many a flash of fun appropriate to the hour and received with bursts of laughter by the simple circle.

“... We are comfortable enough here,” he wrote to his daughter, “and there is entertainment furnished by some of the types, both in their physique and in their intellectual equipment. Some of the older females are designed and constructed with “dangerous salients in their lines,” everything occurring in unexpected places, and only dimly suggesting the original purpose of the Creator. One or two are of stupendous girth with hollows and protuberances that suggest some primeval landscape subjected to volcanic action.”

Thus with the same humorous and kindly eye on the world as when he had been the welcome entertainer of a more brilliant society, he lightened the days—very heavy to him—of national anxiety, and with a contentment rather wonderful in the typical Londoner, alternated the few possible hours of patient literary labour with a cheerful delight in the beauties of the place.

“I wonder if the present difficulty in getting out of England will make us appreciate it better,” he said as we stood one evening on the pier looking towards old Hastings. “If we were abroad we should say that medieval castle against the sunset was a wondrous fine sight.”

So did he still exemplify his life-long belief often expressed in the words: “How can people be dull when they’re alive?”