ii
When Cosmo Hamilton was eighteen, he hid himself in Dieppe, France, for a month. It was necessary to convince his family, and most particularly his father, that he meant to write and could make some kind of figure at writing. There, in the Hotel of the Chariot of Gold, he did the story, Which Is Absurd, and saw occasionally Edward VII., then Prince of Wales, who was enjoying a vacation as plain Mr. Smith. After he had lost money he could ill spare one night, a dazzling person with large violet eyes told him to follow her, and he did with a five-franc piece, winning back all he had lost and 100 francs besides. She was Lily Langtry. Back in London and waiting for the publication of his story, he seized on a novel of Robert Barr’s and made it into a four-act play. Compton Mackenzie’s father, the actor, Edward Compton, played it in the English provinces for a year (after drastic alterations) and it made enough money to enable Hamilton to take rooms in London. Whereupon, for a while, everything he wrote came back with a rejection slip.
Which Is Absurd, whatever its demerits, had the quality of provocation. An evening paper, reviewing it, asked: “Who is Cosmo Hamilton?” and answered: “Either a very bitter old man who is bankrupt of every hope, or an unkissed girl in a boarding school who ought to be spanked with a brush.” Now with the fewest exceptions, book reviews do not sell books; but this is the type of review that infallibly sells a book. And shortly Mr. Hamilton found himself writing for the Pall Mall Gazette, along with Mrs. Humphry Ward, Alice Meynell, and others well-known and doing a syndicated London letter which required his presence in the high places.
His play, “The Wisdom of Folly,” lived two weeks, and after a spell as editor of a short-lived weekly paper he became one of a brilliant company of contributors to the World. William Archer as dramatic critic, Richard Dehan as fictionist, Robert Hichens as dialogist, Gilbert Frankau, Philip Gibbs and Max Beerbohm were some of the staff. Before Cosmo Hamilton was thirty he was to become editor of this paper. But meanwhile a variety of fates awaited him. He dramatized Kipling’s The Story of the Gadsbys in a fashion satisfactory to the author; had a close shave from dishonor as one of the directors of a speculative mineral exploration enterprise which had trapped various well-known names to aid it; and faced bankruptcy. This last adventure resulted from the failure of his first wife, the actress, Beryl Faber, in a theatrical season; and after Mr. Hamilton had taken on the debts he retired to the country to cope with them by writing.
What then occurred was dramatic enough, as life has a fashion of being. A telegram came from a man Hamilton didn’t know. It read: “Kindly see me tomorrow twelve o’clock Savoy Hotel Charles Frohman.” Mr. Hamilton kept the appointment, which marked the beginning of a long association with the famous American theatrical manager. In five consecutive years there was no time when one or more of his plays was not running in London. Probably the best-remembered is “The Belle of Mayfair,” in which Edna May was succeeded by Billie Burke, and which ran for three years.