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.
Feb. 22, 1881.
“Dear Carr,
I have heard that you do the Saturday Review theatrical criticisms. Did you do that on The Colonel? if so I am anxious to know if you ever read Un Mari à la Campagne; also to ask where the puns are in my piece? I admit three, put in carefully into the right peoples’ mouths—the right puns in the right places.
Why is it a farce? Unless She stoops to Conquer is a farce. Where are the evidences of high animal spirits in my play? I don’t pretend to quote your article verbatim but this is my impression of its purport. Had I known at the time that it was your writing I should have tackled you at once; first because I think you are wrong, second because if you are not, I am, and I wish to be put right. I should like to hear your suggestions for the improvement of Act III. where you think I have bungled ‘into seriousness.’
I shouldn’t have taken the trouble to write if I hadn’t been told that you were the critic who in a friendly way pooh-pooh’d the notion of The Colonel being a comedy. I am aware that Dr. Johnson set down She stoops, etc. as a farce, and farcical to a degree its plot is, but not its characters. The Colonel I contend is comedy—farcical neither in plot nor characters.
Yours truly,