Pending the consummation of these great projects, Robertson had acted at the Strand in 1861 a little play called The Cantab, which achieved a sort of success. He offered another burlesque to Mrs. Swanborough but she refused it. Then came a stroke of luck. Sothern, who was at this time attracting all London in a piece by Tom Taylor entitled, Our American Cousin, heard tell of a piece which Robertson had written. Sothern, who was getting sick of the inexhaustible popularity of Lord Dundreary, was anxious to appear before the public in the rôle of David Garrick. He was anxious to get completely away from the field of caricature, to play a really serious part which should bring out all his gifts. Unluckily the piece had not much success, nor did it merit much. It was an adaptation from the French with Garrick substituted for the original French hero. Strange beginning for one who aimed at a “Return to Truth,” this sticking of a historic head upon the shoulders of “a gentleman unknown”!
It was after this that he wrote his comedy Society. He took it to Buckstone, who refused it flatly. “My dear fellow,” he said, “your piece wouldn’t reach a fourth performance.” The author went off, fingers twitching, beyond himself with rage, and wandered into the Strand, where one of his friends met him. “Look here,” said Robertson to him, “here is a capital play and these asses won’t have it.” A provincial manager took it up. It succeeded in Liverpool. Marie Wilton secured it and produced it on November 14, 1861, at her little theatre. From that evening dates not only the success of the Prince of Wales’s Theatre, but a new era for English Comedy—the era of Robertson.
CHAPTER IV
First Performance of Society—Success of Ours, Caste, and School—How Robertson turned to account the Talent of his Actors, John Hare, Bancroft, and Mrs. Bancroft—Progress in the Matter of Scenery—Dialogue and Character-drawing—Robertson as a Humorist: a scene from School—As a Realist: a scene from Caste—The Comedian of the Upper Middle Classes—Robertson’s Marriage, Illness, and Death—The “Cup and Saucer” Comedy—The Improvement in Actors’ Salaries—The Bancrofts at the Haymarket—Farewell Performance—My Pilgrimage to Tottenham Street.
That evening of the 14th of November has been described to us by several eye-witnesses, so that we are able to realise the feelings that prevailed both on the stage and amongst the audience. The first act seemed gay and lively, with a sort of mordant raillery in it with which the audience was unfamiliar. Then came an idyll, evolving amidst the trees of a London square. What! love—youthful, tender, tremulous love—in the very heart of this city of mud, fog, and smoke! Love, so near that you might touch his wings! This was the kind of impression it evoked—an impression that pleased and moved the more, that the public, always over-curious concerning the private life of its favourites, was acquainted with the tender relations of actor and actress. It was a real “honeymoon”—the full moon which shone on this love duet from over the shrubbery of coloured canvas. The hearts of the audience went out to them, and all was well.
But no one could say what sort of reception was in store for “The Owls’ Roost.” This “roost” was a picture from the life of the clubs which I have already described as the principal resorts of Bohemia. Now, the “Savages”—the members, that is, of the Savage Club—as well as the frequenters of the Garrick, the Fielding, and the Arundel, were all there in force. How would they take this caricature of themselves? The laughter which broke out in uninterrupted peals soon reassured the anxious ears behind the scenes.
There is a point at which one of the chief characters is at a loss for half a crown wherewith to pay for the hansom in which he is going off to a ball. Having no money in his pocket he asks a friend for the sum. “I haven’t got it,” the friend replies, “but I’ll see if I can’t get it for you.” He asks a third, who makes a similar reply; and so the appeal makes the whole round of the club, until at last a half-crown is found in the depths of a pocket, and is passed on from hand to hand, borrowed and lent a dozen times, to the man who had asked for it in the first instance. The incident was taken from actual life. Thus reproduced upon the stage, it seemed indescribably comic, and proved the turning-point in the fortune of the play—the happy crisis after which everything was greeted with applause. It was a trivial illustration, but it was thoroughly characteristic. It was Bohemia in a nutshell—to have nothing and give everything.
As the “owls” were so much diverted by the faithful portrayal of their resorts and of their customs, thus presented for the first time upon the stage, there was no reason to expect that Society would take offence over the extraordinary and incongruous proceedings at the establishment of Lord and Lady Ptarmigant. This kind of comic libel was not unknown;—Bulwer, for instance, had set himself to depict the union of the old aristocracy with the new, the naïve veneration displayed by Riches for Rank, and on the other hand, the prostration of Rank before Riches. No one showed astonishment at seeing Lady Ptarmigant smilingly take the arm of old Chodd, though his language and his manners were those of a costermonger, and though his lordship’s valet would probably have hesitated about letting himself be seen with him in a public-house. As for Lord Ptarmigant himself, he was just what we call a panne. The whole character resolved itself into a mere eccentricity, as monotonous as it was far-fetched and extravagant,—a habit of dragging about his chair with him wherever he went, and of falling asleep in it the moment he sat down, with the result that everyone who came in or went out could not fail to tumble over his stretched-out old legs. Who would have imagined that such a rôle as this would be one of the causes of the success of the piece, and would be the means of revealing to London an admirable actor? His name was John Hare. He was still quite young, and he had wished for this strange rôle in which to make his début. Profiting by the example of Garrick, Hare had realised that an actor does not make his name by giving out a witticism or telling phrase with effect, but by putting before us a live human figure, if only a silent figure, in all its eccentricity of brain. His facial expression was wonderful, and his mimicry excellent;—he had in him the genius of metamorphosis; he has it still, and gives evidence of it in a hundred different rôles. By a sort of intuition not easy to explain, there was hardly a spectator who did not divine the future great actor from this one performance.