George Bernard Shaw.—I once rehearsed for a play of his at the Haymarket Theatre. I remember he used to sit at rehearsals with his back to the footlights, tilting his chair so far on its hind legs that it was only by the intervention of heaven that he did not fall into the orchestra. There he sat, always wearing kid gloves, firing off short, terse comments on the acting, and rousing everybody’s ire to such an extent that the fat was in the fire, and finally the production was abandoned, after five weeks’ rehearsal! It was produced later, and was a very great success, Henry Ainley playing the lead. When Bernard Shaw and Granville Barker went into management at the Court Theatre, Harry and I met Shaw one day, and Harry asked how the season “had gone”. “Well,” said Bernard Shaw, “I’ve lost £7000, and Barker’s lost his other shirt.”
Mrs. Kendal.—She came to a reception the other day at Sir Ernest and Lady Wilde’s, to which I had taken my little daughter, Jill. “Look, Jill,” I said, as she entered the room, “that is Mrs. Kendal.” She looked, and her comment is valuable, as showing the impression which “The Old General” made on the “new recruit”: “How perfectly beautiful she looks.” I lunched with her, not long ago, at her house in Portland Place, and I remarked how charming her maids looked. She nodded. “When anyone is coming to see me, I always say to my servants, ‘A clean cap, a clean apron, look as nice as you can; it is a compliment we owe to the visitors who honour this house’.” We sat talking of many things, and Mrs. Kendal said reflectively: “Think of all the things we have missed, people like you and me, through leading—er—shall we say, ‘well-conducted lives’! And, make no mistake, we have missed them!” What an unexpected comment on life from Mrs. Kendal! and yet, I suppose, true enough. I suppose, as “Eliza” says, one “can be too safe”, and perhaps it might be, at all events, an experience to “be in danger for once”.
Ella Shields.—I met her again in Canada. She had come from the States, where, in common with many other artists who are assured successes in England, she had not had the kindest reception. Canada, on the other hand, delighted in her work, and gave her a wonderful ovation wherever she went. One day we went out walking together, and she gave me the best lesson in “walking” I have ever had. I have never seen anyone who moved so well, so easily, and so gracefully. I told her that I wished I could walk with her every day, to really learn “how she did it”.
Arthur Bourchier.—When both Harry and I were playing in Pilkerton’s Peerage, Arthur Bourchier suddenly made a rule that no one was to leave their dressing-room until called by the call-boy, immediately before their entrance on to the stage. One night the call-boy forgot, and Harry was not called, as he should have been. Bourchier came off, and there was a bad “wait”. He turned to me and whispered, in an agonised voice, “Go on and say something”, which I declined to do. At that moment Harry rushed on to the stage, and, as he tore past Bourchier, very, very angry at missing his “cue”, shook his fist in Bourchier’s face, saying fiercely “Damn you!” After his scene he came off, still very angry, and went up to Bourchier. The storm burst. “There you are!” Harry said; “you see the result of your damned, idiotic rules——”, and much more in the same strain. Bourchier, in a soothing voice, said: “It’s all right, it’s all right, Harry—I’ve sacked the call-boy!”
The German Production of “Old Heidelberg.”—Before George Alexander produced this play, it was done at the old Novelty Theatre by a German company, under the direction of Herr Andresson and Herr Berhens. Alexander asked me to go and see it, with Mrs. Alexander, which we did. I have rarely seen such a badly “dressed” play. The one real attempt to show the “glory” of the reigning house of “Sachsen-Karlsburg” was to make the footmen wear red plush breeches. The “State apartments” were tastefully furnished in the very best period of “Tottenham Court Road” mid-Victorian furniture. After the performance was over, Herr Berhens came to see us in the box. I did not know quite what to say about the production, so I murmured something rather vague about the “back cloth looking very fine.” Herr Berhens bowed. “So it should do,” he said, “the production cost £25!”
Rudge Harding.—He is a “bird enthusiast”, and will sit and watch them all day long, and half the night too, if they didn’t get tired and go to roost. Rudge Harding was coming to stay with us at “Apple Porch”—our house in the country, near Maidenhead. Harry met him at the station, saying breathlessly, “Thank God you’ve come! We have a bottle-throated windjar in the garden; I was so afraid it might get away before you saw it!” Harding said he had never heard of the bird (neither, for that matter, had anyone else, for Harry had evolved it on his way to the station). Needless to say, on arriving at “Apple Porch”, the “bottle-throated windjar” could not be located, but Harry had “recollected” many quaint and curious habits of the bird. He possessed a large three-volume edition of a book on birds—without an index—and for three days Rudge Harding searched that book for the valuable additional information on the bird which Harry swore it must contain. He might have gone on looking for the rest of his visit, if Harry had not tired of the game and told him the awful truth!
Morley Horder.—He is now a very, very successful architect, and is, I believe, doing much of the planning for the re-building of North London. He designed “Apple Porch” for us, and when it was in process of being built we drove over one day with him to see it. We had then a very early type of car, a Clement Talbot, with a tonneau which was really built to hold two, but on this occasion held three—and very uncomfortable it was—Morley Horder, Phillip Cunningham, and I. Horder, a very quiet, rather retiring man, with dark eyes and very straight black hair, said not a word the whole journey. Cunningham chatted away, full of vitality and good humour. When we finally reached “Apple Porch”, Cunningham got out and turned to Morley Horder. “Now then,” he said, “jump out, Chatterbox!”
Eric Lewis.—There is no need to speak of his work, for everyone knows it, and appreciates the finish and thought which it conveys. He played “Montague Jordon” in Eliza for us, for a long time, and has been the “only Monty” who ever really fulfilled the author’s idea. Others have been funny, clever, amusing, eccentric, and even rather pathetic; Eric Lewis was all that, and much more. He is, and always has been, one of the kindest of friends, as time has made him one of the oldest.
Fred Grove.—Another of the “ideals” of the evergreen play, Eliza. He has played “Uncle Alexander” a thousand times and more, each time with the same care and attention to detail. He has evolved a “bit of business” with a piece of string, which he places carefully on the stage before the curtain goes up; never a week has passed, when he has been playing the part, but some careful person has picked up that piece of string and taken it away, under the impression that they were making the stage “tidy”. What a wonderful memory Fred Grove has, too! Ask him for any information about stage matters—any date, any cast—and the facts are at his finger-tips at once. He has made a very large collection of books on the stage, and among them a copy of the poems written by Adah Isaacs Menken, the “first female Mazeppa”, who married the famous Benicia Boy, a great prize-fighter of his day. The poems were considered so beautiful that some of them were attributed to Swinburne, who declared he had nothing to do with them beyond giving them his deep admiration. Fred Grove is one of the people who never forget my birthday; Sydney Paxton is another.
Clemence Dane.—My sister Ada knew her first, and it was at her suggestion that I went down to see “Diana Courtis” (the name she used for the stage) play at Hastings. We were about to produce Sandy and His Eliza, the title of which was changed later to Eliza Comes to Stay. I decided she was exactly the type I wanted to play “Vera Lawrence”, the actress, and engaged her at once. It was not until she began to write that she changed her name from “Diana Courtis” to “Clemence Dane”. I remember we were doing a flying matinée, to Southend, and I took Jill, then a very tiny girl, with me. All the way there she sat on “Diana Courtis’s” knee and listened to wonderful stories, Kipling’s Just So Stories. When they came to an end, Jill drew a deep breath and said, “What wouldn’t I give to be able to tell stories like that!” “Yes,” responded the teller of the stories, “and what wouldn’t I give to be able to write them!” She designed and drew our poster, which we still use, for Eliza—Cupid standing outside the green-door, waiting to enter. I have a wonderful book, which “Clemence Dane” made for me; all the characters in Eliza, everyone mentioned, whether they appear or not, are drawn as she imagined them. To be naturally as versatile as this—actress, artist, and writer—seems to me a dangerous gift from the gods, and one which needs strength of character to resist the temptation to do many things “too easily” and accomplish nothing great. Clemence Dane has three books, and what I shall always regard as a great poem in blank verse, to prove that she has resisted the temptation.