. . . . . . . .

Miss Horniman is one of the many people I have never met. “Then why write about her?” you ask. I really don’t know, except that I want to. She was (and, for all I know to the contrary, still is) something of a personality in Manchester, and she was so for a considerable period, she producing quite a few plays at the Gaiety Theatre that were well worth seeing.

But she was ridiculously overpraised. She was petted and spoiled by The Manchester Guardian, the Victoria [210] ]University gave her an honorary Master of Art’s degree, many literary and dramatic societies went down on their knees to her and implored her to come and speak to them, and she was regarded by the entire community as a woman of daring originality, great wisdom and vast experience. She could do nothing wrong. No play she produced, no matter how sour and Mancunian, was ever condemned by the local Press. Miss Horniman had given it, therefore it was “the right stuff.” She knew about it all: she knew: SHE KNEW. Many Manchester dramatic critics were themselves writing plays, and Miss Horniman smiled upon them. She smiled upon Stanley Houghton, Harold Brighouse, Allan Monkhouse, all critics of The Manchester Guardian. She would have smiled upon the plays of J. E. Agate and C. E. Montague if they had written any. She was our benefactress, and we used to sit and watch her in her embroidered gown as she rather self-consciously queened it in a box at her own theatre.

Yet, after all, she had a rather depressing effect upon the city. She gave no new play that was perfectly beautiful. She appeared to detest romance and had little understanding of blank verse. Starting her public life as a patron of Bernard Shaw, she declined upon Shaw’s fevered disciples. She spoke in public very frequently, and always said the same things. She had all the enthusiasm of a clever business woman. Wishing very much to make money (so she told us), she understood all the arts of self-advertisement. But, really, Manchester was not the place for her; it was sufficiently hard and provincial before she came——

But perhaps I am allowing myself to run away with myself in writing down all these disagreeable things. Yet I believe them to be true, and they must stand. Her plays gave me several enjoyable evenings which, but for her, I should never have had, and I can never be [211] ]too grateful to her for restoring to the Gaiety Theatre the drink licence that the Watch Committee had taken away some years before she came. That act, at all events, did in some degree help to make the Manchester plays a little less like Manchester plays.

[212]
]CHAPTER XVIII
BERLIN AND SOME OF ITS PEOPLE

One winter, about ten years ago, I went to Berlin in the company of Mr Frederick Dawson, the famous English pianist, who had planned to give two recitals there. We stayed at the Fürstenhof, a luxurious and enervating hotel where we had a suite of rooms facing the front. In the large drawing-room that Karl Klindworth had engaged for Dawson was a good piano.

Now, music in Berlin is just a trade. Everyone plays or sings and everybody teaches somebody or other to play and sing. Unless you are an artist of colossal merit (and sometimes even if you are), you will find it practically impossible to persuade anybody to listen to you if you are not prepared to “square” the critics. In the season, twenty, thirty, forty concerts are given nightly, and by far the greater number of them are given to empty stalls. That does not matter: no artist of any European experience expects anything else. A musician does not go to Berlin to get money: he goes to get a reputation. Berlin’s cachet is (or, most decidedly, I should say was) absolutely indispensable for any pianist, violinist or singer who wishes to make a permanent and wide reputation. Before the war, Mr Snooks could play as hard and as fiercely and as long in London as he liked, but unless he was known in Berlin, and unless it was known that he was known in Berlin, he was everywhere considered but as a second-rate kind of person, a mere talented outsider. So that it is quite within the facts [213] ]to say that few artists have gone to sing or play in Berlin except for the purpose of obtaining Press notices, favourable Press notices, Press notices that glow with praise and reek of backstairs influence. An American, a French or a Danish artist will go to Berlin with a few years’ savings, give a short series of recitals, cut his Press notices from the papers, go back to his native land, and then advertise freely—his advertisements, of course, consisting of judicious excerpts (not always very literally translated) from his Berlin notices. This visit to Berlin, with the hire of a concert hall, etc., may cost a couple of hundred pounds, but it is counted money well spent, well invested.

Frederick Dawson had already paid several visits to Berlin and Vienna, and was so well known in both cities that his appearance in either always attracted large and enthusiastic audiences; but, apart from Dawson himself, d’Albert and Lamond, no other British artist or semi-British artist had, I imagine, the power to do so.

I was introduced to many critics and many artists. The critic was almost invariably a Herr Doktor and the Herr Doktor was almost invariably a Herr Professor: they all had degrees and they all taught. They were overworked, “doing” five or six concerts a night and receiving very little pay. They would dash about from one concert hall to another in taxi-cabs, jot down a few notes, and look down their noses; when they wished to leave a particular hall, they would look round furtively, gather their coat-tails together, and sidle slimly or roll fatly to the door.