The Secrets of a Savoyard

by Henry A. Lytton

I am afraid that in those days I had an incurable weakness for practical joking. One night I went for dinner into a well-known hotel in the Strand. Soon after I had entered the restaurant I was roughly grasped by one would-be diner, who was obviously in a very bad temper, and who demanded to know why no one had been to take the order for himself and his guests. Well, if I was to be mistaken for a waiter, it would be just as well to play the part. "Pardon, monsieur!" I exclaimed, dropping at once into a most deferential attitude, and immediately getting ready to write down his order on the back of a menu-card that was handy. The diner, still in the worst of humours, recited the courses he had selected. "And wine, monsieur?" I asked. Yes, he wanted wine as well, and that order also was faithfully booked. Then I went to the far end of the room to join my own party of friends. What combustible heat the diner developed when he found that his wishes were still unattended to, and what verbal avalanche the real waiter had to endure when he had to ask that the order should be repeated, are matters upon which no light can be thrown—by myself! But to return to the story of the "explosion" in "The Mikado."

My little bit of devilment was duly reported to the management. Mr. Carte summoned me before him and looked very grave. Unauthorised diversions of this kind would never do—and certainly not when perpetrated by a leading principal. "I think it is about time you stopped your schoolboy pranks," was his rebuke.

But a different side of Mr. Carte was seen in connection with a certain incident at the Savoy. The point to remember is that it had reference to something that did not involve any liberties with the performance, and this fact put it, in his eyes, in an entirely different category. We had in the company a man who was always telling tales about the rest to the stage manager. So one night some of us got hold of him, ducked his head in a bucket of dirty water, and kept it there as long as we dare. Naturally he reported us, and in due course we were summoned to attend and explain our conduct to Mr. Carte. We were bidden to enter his room one by one. I, as one of the ring-leaders, was the first to go in. "This is very serious," said Mr. Carte, but having heard my explanation of the incident, and still looking exceedingly severe, he warned me that "this sort of thing must not happen again." Then, as a smile stole over his face, he added "All the same I might have done it myself!"

With that he told me, when I went out of the room, to put one hand on my temple and, with the other stretched out in the air, to exclaim "Oh! it's terrible—terrible." What the effect of this melodramatic posture was on those anxiously waiting outside may well be imagined. It could only mean instant dismissal for all of us. Then Mr. Carte had another culprit before him, and having formally rebuked him, commanded him to make his exit in much the same way. It was an excellent joke—except for those at the end of the queue.

It was Mr. D'Oyly Carte, by the way, who once did me the compliment of saying, "My dear Lytton, you have given me the finest performance I have ever seen of any part on any stage." Strange as it may seem to-day, the rôle which I was playing then, and which drew those most cordial words from one whose praise was always so measured and restrained, was that of Shadbolt in the 1897 London revivals of "The Yeomen of the Guard." It was impossible for a small man to play the part just as the big men had played it, and so my interpretation of it was that of a creeping, cringing little dwarf who in manner, in method and in mood was not unlike Uriah Heep. This seemed to me to be consistent with the historical figure from which the part was drawn. Gilbert, it is not generally known, took him from a wicked, wizened little wretch who, in the sixteenth century, so legend says, haunted the Tower when an execution was due, and offered the unhappy felon a handful of dust, which was, he said, "a powder that will save you from pain." For reward he claimed the victim's valuables.

When, by the way, Mr. Carte told me that mine was the best performance he had ever seen on any stage, I was so flattered by the compliment that I asked him if he would write his opinion down for me, and he readily promised to do so. Within a day or two I received a letter containing those words over his signature, and it remains amongst my treasured possessions. Only once did I know him to be guilty of forgetfulness, and that was when, meeting me in London, he said: "Oh! I think I can offer you an engagement, Lytton." I had to point out to him that I was actually playing in one of his companies. We were, I think, at Greenwich at the time, and I was making a flying visit to London.

Mr. Carte was a great stage manager. He could take in the details of a scene with one sweep of his eagle eye and say unerringly just what was wrong. Shortly before I was leaving town for a provincial tour he noticed that Ko-Ko's love scene with Katisha might be improved, and so we went together for an extra rehearsal into the pit bar at the Savoy. Mr. Carte said he would be Katisha and I, of course, was to be Ko-Ko. Now, to make love to a bearded man, and a man who was one's manager into the bargain, was rather a task but we both entered heartily into the spirit of the thing. "Just act as you would if you were on the stage," was his advice, "though you needn't actually kiss me, you know!" For this scene we had an audience of one. Little Rupert D'Oyly Carte was there, and before the rehearsal commenced I lifted him on to the bar counter, where he sat and simply held his sides with laughter watching me making earnest love to his father! I imagine he remembers that incident still.

That "eye" for stagecraft, which in Mr. Richard D'Oyly Carte amounted to genius, has been inherited in a quite remarkable degree by his son, Mr. Rupert D'Oyly Carte. He, too, has the gift of taking in the details of a scene at a glance, and knowing instinctively just what must be corrected in order to make the colours blend most effectively, the action move most perfectly, and the stage arrangement generally to be in balance and proportion. I need not say that in all this he most faithfully observes all the traditions which have stood so well the test of time.

So far I have given in this chapter my random reminiscences of the chief three figures—the triumvirate, as I have called them—at the Savoy. But there was also a fourth, and it would be a grave omission were I not to mention one who, in my judgment, was as wonderful as any of them. I refer to Miss Helen Lenoir, who, after acting for some years as private secretary to Mr. Carte, became his wife. There was hardly a department of this great enterprise which did not benefit, little though the wider public knew it, from Mrs. Carte's remarkable genius. It was not alone that hers was the woman's hand that lent an added tastefulness to the dressing of the productions. She was a born business woman with an outstanding gift for organisation. No financial statement was too intricate for her, and no contract too abstruse. Once, when I had to put one of her letters to me before my legal adviser, though not, I need hardly say, with any litigious intent, he declared firmly "this letter must have been written by a solicitor." He would not admit that any woman could draw up a document so cleverly guarded with qualifications.