It may, of course, be conceded that in his critical and discriminating judgment of Irving’s acting Coquelin had before him an extreme example of marked personal idiosyncrasy. The English actor, and no one was better aware of the fact than himself, was partly hampered in the exercise of his art by physical peculiarities that for many years proved a serious hindrance in his career. But, even if he could have shaken himself wholly free of them, he could never have effaced the personality that lay behind them. It is, indeed, impossible to conceive a more striking contrast than was presented by the two men as I used often to see them in those intimate little supper-parties at the Lyceum. Coquelin, despite his alert and agile intelligence, remained in outward appearance almost defiantly bourgeois, and this indelible stamp of his origin, which art had done nothing to refashion or refine, never showed so clearly as when he stood beside the English actor, who, with no better social title than his own, nevertheless carried about him a nameless sense of race and breeding. I remember one night when they stood up side by side towards the close of a long evening, Coquelin’s silhouette bulging in somewhat rotund line as it traversed his ample waistcoat, the comedian was enlarging in earnest and eager tones as to his plans for the future. “I have the intention,” he said to Irving, in his halting English, “I have the intention next year to assume the rôle of Richard III.” Irving seemed thoughtful for a moment, and then his long, slender fingers lightly tapping that protuberant outline, he murmured, as though half to himself, “Would you? I wonder!”
SIR ARTHUR SULLIVAN
Arthur Sullivan’s final claims as a composer can only be settled by time. It is not allowed, even to the expert, to hasten the judgment of posterity, for, as we know from experience, that judgment does not always accord with the verdict even of the most learned of the living. But there is one fact which in Sullivan’s case time cannot dispute, and that is the extraordinary influence which he exercised over his generation. There is possibly no Englishman in any realm of art who, during the same period, won the admiration of so many of his fellows: none assuredly whose genius entered with so sweet a welcome into so many English homes.
The art of the musician where it is destined to win any form of popular response has indeed this peculiar prerogative. The processes of its production are hedged around with special technicalities that can be comprehended only by the few, but its completed message owns a universal language that no other art can command. And those of us who know of music no more than the pleasure it confers ought not on that account to withhold our tribute of praise from a master who has charmed us all. It is not only the super-subtle or the obscure which merits respect, and we need not, therefore, be too timorous in confessing our love of that which we are permitted to understand, resting assured that there will remain critics enough to deliver the sterner judgment of the higher courts. And amongst such critics there is a certain section in music, as in literature, or in painting, whose ears are so finely tuned to catch the first whisper of the moderating voice of the time to come, that they are apt to lose their nerve for praise of their contemporaries: others again so beset with the cant of categories that they must needs deplore in the case of every gifted artist who chances also to be popular that his gifts are not engaged in other and loftier employment. We need not, however, be too greatly concerned with censure of this sort; for the accepted formulas of criticism are after all but the reflex of past achievement, and are liable to be recast or enlarged in accordance with the needs and resources of those who have the power to remodel them. Genius, indeed, takes little account of the accepted classifications of the schools, and forms of art that were deemed capable of holding only so much as they have hitherto contained are suddenly transformed at the touch of new invention, which, in its turn, forges new fetters doomed again to be shattered by the advent of some later individuality.
But it is the personality of the artist rather than the quality of his work that now chiefly concerns us. Of the latter, indeed, the present writer has no title to speak save in terms of grateful admiration, and although it is true of every man of genius that the finest attributes of his nature lie surely enshrined in the fruit of his life’s labour, yet those who enjoyed the privilege of Arthur Sullivan’s friendship may be pardoned for thinking that the art with which he charmed the world still left unrevealed a deeper fascination in the man himself. So much at least is certain, that only those who knew him well were able to realise the perfect accord that existed between the artist and his work. This, as we know, is not always easy to discover. Life sometimes refuses to surrender any hint of the subtler graces that stand confessed in the artistic record given to the world for its enjoyment; and, on the other hand, it will as often happen that the product of hand or brain seems sternly to exclude some more intimate charm that friendship alone can claim to have discovered. It was not so in Sullivan’s case. The man and the artist were woven of one fabric throughout, and those who have enjoyed the varied phases of his music, from its graver to its lighter strains, may be said to have possessed a faithful index to the purely personal qualities that won the affection of his friends. In the unstudied converse of daily life he exhibited in himself that same swift grace of alternating mood that is so characteristic of his art. He was never afraid of the sudden entry of humour into a discussion of the most serious theme, or of sounding a deeper and graver note, however closely it may have followed upon the heels of recent laughter. It was this that made him the most delightful of companions. His instinct was so sure, his sympathy so finely tuned, that he never missed his footing: his sense of harmony in friendship, as in art, so absolutely irreproachable, that he never struck a jarring note.
A great simplicity and generosity of nature lay, I think, at the root of the rare social charm he possessed. In all my recollections of our companionship I cannot recall a single ill-natured word towards friend or acquaintance, or any bitter criticism of a comrade in art. In another man such restraint might have seemed insipid: in his case it was instinctive and obviously sincere. He was naturally endowed with the genius of friendship, and what he had to say in the way of serious criticism was delivered with such generous understanding of the claims of other arts with which he was brought into association, that it could never give offence. It was my good fortune more than once to be closely allied with him in the execution of a common task, and those who have written for music will know how constant are the opportunities for friction between the author and the composer. The conflicting claims of music and drama must needs breed keen discussion, and sometimes even marked divergence of view, but with Arthur Sullivan the sense of what was essential in the requirements he had to meet was so quick and so true that it was rarely possible to withhold any concession he might finally see fit to demand.
We met first in the seventies when we were fellow-guests in a country-house in Scotland. The house party was a large one, and Sir Arthur Sullivan, laying aside all claim to the kind of consideration to which his reputation entitled him, became at once the life and soul of the varied entertainments that were organised during the evenings of our visit. If there were private theatricals or tableaux vivants he would cheerfully supply the incidental music required for the occasion, and was so little preoccupied with the dignity of his position as composer that he would willingly accompany the songs of every amateur, and when the need arose would seat himself patiently at the piano to provide the music for an improvised dance. We met often in the years that followed, and our acquaintance quickly ripened into a close and lasting friendship. In the riverside houses, which he used then to take during the summer months of the year, he was the most delightful of hosts, and when I was able to accompany him on some of his trips abroad, I found in his companionship a charm that never failed.
In 1894 he was invited by Sir Henry Irving to compose the music for my play of King Arthur, and he became so deeply interested in the subject that he afterwards planned the execution of an opera dealing with the fortunes of Launcelot and Guinevere, for which I was to supply the libretto. Owing to failing health, however, the scheme was never carried to completion, and it is perhaps open to question whether the sustained effort needed for the interpretation of a serious and tragic theme would have so nicely fitted the natural bent of his genius as the lighter framework provided for him by Sir William Gilbert.
Certainly the alliance of these two men proved of rare value to their generation. It is impossible to conceive of talents so differently moulded or so sharply contrasted, a contrast that found an apt reflection in their strikingly divergent personalities. At the first glance their partnership would hardly seem to promise a fruitful result, and yet it was perhaps out of their very unlikeness that they were enabled to derive something of constant inspiration from one another. Gilbert’s humour, perhaps the most individual in his generation, was cloaked beneath a somewhat sullen exterior. The settled gravity of his expression, sometimes almost menacing in the sense of slumbering hostility which it conveyed, gave hardly a hint of those sudden flashes of wit which came like quick lightning from a lowering sky, and was as far removed as possible from the sunny radiance of Sullivan’s face, wherein the look of resident geniality stood ready on the smallest provocation to reflect every passing mood of quickly responsive appreciation. Many of the pungent epigrams of Gilbert are well known, and if they were not in every case invented on the spur of the moment, they were uttered with such apparent reluctance to disturb the settled gravity of his demeanour as to produce in the listener the conviction that he himself was the last person to suspect their existence. Very often indeed they were obviously born of the moment of their utterance. I remember our both being present in the stalls of a theatre listening to an actor who was wont to mask his occasional departure from strict sobriety by the adoption of a confidential tone in delivery that sank sometimes to the confines of a whisper, when Gilbert, leaning over my shoulder, remarked, “No one admires the art of Mr. K—— more than I do, but I always feel I am taking a liberty in overhearing what he says.” At another time, when he had been invited to attend a concert in aid of the Soldiers’ Daughters’ Home, he replied with polite gravity that he feared he would not be able to be present at the concert, but that he would be delighted to see one of the soldiers’ daughters home after the entertainment. These are only two samples drawn at random from an inexhaustible store of such sayings as must survive in the memory of all who knew him, and the special flavour that is impressed upon them all is equally to be noted in his work for the theatre, more particularly in those lyrical portions of the operas composed in association with Sullivan. In the art of stating a purely prosaic proposition in terms of verse he was indeed without rival. His metrical skill only served to emphasise more deeply the essential unfitness of the poetic form for the message he had to convey; and this unconcealed discordance between the essence of the thought to be expressed and the vehicle chosen for its expression, became irresistible in its humorous appeal even before it had received its musical setting. And yet that setting, as supplied by Sullivan, gave to the whole a unique value. The sardonic spirit of the writer not only called forth in Sullivan a corresponding humour in the adaptation of serious musical form, but it enabled him to super-add qualities of grace and beauty which deserved to rank as an independent contribution of his own. In this way the combined result possessed a measure of poetic charm and glamour which Gilbert’s verse in itself, despite its rare technical qualities, could not pretend to claim, although without the impulse supplied by his more prosaic partner, it may be doubted whether even the finer graces of Sullivan’s genius would have found such apt and fortunate expression. Certain it is that where the task imposed upon him lacked the support of this satiric spirit, he often laboured with a reward less entirely satisfying, and, on the other hand, I think Gilbert himself was impelled by the exigencies of their comradeship to indulge a more fanciful invention than was characteristic of his isolated efforts as a writer of verse.
My final association with Sir Arthur Sullivan arose out of my joint authorship with Sir Arthur Pinero in the libretto of The Beauty Stone. I think the composer was conscious that the scheme of our work constituted a somewhat violent departure from the lines upon which his success in the theatre had hitherto been achieved. At an earlier time this fact in itself would not, I believe, have proved unwelcome to him, for he had confessed to me that he was sometimes weary of the fetters which Gilbert’s particular satiric vein imposed upon him, and his ambition rather impelled him to make trial in a field where, without encountering all the demands incident to Grand Opera, he might be able to give freer rein to the more serious side of his genius. But the adventure, even had our share in the task proved entirely satisfactory to the public, came too late. Poor Sullivan was already a sick man. Sufferings long and patiently endured had sapped his power of sustained energy, and my recollection of the days I passed with him in his villa at Beaulieu, when he was engaged in setting the lyrics I had written, are shadowed and saddened by the impression then left upon me that he was working under difficulties of a physical kind almost too great to be borne. The old genial spirit was still there, the quick humour in appreciation and the ready sympathy in all that concerned our common task, but the sunny optimism of earlier days shone only fitfully through the physical depression that lay heavily upon him, and when a little later we came to the strenuous times of rehearsal in the theatre, one was forced to observe the strain he seemed constantly in need of putting upon himself in order to get through the irksome labour of the day. There were indeed brighter intervals when he seemed in nothing changed from the man as I first knew him, but on such happier moments would quickly follow long seasons of depression, showing itself sometimes in an irritability of temper so foreign to his real nature as to raise in the minds of his friends feelings of deep disquietude and anxiety. But the Sullivan of those moods of dejection is not the man whose portrait lives in the memory of those who knew him. It is easier to think of him in those earlier days when the constant urbanity of his outlook upon the world was lightened by a laughing humour constantly inspired by sympathy and affection.