“Well,” replied Toole, with the blandest of smiles, “you can’t blame the boy, he was only trying if it fitted him.”
The poor little fellow, now almost in tears, looked ruefully at us as we drove away. But there is a pretty ending to the story, for I happen to know that on the next day, which was his birthday, Toole sent him a little bicycle for his own.
During those earlier days when I first made his acquaintance and Irving’s, I was from time to time, and on different papers, employed as a dramatic critic, and I remember it was in that capacity that I had written a notice of Mr. Wills’ play of Charles I., in which Irving had enforced and enlarged the impression created by his appearance in The Bells. I think I had done sufficient justice to Irving’s impressive personation of the king, but my pronounced democratic inclinations were perhaps justly wounded by Mr. Wills’ almost farcical representation of the character of Cromwell. This opinion, openly declared in my criticism, deeply incensed Irving’s manager Mr. Bateman, and it was perhaps in order to find the opportunity of informing me of his disapproval that he invited me to a supper at the Westminster Club on the second or third night of the production.
My friend Thomas Purnell, to whom I have already referred, was present, and Irving and Toole were also of the company. When he thought the fitting moment had arrived, Mr. Bateman led the conversation to the point at issue, and lured on, I think, in a spirit of mischief by Purnell, he at last emphatically banged the table with his fist, and in the loudest of tones declared that he did not produce his plays at the Lyceum Theatre to please Mr. Comyns Carr. There was a moment’s awkward pause, which I did not feel quite able to break, but which was released by Purnell with a chuckle of delight and the happy retort:
“Well, dear boy, then you can’t be surprised if they don’t please him.”
All this while my own ambition to make an adventure as a writer for the stage had been steadily growing. My wife and I had made an experiment in a version of Frou-frou entitled Butterfly, which was produced by Miss Terry and Mr. Kelly during one of their provincial tours at Glasgow. But it was not until the year 1884 that I succeeded in getting a play presented at a London theatre. In the Christmas of 1883 Messrs. Arrowsmith of Bristol had published a short story entitled Called Back which won instant attention from the public. Almost immediately after its publication I was dining at the Beefsteak Club, which at that time occupied rooms over Toole’s theatre opposite King William Street, and I was there recommended by one of my fellow-members to read it without delay.
As I walked home, for we had dined early, I asked at the small newsvendors’ shop near my house in Blandford Square, if they chanced to have a copy of the book. By a strange coincidence, one of their customers had ordered the little volume, published in paper covers at a shilling, and had afterwards found that he did not need it. I bought it and read it that night, and on the next day I wrote to its author—known to the public as Hugh Conway, but whose real name was Fred Fargus, member of a firm of auctioneers at Bristol—to inquire if he would permit me to prepare a version of it for the stage. We were wholly unknown to one another, yet he readily assented, and in the early part of the year 1884 I secured the production of the play at the Prince of Wales’ Theatre, then managed by Mr. Edgar Bruce. When the date agreed upon for its production was drawing near Bruce had brought out, in association with Charles Hawtrey, a play called The Private Secretary; and, although on its first presentation this was not entirely successful, it grew so rapidly in public favour, due in great part, as I must think, to Mr. Beerbohm Tree’s admirable creation of the part of the curate, that there came a moment when Hawtrey very ardently desired that I should postpone the performance of Called Back.
He offered me as an inducement such a liberal share in the profits of his own piece as would, as the event proved, have yielded me something like a handsome fortune. But with the vanity of a young dramatic writer—in this instance supported by the fact that in Hugh Conway’s interests it was imperative Called Back should not be delayed, lest our joint chance of success should be imperilled by piracy—I held fast by my agreement with the management, and further insisted as an integral part of that agreement that Mr. Beerbohm Tree, whose services Mr. Hawtrey desired to retain, should be engaged by Mr. Bruce for the part of Macari. Nor did I see cause to regret my decision; for, apart from the fact that Called Back itself proved an instant success which yielded to Conway and to myself, both in England, in America, and Australia, a substantial reward, its production was the means of forming two valued friendships, the one with Hugh Conway, only severed by his untimely death, the other with Beerbohm Tree, sustained and strengthened as the years have passed, and still surviving in a spirit of loyal comradeship on his side and on mine.
Hugh Conway’s was a lovable nature, and if his talent as displayed in later efforts has not been appreciated at its true value, the reason perhaps may be sought in the fact that the glamour of his first essay in fiction was sufficient to overshadow the work of his later years. But he had, as I think, a power in the suggestion of the supernatural altogether exceptional, and although his style affected no literary grace, he had the art of contriving and weaving a story so as to arrest and enchain the attention of the reader. From the time of our first association we became firm friends, and I believe my name was almost the last upon his lips when he met his untimely death from fever on the Riviera. At his wish I dramatised the next of his Christmas books, entitled Dark Days, which was presented at the Haymarket Theatre in the following year, but it proved less acceptable to the public. He also published under my editorship, in the English Illustrated Magazine, a serial story called A Family Affair, and a few shorter tales, one of which, entitled Paul Vargas, possessed something of the weird mysticism of Edgar Allan Poe.
Previous to the publishing of Called Back he had issued in one of the magazines an amusing little story illustrating the fortunes of two collectors of old china, which he allowed me to employ as the basis of a piece I presented at St. George’s Hall under the title of The United Pair. The German Reeds’ entertainment is now a thing of the past, but it occupied in those days a unique position as satisfying those whose religious scruples did not allow them to visit or to patronise regular theatrical entertainments. I remember as a child having been taken to the Gallery of Illustration in Regent Street, occupying, I fancy, the site now tenanted by the Raleigh Club, to see Miss Priscilla Horton, the originator of this special form of entertainment who afterwards, as Mrs. German Reed, gave a permanent name to the programme presented for so many years at St. George’s Hall.