Some eminent Victorians: Personal recollections in the world of art and letters

by J. Comyns Carr

At first the German Reeds had been associated with Mr. Parry, whose place, in my time, was occupied by my friend Corney Grain. Mr. and Mrs. Reed in those later days were both dead, and the purely dramatic part of the bill was under the direction of Alfred Reed their son, with whom I had many pleasant hours of association in the several pieces I wrote for him. The Cabinet Secret was followed by The Friar, a rather more ambitious experiment in verse, and that again was succeeded by The Naturalist, the last of my contributions to the performances at St. George’s Hall.

It is hard in these days, when the earlier prejudices against the theatre are so nearly effaced, to realise the extraordinary vogue which this particular class of entertainment enjoyed. An author who wrote for the German Reeds had to tread warily, and the presence of a harmonium, as the sole support of the piano in the orchestra, was there constantly to remind him of the somewhat orthodox tone he was enjoined to observe.

Corney Grain, who in later days rarely appeared in the dramatic part of the programme, was a host in himself when he was seated at the piano, inimitable as he was in humorous perception of the lighter foibles of the day. For years he was a constant figure at the Beefsteak Club, where in private life he betrayed the same quick glance into the little idiosyncrasies of individual character allied to a power of ridicule that never sought to wound, and a deeply seated geniality of nature that won him many friends, and never, as I think, a single enemy.

Of all the entertainers in this kind who have sought single-handed to amuse the public, partly in humorous characterisation and partly through musical accomplishment, he remains, as far as my impression goes, easily first in the class he represented.

A chapter of pleasant memories in the earlier days of my theatrical association is provided by a little club called “The Lambs,” to which I have already alluded. It had been founded in 1868, and I suppose it was about the year 1870 that I was admitted into the fold. Though not exclusively composed of actors, it was mainly concerned with interests that were theatrical, and it was there I first met Sir Squire Bancroft and Sir John Hare, in days when neither dreamed of the distinction of a title, and when both, indeed, were little past the threshold of their fame. There were no matinées then, and so we were enabled to meet for dinner on every Saturday during the autumn and winter at the pleasant hour of four o’clock.

When I first joined the society our meeting-place was at the old Gaiety Restaurant, but afterwards we moved to the Albemarle Hotel, then an old-fashioned hostelry at the corner of Piccadilly, which has long been supplanted by a more modern structure. They were the pleasantest gatherings that I can recall as being connected with that period of my youth. The rules of our Club prescribed just that little touch of ceremony and ritual by which grown men when they come together for social purposes prove themselves to be so nearly allied to children, and as a part of that ceremonial it was ordained that the “Shepherd” of the day, an office filled in rotation, had, at the summons of a graceful little silver bell, designed by one of our members, Fred Jameson, the right to call upon any one of those present whom he chose to select for a speech, which, with its reply, was all in the way of oratory that our rules permitted.

It was in this way that I first encountered that handsomest and gayest of young actors, H. J. Montague, whose charm exercised a widespread fascination upon the play-goers of his day, and who was further, and quite independently of such histrionic gifts as he could boast, a companion of the most sympathetic spirit. If not endowed with absolute wit, he could so infect the recital of the most ordinary adventures that he had encountered during the day with something of the rollicking sense of boyishness that was his own, as to keep his hearers in a mood of unflagging merriment and enjoyment.

But on one particular occasion, which I recall, he was bidding for a victory that lay not quite so easily within his reach. Chosen by the chairman as the spokesman of the day, he had selected me, perhaps because I was the youngest member of the Club, as the object of his raillery, and I remember now the look of amazement, almost of consternation, on his face when I replied to him in something of the same spirit which animated his own speech, and retorted with unsparing ridicule upon his own qualifications as an actor and as a member of our little society.

Joyous, indeed, were those weekly meetings of “The Lambs,” where we met in eager appreciation of that new birth in the drama inaugurated by Tom Robertson, and which was being presented, with so loyal a faith in their mission, by the company which Mr. and Mrs. Bancroft had gathered together in the little house in Tottenham Court Road. We were all enthusiasts, all animated by a firm faith in the future of the drama we loved, all supported by the thought that to-morrow would see the dawn of such a new birth of drama upon the stage as England had not witnessed for many a generation. And even looking back now it seems plain to me that the movement in which we were taking a part was not without its direct and important influence upon the new spirit that had crept into the theatre.

It is difficult now quite to realise the warmth of welcome we were then glad to bestow upon that little revolution which must be always associated with the Prince of Wales’s Theatre under the management of the Bancrofts. The return to realism which was there sought, and in a measure achieved, was exercised only in a narrow compass, and with an outlook that was restricted and limited. But it was designed to have a larger influence than seemed possible from such modest beginnings. It sought no triumphs which were not within the region of comedy, and that comedy itself did not strive for the interpretation of more than the current sentiments of the time. But, by its earnest endeavour to bring the life as presented upon the stage into closer contact with the life of its time, it served to exercise an influence upon the art of the future in a wider and a deeper sense than was, perhaps, quite consciously entertained by those who were conducting its efforts.