Her eyebrows went up in amazement.
“Dear me,” she said, “you do surprise me.”
George R. Sims told me that once he dined some friends at the Savoy. Over the coffee, he asked them if they would like to go to a theatre, and they said they would. He took them to a play of his own. For some reason that Sims could not explain, they did not like it. At the end of the first act, one of them, turning to him, said:
“Rather dull stuff this. Don't you find it so?”
“Well, now you come to mention it, perhaps it is, a trifle,” agreed Sims.
“Let's go on to the Empire,” suggested another.
The proposal was carried nem. con.; and leaving their programmes behind them, the troop arose and made their way out of the theatre noisily and cheerfully, followed by Sims, walking soberly.
“It used to annoy me,” added Sims, “that not one theatre-goer in a hundred ever takes the trouble to read the author's name. That evening, I was glad of it.”
“Barbara” was my first play. I am informed that nowadays managers read plays by unknown authors. In my young days they didn't. I read it to Rose Norreys, one evening, at her little flat in Chelsea Gardens; and good comrade that she was, she took it herself to Charles Hawtrey, and stood over him until he had finished it. He wrote me, asking me to come and see him the following Tuesday at twelve o'clock noon—he underlined “noon.” He was running “The Private Secretary” at the Globe. I got there at twenty minutes to, and walked up and down Hollywell Street until I heard Big Ben strike twelve. The stage door-keeper said Mr. Hawtrey wasn't in. I said I would wait. The door-keeper—a kindly soul, I wish I could remember his name—put me a chair by the fire and gave me a thumbed copy of “The Talisman.” He said that, speaking for himself, he considered it the best of all Scott's novels. Hawtrey turned up at a quarter past three. The stage door-keeper introduced us, and explained things.
“I'm so sorry,” said Hawtrey. “I thought it was Monday.”