The last play I wrote for Charles Frohman was in collaboration with Haddon Chambers. He paid us a good sum down, but never produced it. We had made our chief comic character a Lord Mayor of London, and Frohman was nervous about it. He had the foreigner's fixed notion that the Lord Mayor of London is, next to the King, the most exalted personage in all England; and feared that to put him on the stage in company with ordinary mortals would be to outrage all the better feelings of the British public. I am sorry. He was a jolly old chap and, I think, original. We had given him a sense of humour.
Haddon Chambers had the reputation of being a “dangerous” character; but my wife always said she was sure it was their fault, and our two daughters loved him. The elder, who was nearly thirteen, said the great thing was to keep him to serious subjects. They taught him croquet and talked to him about horses and religion; and he used to tell them stories about Bushrangers, and Madame Melba when she was a little girl.
“New Lamps for Old,” I wrote for Cissy Grahame. She produced it at Terry's Theatre. Horatio Bottomley was her backer. We all liked him. He used to take us out to lunch at the old Gaiety; and tell us stories about his early struggles, when he was a poor boy selling newspapers for his uncle, Charles Bradlaugh; and how he saved his first half-crown. Penley played the old family lawyer. He made a wonderful character of it at rehearsal. Penley was really a great actor. If he had played the part as he rehearsed it, he would have made for himself a new reputation. But he funked it at the end; and on the first night he was just Penley, as usual. Fred Kerr, Gertrude Kingston and Bernard Partridge were in the cast, in addition to Cissy herself. But the most wonderful person connected with the affair was our acting manager. I wish I could remember his name. It deserves to go down to posterity as the man who swindled Bottomley.
“He must have started faking the accounts from the very first week,” commented Bottomley, more in sorrow than in anger; “and he's done it so cleverly that, although it is staring me in the face, I can't prove it. Damned scoundrel!”
Later, he got a cheque out of The Daily Mail for telling lies about Lloyd George. The Daily Mail was very indignant and charged him with fraud. The man must have had a sense of humour, when you come to think of it.
Bottomley had a wonderful tongue. I remember a shareholders' meeting, called together for the sole and express purpose of denouncing him. Half of them were in favour of lynching him. He talked to them for three-quarters of an hour; and now and then there were tears in his eyes. Before he sat down he had launched a new company on them. The majority of them subscribed to it before they left the room. He had his kindly side and was always good company. Once when I was in sore straits he lent me a thousand pounds; and never asked me for security or interest.
Augustus Daly took “New Lamps” for America; and Ada Rehan and John Drew played in it. Ada Rehan was superb in passion. Her Katharine in “The Taming of the Shrew” was a magnificent performance. It began like a tornado and ended like a summer's breeze whispering to the willows. But John Drew in Shakespeare always suggested to me “A Yankee at the Court of King Arthur.” Afterwards, Daly asked me to adapt Sudermann's “Die Ehre.” I had marvelled up till then at the linguistic range of the average dramatic author who at a moment's notice “adapts” you from the Russian, or the Scandinavian, or any other language that you choose. I did not then know very much German and had to confess it.
“That'll be all right,” said Daly. “I'll send you the literal translation.”
For translations, a shilling a folio used to be the price generally paid to the harmless necessary alien.
Somewhat against my conscience, I consented to bowdlerise Sudermann's play so as not to offend Mrs. Grundy, who then ruled the English and American stage. Poor lady! She must have done quite a lot of turning in her grave since then. Jones went further when he adapted Ibsen's “Doll's House.” In the last act Helmar took the forgery upon himself, and the curtain went down on Nora flinging herself into his arms with the cry of “Husband”; and the band played “Charlie is my Darling.” That was the first introduction of Ibsen to the British public. “A charming author,” was the verdict first passed upon Ibsen in London.