“On Thursday the entrance will be by Stage Door—on Friday at the front entrance.
“Yours for ever and ever, Amen,
“W. S. Gilbert.”
Amongst the many people who made a sketch of my head was the late Captain Robert Marshall, the author of “The Second in Command” and other delightful plays.
This came about a few days before the Coronation of Edward VII. We were having tea together, when he took out a pencil, and in a few minutes this soldier-playwright made a charming little sketch. What a strange thing it is that people who succeed in one particular thing are often so gifted in various other lines. And people who do not succeed at anything seem to have no versatility of any sort or kind, except to amplify the various forms of stupidity.
I first met Captain Marshall at Sir W. S. Gilbert’s. The younger man almost worshipped his host, and considered him a model playwright. On his side, Sir William had been very kind and encouraging. His manner was perfectly frank, and he never hesitated to say whether he thought a piece of work good or bad, as it struck him.
There are not many cases in which a man can earn an income in two different professions. Lord Roberts is a soldier and a writer; Mr. Forbes Robertson, Mr. Weedon Grossmith, and Mr. Bernard Partridge are both actors and artists; Mr. Lumsden Propert, the author of a great book on miniatures, was a doctor by profession; Mr. Edmund Gosse and Mr. Edward Clodd have other occupations besides literature; Sir A. W. Pinero is no mean draughtsman; Miss Gertrude Kingston writes and illustrates as well as acts; and Mr. Harry Furniss is as clever with his pen as with his brush.
No one looking at Captain Marshall would have imagined that ill-health pursued him; such, however, was the case, and but for the fact that a delicate chest necessitated retiring from the army, he would probably never have become a dramatist by profession. “After one gets up in the service,” he amusingly said, “one receives a higher rate of pay, and has proportionately less to do. Thus it was I found time for scribbling, and it was actually while A.D.C. and living in a Government House, that I wrote ‘His Excellency the Governor.’ Three days after it came out I left the army.” Many men on being told to relinquish the profession they loved because of ill-health would have calmly sat down and courted death. Not so Robert Marshall. He at once turned his attention elsewhere; chose an occupation he could take about with him when each winter drove him to warmer climes to live in fresh air, doing as he was medically bidden, thus cheating the undertaker for ten years. Nothing gave him greater pleasure than to spend an evening at the Opera. One night I happened to sit in a box between him and Mr. Cyril Maude, and probably there were no more appreciative listeners in the house than these two men, both intensely interested in the representation of “Tannhäuser.” Poor Mr. Maude was suffering from a sore throat, and had been forbidden to act that evening for fear of losing the little voice that remained to him. As music is his delight, and an evening at the Opera an almost unknown pleasure, he enjoyed himself with the enthusiasm of a boy, feeling he was having a “real holiday.” Since then he has appeared as a singer himself, in a Christmas frolic.
Herbert Bedford, the painter who married that delightful composer Liza Lehmann, was another once desirous to do a miniature of me. Accordingly, one terribly foggy morning in January, 1909, he arrived with his little box and ivory. He started; but of all things for a miniature a good light is the most necessary and fate was not kind. The fog deepened and blackened, till we were thoroughly enveloped in one of “London’s particulars.” I really think it was one of the worst fogs I remember; and that is saying a good deal, for I have not only had much experience in London, but have seen denser specimens in Chicago, and almost as bad in Paris and Christiania.
He waited an hour, but working was hopeless, so he departed. Next time he came, the morning was beautifully bright, but ill-fate pursued us, and we had no sooner settled down to work than Cimmerian darkness came on again. A week later a third attempt was made, and incredible as it may appear, the blackest of all smoky, yellow, carboniferous fogs arrived that day also. Verily, it was a black month. Though the morning was always fine when we started, the darkness arrived as soon as we were well settled down to work, as if from very “cussedness.”
November is named the month of fogs, but as a Londoner I should say they rarely come before Christmas, generally in January; and three or four during the entire winter is now our usual number. They seldom last more than a few hours; but they are so awful when they do come, that that is quite long enough, and the sooner science robs us of their presence the better. They certainly are less frequent and less severe than when I was a child. Poor old London climate! how we abuse it, and yet we have much to be thankful for. We do not get prickly heat or mosquitoes, sunstroke or ticks, neither do we have frost-bite or leprosy. The Marquis de San Giuliano, late Italian Ambassador in London and now Minister of Foreign Affairs in Rome, always maintained that London possesses the best climate in the world, and wondered why people ever left England with all its comforts in the winter, for the South with its cheerless houses and treacherous winds.