THE LAMBS CLUB
What a remarkable institution is the Lambs Club!
I say institution because in its development during the past twenty years it has grown from a cozy little rendezvous for the tired actors after their night's work to a clearing house for plays, sketches and engagements of artists.
To visit that beautiful home on Forty-fourth Street between the hours of one and two o'clock is to imagine you are in a business man's luncheon club down town.
As I look back upon the many years when, of a cold winter's night, I would wander into the little Twenty-sixth Street home of the Lambs—I sigh deeply! Then I was sure to find a greeting from dear old Clay Greene, from that budding genius Gus Thomas. There were there to welcome me also the erratic Sydney Rosenfeldt, suave Frank Carlisle, dominant Wilton Lackaye, brilliant Maurice Barrymore, dear old Lincoln (now passed away) and countless others, including clever Henry Dixey, then at the zenith of his success, the Holland boys and—but then why continue?
It was then we knew how to spend the time, how to regale ourselves and how to pass many, many happy hours with anecdote and song. All the members knew each other in those days. I, among many others, never entered the club without embracing that dearest of men, George Fawcett. There were no favored few in those days. It was one for all and all for one. Clever John Mason and that equally talented artist, George Nash, were the staunchest upholders of this slogan.
How different now!
As I enter the Lambs Club today I scarcely know a member. Almost all of the old guard have passed away. As I look into the faces of the many unknown to me it seems almost impossible that I have not wandered into the wrong building! But presently I find Gus Thomas and a few remaining members of the old flock—and then all is well once more.
Thomas has developed into the greatest American dramatist—as I knew he would. To be sure now and then one of his plays fails to meet with favor while perhaps one of the anaemic Broadhurst's sensual plays is meeting with success, but Thomas's plays will live and be in the libraries of America when the products of these ephemeral writers have been consigned to the waste baskets of obscurity.