On the very top of all is his ability to open the charm tap at will. On occasion, I have been of a mind to choke him, so annoyed have I been at him. We have parted in a cloud of aggravation and exacerbation. Yet, on meeting him an hour later, there was only an Irish smile with twinkling eyes, all radiating good will and genuine affection.
This is the Anton Dolin I know, the Dolin I like best.
As these lines are written, all concerned are working on a budget to determine if it is not possible to bring Dolin and his company to America for a visit. It is my hope that satisfactory arrangements can be made, for it would give me great pleasure to present “Pat” at the head of his fine organization. I can only say to Dolin that if we succeed in completing mutually agreeable conditions: “What a job we will do for you!”
[12.] Ballet Climax— Sadler’s Wells And After....
SADLER’S WELLS—a name with which to conjure—had been a part of my balletic consciousness for a long time. I had observed its early beginnings, its growth from the Old Vic to Sadler’s Wells to the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, with the detached interest of a ballet lover from another land. I had read about it, heard about it from many people, but I had not had any first hand experience of it since the Covent Garden Opera Trust had invited the Sadler’s Wells Ballet to move to Covent Garden from their famous ballet center, Sadler’s Wells. This they did, early in 1946, leaving behind yet another company called the Sadler’s Wells Theatre Ballet.
I arrived in London in April, 1946, at a time when I was very definitely under the impression that I would give up any active participation in ballet in any other form than as an interested member of the audience.
The London to which I returned was, in a sense, a strange London—a London just after the war, a city devastated by bombs, a city that had suffered grave wounds both physical and spiritual, a city of austerity.
It was also a London wherein I found, wherever I went, a people whose spirits were, nevertheless, high; human beings whose chins were up. The typical Cockney taxi-driver who brought me from Waterloo to my long-time headquarters, the Savoy, summed it all up on my arrival, when he said: “We’ll come out of this orlrite. We weren’t born in the good old English climate for nothin’. It’s all a bit of a disappointment; but we’re used to disappointments, we are. Why when ah was a kid as we ’ad a nice little picnic all arranged for Saturday afternoon, as sure as fate it rained and the bleedin’ picnic was put orf again.... We’re goin’ to ’ave our picnic one day; this ’ere picnic’s just been put orf, that’s all....”
As the porters were disposing of my luggage, the genial commissionaire at the Savoy, Joe Hanson, added his bit to the general optimism. After greeting me, he asked me if I had heard about the shipwreck in the Thames, opposite the Savoy. I had not, and wondered how I had missed the news of such a catastrophe.