In peace and war
The parts she played upon the stage were the sweet romance of life, but she was ever ready to face its stern realities; and I was proud of her record in the Great War. In spite of advanced years and broken health, she lived through it, with brief absences only, and without a murmur, on the shore of the sea, with all its alarms and risks; but, then, I have always known her to be brave, even when her life was in danger. She was unsparing in hospitality—I recall an occasion when she had the pleasant company of General Sir Arthur Sloggett and Edward Knoblock, who were hung up with their men for the night at Folkestone—and untiring in organising and leading in amusements, helped by her interest in those who were spared, and those who were maimed and wounded, and by the remembrance of those who rest in the grave-fields of Flanders and France, or lie deep down under the sea.
By her own written request, the hour and place of her funeral were kept secret, and were only known to immediate members of her family and four friends who were chosen to represent the calling she had loved and served. These four friends were Arthur Pinero, Johnston Forbes-Robertson, Arthur Chudleigh and Gerald du Maurier.
The funeral was conducted by her friend and mine, the Reverend W. H. Elliott, the Vicar of Holy Trinity, Folkestone, who delivered the Address at the Memorial Service which, immediately afterwards, was held at the Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields by Canon Edgar Sheppard.
The spirit of the artist
This was the address to which Forbes-Robertson refers in his tribute; and I ask the reader, as a favour to myself, not to pass it by.
"We have come together to remember before God one who, having played her part bravely and earnestly in this scene that men call life, is now hidden from us by the curtain that men call death. We do so in the sure and certain hope that what we know of life here is only the First Act in a great eternal drama, of the which the end is not yet. So often we feel, as one by one our friends depart in this mystery of death, that the curtain has fallen upon a tale that is only half told, its problems unsolved, its meaning undisclosed, its virtues unrewarded. But the play is not done. We wait as Christians for the hour when, at the sounding of celestial trumpets, this great curtain shall uproll once again and reveal to our amazed eyes that last tremendous scene, in which all things shall be made new. Such is death. It is a pause—that is all—and one that does but make more wonderful the music of an endless life.
"I shall not do more than remind you of those many gifts which Lady Bancroft possessed, which the years in their passing seemed to leave almost untouched, which she offered so freely for the public good. After all, the work and significance of any life depend not so much upon its natural endowment as upon the spirit in which that endowment is accepted and used. It is the spirit of the artist that matters, and it is of this in the lifetime of Lady Bancroft that you are thinking, I know, at this hour. Without that eager generous spirit her influence could never have been what it was. I have heard her say more than once that in her youth she was not a very apt pupil in the use of the voice, and indeed that she made very little effort in regard to it, until one day her mother bade her think of the poor man who, tired out with his day's work, spent a hard-earned sixpence to see the play, and then went away disappointed, because he could not hear. From that moment everything for her was changed. And the thought of that man at the back of the gallery—what she could do for him, to make him forget his cares and have his part in the sunshine and merriment of life, to take away the frown and to win the smile—was for her, I believe, the true motive and the abiding inspiration of her art. Such a task, one cannot but think, is very much according to the mind of Him who gives the wayside flower a robe that Solomon might envy, that we may see it and be glad. And there are few things, I imagine, that bring so much comfort at the last, when the time has come to retreat from the active work of the world, and to reflect quietly in the gathering dusk upon what has been and what is yet to be, as the thought that one has done something to make others happy, that now and again one has managed to light a lamp or to kindle a fire in a cold and darksome room, that one has done what one could in one's own way to share the burdens of humanity and to minister to its need.
"I need scarcely say that one of the secrets of such a work as this is a heart which, in spite of all that time and circumstance can do, keeps young. The first test of all art is sincerity. It is impossible, I should suppose, to be in any true sense an interpreter of emotions that one has ceased to feel. To represent in any way the vivacity, the buoyancy, the gaiety that belong to youth, its irrepressible humour, its unquenchable hope, is a task that the years make difficult enough for us all. To attempt it successfully is only for those who in themselves have never yet grown old. Lady Bancroft was a lover of young life. She was beloved by all young people who knew her. And one felt in talking to her that, as her voice had kept its magic, so her nature had preserved within a tired body something of its youth.