William Holland at one time “ran” the Surrey Theatre, with pantomime in the winter, and melodrama during the remainder of the year. I attended the Surrey during his occupancy, to notice a new piece by poor Henry Pettitt. Oxenford had a box as usual. And not only was his sneezing rather more distressing than usual, but he was accompanied by a lady whose babble was incessant. This acquaintance of the venerable critic was a person of no very exalted rank in Society, and Holland became anxious lest the sternutation and conversation in the box should interfere with the comfort of those in its immediate vicinity. During the second entr’acte he thought it well to pay his court to the eminent exponent of the higher criticism. He knocked at the door of the box, was bidden to enter, went in, and, greeting the occupants with his characteristic effusion, inquired:
“And what do you think of the play, Mr. Oxenford?”
“The play?” said the old gentleman. “Oh, the play is rot! . . . What do you think of it, my dear?”
“Rot?” exclaimed the lady friend thus addressed—“it’s muck!”
Only the word the fair creature employed was much coarser than “muck,” and the anxious manager went away sorrowing. However, an excellent notice of the melodrama subsequently appeared in the leading journal. It may interest a new generation of those who illustrate the gay science to learn that all the theatrical representative of the Times received for his services was one hundred pounds a year. At least, so Mr. Oxenford himself more than once assured me.
When Mowbray Morris succeeded Oxenford as the representative of the Thunderer, a very different spirit informed those columns of the Times devoted to the stage. Morris came to the task impressed with the idea that it was the business of a critic to criticize. “Have at you!” was evidently his motto. And he laid about him right merrily, not particular whom he might inconvenience by his shrewd thrusts; for, indeed, he was no respecter of persons, and was suspected of entertaining an invincible contempt for the personnel of the British stage. When Morris was appointed, Henry Irving was in the first flush of his triumph as manager of the Lyceum Theatre. And the shrewd actor-manager had inaugurated the custom of giving a reception to his friends on the first night of a new play.
The reception was held on the stage itself after the conclusion of the performance. Very agreeable, and even memorable, functions they were. The stage had been quickly transformed into a palatial hall, made comfortable by a judicious arrangement of curtains and palms, and—as at that advanced period of the night guests were usually in need of sustenance—tables were laid out laden with cold viands in profusion. And there was plenty to drink. Now, the attitude of Morris towards the stage was that of a person who did not accept the existence of the actor as a social fact, and he resented this surely innocent effort on the part of Irving to gratify his friends. It would all have been very well had the new critic kept his opinions on this head to himself. Unfortunately, he gave them to the readers of his journal. He attributed sinister motives to the founder of the feast, and boldly averred that it was an attempt to influence the Press with “chicken and champagne.” The phrase “chicken and champagne” in this connection persisted for a long time—for a much longer time than Mowbray Morris continued in his post. From the beginning of his managerial career it had been Irving’s great aim to consolidate friendly relations with the London and provincial newspapers. And the fearless and unconventional satirist of “chicken and champagne” gave the popular manager of the Lyceum furiously to think.
May I here, in justice to the present policy of the Times in the control of its dramatic columns, acknowledge the fact that the gentleman who at present represents that journal at the theatres more nearly approaches the ideal of what a dramatic critic ought to be than any of the men who were my contemporaries, and that he is head and shoulders above any of his own contemporaries? It is pleasant to be able to say this of any department of a Press which exhibits many of the symptoms of decadence. Mr. Walkley’s attitude regarding stage affairs is nicely calculated. He is beautifully poised. He never condescends to a contemptuous pose. On the other hand, he is never inclined to accept the dramatic art too seriously. He states his opinions with playfulness and not with brutality. He exhibits a fine spirit of detachment. He never insults the professors of the art. On the other hand, he declines to take those gentlemen as seriously as they take themselves. Under all that he writes may be discovered the social philosopher. His essays are scholarly without pedantry, lively without vulgarity, piquant without mordacity, and they always afford the most stimulating “reading.”
My mention above of Henry Pettitt reminds me of another writer of melodrama whom we, of the jocund years, were sometimes called upon to review. This was Paul Merrit. Paul was an enormously fat man with the absolutely hairless face of a boy. He had a high falsetto voice, and his blood-and-thunder dramas were crude, lurid, penny-plain-and-twopence-coloured productions. He had a great facility in plots and situations, and, in respect of these gifts and graces, was called in by Sir Augustus Harris to collaborate in one or two of the autumn melodramas at Drury Lane. Paul was the last man in all Europe to whom would apply the term “literary.” Yet he became a member of one or two literary clubs. On the day on which the death of Thomas Carlyle was announced, some of us were sitting in one of these institutions discussing the passing of the Sage of Chelsea. To us entered Paul Merrit. He wore the drawn and despairing expression of one who had suffered a severe personal bereavement. He had in his hand a journal containing a long obituary notice of Carlyle. Holding it towards us, he said in his high falsetto, shaken by a queer tremolo of emotion:
“Well, gentlemen, another gap in our ranks!”