Transcriber’s Note:

The cover image was created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.

EXITS AND ENTRANCES

Photograph by Claude Harris, London, W. Frontispiece

EXITS AND ENTRANCES

BY

EVA MOORE

WITH TWENTY ILLUSTRATIONS

“All the world’s a stage,

And all the men and women merely players:

They have their exits and their entrances;

And one man in his time plays many parts.”

—As You Like It.

LONDON

CHAPMAN & HALL, LTD

1923

PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY

THE DUNEDIN PRESS LIMITED, EDINBURGH

To Harry

Whose words head each chapter of what is really his book and mine

Eva

21 Whiteheads Grove, Chelsea.

“Apple Porch”, Maidenhead.

July, 1923.

CONTENTS

ILLUSTRATIONS

CHAPTER I
HOME

“And I’ll go away and fight for myself.”

—Eliza Comes to Stay.

As Mr. Wickfield said to Miss Trotwood—the old question, you know—“What is your motive in this?”

I am sure it is excellent to have a motive, and if possible a good motive, for doing everything; and so before I begin I want to give my motive for attempting to write my memoirs of things and people, past and present—and here it is.

Jack, my son, was on tour with his own company of Eliza Comes to Stay; and Jill, my little daughter, was playing at the St. James’s Theatre, her first engagement—and, incidentally, earning more each week than I did when I first played “lead” (and I found my own dresses). I thought that some day they might like to know how different things were in the “old days”; like to read how one worked, and studied, and tried to save; might like to know something of the road over which their father and mother had travelled; and perhaps gain some idea of the men and women who were our contemporaries. Perhaps, if they, my own boy and girl, would like to read this, other people’s boys and girls might like to read it also: it might at least interest and amuse them.

To me, to try and write it all would be a joy, to “call spirits from the vasty deep,” to ring up again the curtain on the small dramas in which I had played—and the small comedies too—and to pay some tribute to the great men and women I have known. It may all seem to be “my story,” but very often I shall only be the string on which are hung the bravery, kindness, and goodness of the really great people; not always the most successful, but the really great, who have helped to make life what it should be, and luckily sometimes really is!

So I determined to begin, and begin at the beginning.

Brighton! when it was Brighton; still retaining some of the glories of the long past Regency; with its gay seasons, its mounted police, and—no Metropole Hotel; when the only two hotels of any importance were the “Bedford” and the still-existing “Old Ship.” The old chain pier, standing when we went to bed one evening, and swept away when we got up the next morning by a terrific gale. The Aquarium, then a place which people really visited and regarded as something of a “sight worth seeing”—does anyone go there now, except on a very wet day? The Dome in the Pavilion, with its grand orchestral concerts, conducted by the famous Mr. Kuhe, whose son is now a musical critic in London. All these things belonged to Brighton of the—well, the exact date does not matter—but of the time when women did not ride bicycles or drive motor cars, because certainly the one, and certainly the other so far as women were concerned, did not exist. In those days men rode a high “single wheel” bicycle: the higher the wheel, the greater the Knut—only the word “Knut” was unknown then!

Those are some of the memories I have of Brighton at the time when we were a happy, noisy, large family living in Regency Square; a really large family, even as Victorian families went—nine girls and one boy. We had no money, but unlimited health and spirits.

My mother!—well, everyone says “Mine was the sweetest mother in the world,” but my mother really was. She had a most amazing amount of character hidden under a most gentle exterior. As pretty as a picture, adorable—just “Mother.”

And father—an austere, very good-looking man of uncertain temper; one of those tempers which periodically sweep through the house like a tornado. Absolutely upright, and deeply respected, but with a stern sense of his duties as a parent which we, his children, hardly appreciated.

My first recollection is of trying to climb into my mother’s bed, and finding the place that should have been mine occupied by a “new baby.” I heard years afterwards that when my mother was told that her tenth child and ninth daughter had arrived in the world, she exclaimed: “Thank God it’s a girl!” Such a nice feminine thing to say, bless her!

Six of the girls lived to grow up, and we each, as we grew sufficiently advanced in years, took turns at the “housekeeping”. I know I did double duty, as my sister Jessie distinguished herself by fainting one morning when preparing the breakfast, and so was not allowed to do it any more. I remember creeping down the stairs in the dark early mornings (when I think of “getting breakfast”, it seems to me that we must have lived in perpetual winter, the mornings seem to have always been cold and dark, never bright and sunny: I suppose the memory of the unpleasant things remains longer), going very softly past my father’s room, and putting the loathsome porridge—partially cooked the night before—on the gas ring, and, having stirred it, creeping upstairs again to dress.

I remember, too, at breakfast how I would watch my father’s face, to see by his expression if it was “all right”; the awful moment when, eyeing it with disfavour, he would give his verdict: “Lumpy!” The cook for the day, after such a verdict, generally left the table in tears.

It must have been before I was old enough to make porridge that I had my first sweetheart. His name was Johnnie; he was a small Jew, and we met in Regency Square; together we turned somersaults all round the Square, and it must have been all very idealistic and pleasant. I remember nothing more about him, so apparently our love was short-lived.

Up to the time that my sister Decima was six, my father kept a stick in the dining-room; the moral effect of that stick was enormous; should any member of the family become unruly (or what my father considered unruly), the stick was produced and a sharp rap on the head administered.

One day Decima was the culprit, and as my father leant back to reach the stick, she exclaimed cheerfully: “You won’t find the old stick, cos I’ve hided it.”

She had, too; it was not found for years, when it was discovered in a large chest, right at the bottom. It is still a mystery how Decima, who was really only a baby at the time, put it there. Looking back, I applaud her wisdom, and see the promise of the aptitude for “looking ahead” which has made her so successful in the ventures on which she has embarked; for the “stick” certainly affected her most. She was a naughty child, but very, very pretty. We called her “The Champion”, because she would take up the cudgels on behalf of anyone who was “underdog”. I loved her devotedly; and, when she was being punished for any special piece of naughtiness by being interned in her bedroom, I used to sit outside, whispering at intervals, “I’m here, darling”, “It’s all right, dear”, and so on.

Yet it was to Decima that I caused a tragedy, and, incidentally, to myself as well. She was the proud possessor of a very beautiful wax doll; a really beautiful and aristocratic person she was. We always said “Grace” before meals (I think everyone did in those days), and one morning I was nursing the doll. In an excess of religious fervour, I insisted that the wax beauty should say “grace” too. Her body, not being adapted to religious exercises, refused to bend with the reverence I felt necessary; I pushed her, and cracked off her head on the edge of the table. Now, mark how this tragedy recoiled on me! I had a gold piece—half a sovereign, I suppose—given to me by some god-parent. It lived in a box, wrapped in cotton wool, and I occasionally gazed at it; I never dreamt of spending it; it was merely regarded as an emblem of untold wealth. Justice, in the person of my father, demanded that, as I had broken the doll, my gold piece must be sacrificed to buy her a new head. If the incident taught me nothing else, it taught me to extend religious tolerance even to wax dolls!

Not only did we hate preparing breakfast, we hated doing the shopping, and called it “Sticking up to Reeves, and poking down to Daws”—Reeves and Daws being the grocer and laundryman respectively. It was in the process of “Sticking up to Reeves”, whose shop was in Kemptown, one morning, that Decima stopped to speak to a goat, who immediately ate the shopping list out of her hand.

Decima was the only member of the family who succeeded in wearing a fringe—openly—before my father. We all did wear fringes, but they were pushed back in his presence; Decima never pushed hers back! In those days so to adorn one’s forehead was to declare oneself “fast”—an elastic term, which was applied to many things which were frowned on by one’s elders. That was the “final word”—“fast!”

Our great excitement was bathing in the sea, and singing in the church choir. We bathed three times a week; it cost 4d. each. Clad in heavy serge, with ample skirts, very rough and “scratchy”, we used to emerge from the bathing machines. All except Ada, who swam beautifully, and made herself a bathing suit of blue bunting with knickers and tunic. My father used to row round to the “ladies’ bathing place” in his dinghy, and teach us how to swim. As there was no “mixed bathing” then, this caused much comment, and was, indeed, considered “hardly nice”. My brother Henry was the champion swimmer of the South Coast, and he and Ada used to swim together all round the West Pier—this, again, was thought to be “going rather far” in more senses than one!

Though I loved Decima so devotedly, we apparently had “scraps”, for I can remember once in the bathing machine she flicked me several times with a wet towel—I remember, too, how it hurt.

We all sang in the church choir; not all at once; as the elder ones left, the younger ones took their places. Boys from the boarding school in Montpelier Square used to be brought to church: we exchanged glances, and felt desperately wicked. Once (before she sang in the choir) Decima took 3d. out of the plate instead of putting 1d. into it.

At that time our pocket-money was 1d. a week, so I presume we were given “collection money” for Sunday; this was later increased to 2s. a month, when we had to buy our own gloves. Thus my mother’s birthday present—always the same: a pot of primulas (on the receipt of which she always expressed the greatest surprise)—represented the savings of three weeks on the part of Decima and me. It was due to parental interference in a love affair that I once, in a burst of reckless extravagance, induced Decima to add her savings to mine and spend 5d. in sweets, all at one fell swoop.

I was 14, and in love! In love with a boy who came to church, and whose name I cannot remember. We met in the street, and stopped to speak. Fate, in the person of my father (who always seems to have been casting himself for the parts of “Fate”, “Justice”, “Law”, or “Order”) saw us; I was ordered into the house, and, seizing my umbrella, my father threatened to administer the chastisement which he felt I richly deserved for the awful crime of “speaking to a boy”. I escaped the chastisement by flying to my room; and it was there, realising that “love’s young dream was o’er”, I incited Decima to the aforementioned act of criminal extravagance. I know one of the packets she brought back contained “hundreds and thousands”; we liked them, you seemed to get such a lot for your money!

My life was generally rather blighted at that time, for, in addition to this unfortunate love affair, I had to wear black spectacles, owing to weak eyes, the result of measles. “A girl” told me, at school, that “a boy” had told her I “should be quite pretty if I hadn’t to wear those awful glasses.” The tragedy of that “if”!

I was then at Miss Pringle’s school, where I don’t think any of us learnt very much; not that girls were encouraged to learn much at any school in those days. I certainly didn’t. My eyes made reading difficult. Then the opportunity for me to earn my own living offered; it was seized; and I went to Liverpool. I was to teach gymnastics and dancing under Madame Michau.

The original Madame Michau, mother of the lady for whom I was to work, had been a celebrity in her day. Years before—many, many years before—she had taught dancing in Brighton, where she had been considered the person to coach debutantes in the deportment necessary for a drawing-room. Her daughter was very energetic, and worked from morning to night. She had a very handsome husband, who ostensibly “kept the books”, which really meant that he lounged at home while his wife went out to work. Not only did she work herself, but she made me work too—from eight in the morning until eleven at night; in fact, so far as my memory serves me, there was a greater abundance of work than of food. I don’t regret any of it in the least; the dancing and gymnastics taught me how to “move” in a way that nothing else could have done. It taught me, also, how to keep my temper!

Only one thing I really resented; that was, among other duties, I had to mend Madame’s husband’s underwear. Even then I am overstating the case; I did not mind the mending collectively; what I minded was the mending individually—that is, I hated mending his (what are technically known, I think, as) pants. At the end of a year I “crocked up”—personally I wonder that I lasted so long—and came home for a holiday. I was then about 15, and I fell in love. Not, this time, with a small boy in the Square; not with a big boy; this was a real affair. “He” was at least twelve years older than I, very good to look at, and apparently he had excellent prospects on the Stock Exchange. My family, so far as I can remember, approved, and I was very happy. I forget how long the engagement lasted—about a year, I think—and for part of that time I was back in Liverpool. I know the engagement ring was pearl and coral. One day a stone fell out—so did the engagement. The picture “he” had drawn of us living in domestic and suburban bliss at West Norwood—me clad in brown velvet and a sealskin coat (apparently irrespective of times or seasons) vanished. He “went broke” on the Stock Exchange, and broke off the engagement—perhaps so that his love affairs might be in keeping with the general wreckage; I don’t know. I remember that I sat in the bedroom writing a farewell letter, damp with tears, when the sight of a black beetle effectively dried my tears and ended the letter.

I don’t know that this love affair influenced me at all, but I decided I was utterly weary of Liverpool. I came back to Brighton, and taught dancing there, partly on my own and partly in conjunction with an already established dancing class. It was there that I taught a small, red-headed boy to do “One, two, three—right; one, two, three—left.” He was the naughtiest small boy in the class; I used to think sometimes he must be the naughtiest small boy in the world. His name was Winston Churchill.

It was not a thrilling life—this teaching children to dance—on the contrary, it was remarkably dull, and once your work becomes dull to you it is time you found something else to do. I decided that I would. I would make a bid for the Stage.

We, or at least my elder sisters, gave theatrical performances at home—comedies and operettas—and it was during the production of one of these that I met Miss Harriet Young, the well-known amateur pianist, in Brighton.

The production was called Little Golden Hope, the one and only amateur production in which I ever took part. It was written by my brother-in-law, Ernest Pertwee, and the music by Madame Guerini, who had been a Miss Wilberforce, daughter of Canon Wilberforce. Miss Young used to come and play the piano at these productions, and I heard that she knew Mrs. Kendal! Mrs. Kendal was staying at Brighton at the time. A letter of introduction was given to me by Miss Young, and, accompanied by my sister Bertha, I went to see Mrs. Kendal.

No very clear memory of it remains. She was charming; I was paralysed with fright. If she gave me any advice about the advisability of taking up the stage as a profession, it was “don’t”—so I went back to my dancing class.

But hope was not dead! Florrie Toole, who was a pupil of my sister Emily, promised me an introduction to her father, and not only to him but to Tom Thorne of the Vaudeville Theatre as well. I made up my mind to go up to London and see them both. All this was arranged with the greatest secrecy, for I knew that my father would set his face sternly against “the Stage”. Though we might be allowed to have amateur theatricals at home, though we might teach dancing, singing, elocution, or indeed anything else, the Stage was something unthought of in the minds of parents. However, Fate was on my side. I was out teaching all day, and, once the front door had closed behind me in the morning, I was not actually expected back until the evening, so I slipped up to London. There, at the Vaudeville Theatre, I saw both Tom and Fred Thorne.

In those days there were no play-producing societies—no Play Actors, Interlude Players, or Repertory Players—and so new plays were “tried out” at matinées. One was then looming on the horizon of the Vaudeville—Partners—and it was in connection with a possible part in this play that my name and address were taken; I was told that I might hear from Mr. Thorne “in about a week”, and so, full of hope, I returned to Brighton. About a week later I received a letter which told me that I had been given a small part in Partners, and stating the days on which I should have to rehearse in London.

It was then that the question arose, “Should I tell father?” I thought it over, long and earnestly, and decided not to. I did not have to rehearse every day, and, as I had slipped up to London before, “all unbeknownst”, why not again? So, entering on my career of crime, and unheeding the words of—I think—the good Doctor Watts, who says “Oh, what a tangled web we weave when first we practise to deceive”, I used to come up to rehearsal, leaving my family happy in the belief that I was teaching dancing in Brighton!

During rehearsals I heard from Florrie Toole that she had arranged an interview for me with her father, who would see me on a certain day, at his house at Lowdnes Square. That was a real “red letter day”. For some reason, which I forget, I had taken Decima with me, and after the rehearsal I was asked if I would like to see the matinée performance of Hearts is Hearts, which was then playing at the Vaudeville. Would I like! I was given a box—a stage box at that—and there Decima and I sat, thrilled to the depths of our small souls.

Before this auspicious occasion I had seen three theatrical performances, and three only. One had been at the Adelphi, when I saw Harbour Lights, and the other two at the Brighton Theatre-Royal; from the upper circle, or the gallery, I had seen Faust, when a really very stout lady played “Marguerite”; and the other a pantomime, Cinderella, when Florence St. John played “Cinders” (and played it most delightfully, too) and Charles Rock played “Baron Hardup”. Even these two delightful events had been somewhat marred by the fact that father insisted that we should “come out before the end, to avoid the crush”—as though anyone minded a crush after a theatre, when you went only twice a year, and were only 14!

But to return to our stage box at the Vaudeville Theatre. The interview with Mr. Toole was fixed for 5.30, but rather than miss a moment of the play, we stayed until the very end, and were thus forced to be recklessly extravagant and take a hansom to Lowdnes Square. It cost eighteen-pence, but we both felt that it was worth it, felt that this was indeed Life—with a very large capital letter.

I do not think that the interview with the great comedian was impressive. Florrie took me in to her father, and said “This is Eva.” He said “How are you?” and murmured vague things about “seeing what we can do” and—that was all.

The matinée came, I played a little chambermaid. As “Herbert” says in Eliza Comes to Stay: “The characters bear no relation to life, sir. The play opens with the butler and the housemaid dusting the drawing-room chairs”—I was the “housemaid”.

I remember the fateful afternoon we first played Partners. I was in the Green Room—there were such things then—Maud Millet was learning her part between all her exits and entrances. During one of my waits, Mr. Scot Buest offered me a glass of champagne; I thought that I had plumbed the depths of depravity! It was Mr. Buest who later asked me to have dinner with him. I did, but felt sure that all London would ring with my immorality. What a little prude I must have been!

That afternoon Mr. Toole was in front, and so saw me play. A few days later I heard from him; he offered me a part in The Cricket on the Hearth, which he was going to produce at his own theatre. I was to receive “£1 a week, and find your own dresses”. Naturally, I accepted, and was then faced with the necessity of telling my father. I took my courage in both hands, and broke the news.

The expected tornado swept the house, the storm broke and the thunder of my father’s wrath rolled over our heads. My mother was held responsible for my wickedness; she was asked to consider what “her child” had done; for, be it said, when any of us did anything which met with my father’s disapproval, we were always “my mother’s children”; when we met with his approval, we were his, and apparently his only.

So my mother wept, and my father washed his hands with much invisible soap, ordering me never to darken his doors again—“To think that any daughter of his”, and much more—oh! very much more—to the same effect.

I remained firm; here was my chance waiting for me in the greatest city in the world, and I was determined to take it. I left Brighton for London—“the world was mine oyster”.

CHAPTER II
THE START

“We ... never stopped in the old days to turn things over in our minds, and grow grey over counting the chances of what would or what wouldn’t happen. We went slap for everything like the healthy young devils we were.”

—When We Were Twenty-One.

And so at Christmas I began to play “The Spirit of Home” in The Cricket on the Hearth at Toole’s Theatre, which was a small place, mostly underground, beside the Charing Cross Hospital. I was very happy; it was all new and exciting, and everyone was very kind to me. Kate Phillips, who played “Dot”, had been ill, and her dressing-room—the dressing-room provided for the leading lady—was underground; she couldn’t stand it, and, as mine was on the roof—or as nearly on the roof as possible—she came up to dress with me. It was in Kate Phillips’s (and my) dressing-room that I first saw Winifred Emery, who came on to Toole’s for tea from the Vaudeville. She was perfectly beautiful, with most lovely hands, and oh, so attractive!

In those days, after a matinée, there were only two things to do—either stay in the theatre or go out and walk about in the streets. Your rooms were generally a long way from the theatre, which meant ’bus riding (and every penny had to be considered), and there were no girls’ clubs then. No Three Arts Club, Theatrical Girls’ Club, no A.B.C.’s, no Lyons, nothing of that kind, so you stayed in the theatre.

Another person who was in the cast was George Shelton, the same George Shelton who was in Peter Pan this year—1922—when Jill made her first appearance. I can see no difference in him; after all these years he looks, and is, just the same. The children who went to see Peter Pan—so Mr. Lyn Harding assured us—“found Smee lovable”, as I found him so many years ago. Only then he wasn’t playing Smee!

The run ended, and I was engaged to play in a first piece by Justin Huntly Macarthy, called The Red Rag. I have no very clear recollection of the part, except that I played the girl who made love to a man “over the garden wall,” standing on a flowerpot. It was in this play, The Red Rag, that Decima asked, after noting that only the “top half” of the gentleman appeared over the wall, “As his legs don’t show, does he have to wear trousers? Because, if he doesn’t, it must be such a very cheap costume.” I had a new dress for the part, which is not really so impressive as it sounds, for in those days “Nun’s veiling” (thanks be to Heaven!) was 6½d. a yard, and, as in The Cricket on the Hearth I had been clad in white Nun’s veiling, so now for The Red Rag I wore a blue dress of the same useful material. Of course, I made both of them myself.

However, this play marked a “point in my career”—I began to have “notices” in the Press. The Punch critic of that date said: “If names signify anything, there is a young lady who is likely to remain on the stage a very long time—‘Quoth the Raven, Eva Moore’.” She has, too—a very long time. The People said he should keep his “critical eye on me, in fact both his critical eyes.”

At the end of the spring season, Mr. Toole asked me to go on tour for the summer and autumn, to play “leading lady”—this was a real leap up the ladder—appearing in fifteen plays. I was to receive £3 a week. I accepted (of course I accepted!), and took with me twenty-three dresses. I remember the number, because in order to buy the necessary materials I had to borrow £10 from my brother.

By this time the attitude of my father had changed; he no longer regarded me as “lost”, and no longer looked upon the Stage as the last step in an immoral life; he was, I think, rather proud of what I had done. So far had he relented that, when my sister Jessie decided that she too would go on the Stage, there was no opposition. She left home without any dramatic scenes, and went into the chorus of Dorothy, where she understudied Marie Tempest and Ben Davis’s sister-in-law, Florence Terry, afterwards playing the latter’s part.

I was staying then off the Strand, near the Old Globe Theatre, sharing rooms with the sister of a man—his name does not matter, he has since left the Stage for the Church—to whom I later was engaged. When Jessie came to London we arranged to have rooms together. One day we mounted a ’bus at Piccadilly, and found we could go all the way to Hammersmith for a penny. We were so struck by the cheapness of the journey that we rode the whole length of the pennyworth.

Eventually we found rooms in Abingdon Villas, two furnished rooms for 18s. a week; we took them and “moved in”.

I must go back here to record what might really have been a very tragic business for me. After I had been playing in The Red Rag for about five weeks, Mr. Toole was taken ill, and the theatre was closed for over a month—“no play, no pay”. Providence had ordained that I should have been given the money for a new winter coat; I had the money, and was waiting to buy the garment. The coat had to wait; I had to keep a roof over my head. I paid it over—in a lump—to the landlady, and knew I was safe to have at least a bed in which to sleep until the theatre re-opened.

The tour began; we went to Plymouth, Bath, Scarborough, Dublin, Edinburgh (where, for the first time, I slept in a “concealed bed”), and many other places I have forgotten; but, wherever we went, the audience was the same: Toole had only to walk on the stage and they howled with laughter. I very seldom spoke to him; in those days I was far too frightened to address the “Olympians”; I could only congratulate myself on being in the company at all.

Funnily enough, the position I held was originally offered by Toole to Violet Vanbrugh; I fancy—in fact, I am pretty sure—that I eventually was given it because she wanted “too much money”. She probably asked for £5, or even perhaps rose to the dizzy height of demanding £8, while I “went for £3” (it sounds like little David Copperfield selling his waistcoat!).

I think I enjoyed the tour; it was all new and strange to me. The sea journey to Ireland was distinctly an experience. I remember that a critic in Cork, a true son of Ireland, said of me in his paper, “Critics have been known to become dizzy before such beauty.” How I laughed at and enjoyed that notice! It was at Cork that poor dear Florrie Toole was taken ill. She had joined us some weeks before, to my great delight, for she had always been so very kind to me. It was from Florrie that I received a velvet dress, which was one of the most useful articles in my wardrobe; it was altered and re-altered, and finally retired from active service after having been my “stand-by” in many parts.

During the week we were at Cork, Florrie was ill—not very ill, or so it seemed; at any rate, she was able to travel with us to Edinburgh on the Sunday. There she became rapidly worse, and it was found that she had typhoid fever. We left her in Edinburgh, and heard the following week that she was dead. Such a beautiful life cut short! She was so brilliant, and so very, very lovable.

Photograph by C. Hawkins, Brighton. To face p. [21]
Dora
“The Don”

I shared rooms with Eliza Johnson, a capable but somewhat unrelenting elderly lady. She “dragooned” me effectively; young men who showed any tendency to gather round stage doors, or gaze at one in the street, were sternly discouraged. At Cambridge, I remember, I had a passionate love letter from some “undergrad.”, who said he refrained from signing his name, as his “trust had been broken before”, but, if I returned his affection, would I reply in the “agony” column of the Times to “Fido”! I did nothing of the kind, naturally; but so definite were the feelings of Eliza Johnson on “things of that kind” that she told me she could “not help feeling that I was, in some measure, to blame.”

At Birmingham, on the Friday night, after “treasury,” I left my money in my dressing-room, went on the stage, and returned to find the money gone! I went to the manager and told him, but he protested that he could do nothing. I managed to borrow money to pay for my rooms, and went on to the next town very downcast indeed. Three pounds was a lot of money. The following week I had a letter from Birmingham, telling how the writer, who was employed at the theatre, had stolen the money, but that the sight of my distress had so melted his heart that he had decided to return it to me intact. The £3 was enclosed. I concluded that it was one of the stage hands; it wasn’t, it was Mr. Toole. He had heard of my loss, and, in giving me the money, could not resist playing one of those practical jokes which he loved!

The tour ended and we came back to London, where Toole was going to put on a first piece called The Broken Sixpence before The Don. The cast included Mary Brough, Charles Lowne, the authoress (Mrs. Thompson)—who was a very beautiful woman, but not a strikingly good actress—and, among the “wines and spirits,” me.

My dress was the same that I had worn in The Butler (a play we had done on tour), or, rather, it was part of the dress, for, as I was playing a young girl, with short skirts, I only used the skirt of the dress, merely adding a yoke; in addition, I wore a fair wig.

I have it on good authority that I looked “perfectly adorable”, for it was in this play, though I did not know it for a long time, that Harry Esmond first saw me, and, apparently, approved of me!

Then I began to be ill; too much work, and, looking back, I fancy not too much food, and that probably of the wrong kind for a girl who, after all, was only about 17, and who had been playing in a different play every night for weeks.

I didn’t stop working, though I did feel very ill for some weeks, but finally an incident occurred which took the matter out of my hands and forced me to take a rest.

I was walking home from the theatre, with my salary and my savings (seven pounds, which I had gathered together to pay back to my brother for the loan I mentioned before) in my bag. In those days the streets were in the state of semi-darkness to which London grew accustomed in the war—at any rate, in all but the largest streets; some one, who must have known who I was, or at any rate known that I was an actress and that Friday night was “pay night”, sprang out of the darkness, struck me a heavy blow on the head, snatched my bag, and left me lying senseless.

After that, I gave in—I went home, and was very ill for a long time with low fever; not only was I ill, I was hideously depressed. However, I went back to Mr. Toole as soon as I was better, and he told me he was going to Australia, and asked me to go too. The salary was to be £4 a week, and “provide your own clothes”. I declined, though how I had the pluck to decline an engagement in those days passes my comprehension. However, I did, and Irene Vanbrugh went to Australia in my place—though not at my salary; she was more fortunate.

I began to haunt agents’ offices, looking for work, and a dreary business it was! At last I was engaged to go to the Shaftesbury to play in The Middleman with E. S. Willard, and it was here that I first actually met my husband. He was very young, very slim, and looked as young as he was; he was, as is the manner of “the powers that be”, cast for a villain, and, in order to “look the part”, he had his shoulders padded to such an extent that he looked perfectly square. His first words in the play were “More brandy!” I don’t think he was a great success in the part, though, looking through some old press cuttings, I find the following extract from The Musical World: “But a Mr. Esmond shows, I think, very high promise, together with faults that need to be corrected. His attitudes are abominable; his voice and the heart in it could hardly be bettered”—and that in spite of the padding!

I think we were at once great friends—at any rate, I know he had to use a ring in the play, and I lent him mine. In particular I remember one evening, when I was walking down Shaftesbury Avenue with the man to whom I was engaged, and we met Harry wearing my ring; I was most disturbed, lest my own “young man” should notice. However, we broke the engagement soon after—at least I did—and after that it didn’t matter who wore or who did not wear my ring. Then Harry, who lived at Empress Gate, used to take me home after the theatre; and if he didn’t take me home, he took somebody else home, for at that time I think he loved most pretty girls. It was a little later that he wrote in his diary: “Had tea with Agnes (Agnes Verity); took Eva home; she gave me two tomatoes; nice girl. How happy could I be with either!”—which, I think, gives a very fair idea of his general attitude at the time.

The Middleman ran well; it was a good play, with a good cast—E. S. Willard, Annie Hughes, Maude Millet, and William Mackintosh—the latter a really great actor. I understudied Annie Hughes—and played for her. In The Middleman, Willard wore his hair powdered, to give him the necessary look of age, and in one scene I had to comb it. I was most anxious to do well in Annie Hughes’s part, and was so zealous that I combed all the powder out of his hair at the back, to my own confusion and his great dismay.

Photograph by Elliott & Fry, London, W. To face p. [24]
Harry
November 19th. 1891

At the end of the run of The Middleman, I wrote to Mr. (now Sir) A. W. Pinero, and asked for an interview. His play, The Cabinet Minister, was shortly to be produced at the Court Theatre, and I hoped he might give me a part. He granted me the interview, and I remember how frightened I was. I met him some time ago, and he reminded me of it. He told me I struck him as being “such a little thing”. Anyway, he gave me a part. This was the first production in which I had played where the dresses were provided by the management, and very wonderful dresses they were.

It was a great cast—Mrs. John Wood (whose daughter and granddaughter were both with us in Canada in 1920), Allen Aynesworth (a very typical young “man about town”), Rosina Philippi, Weedon Grossmith, and Arthur Cecil.

Mrs. John Wood was a wonderful actress; she got the last ounce out of every part she played. Fred Grove says: “When she had finished with a part, it was like a well-sucked orange; not a bit of good left in it for anyone else.” The first act of The Cabinet Minister was a reception after a drawing-room. We all wore trains of “regulation” length; at rehearsals Mrs. Wood insisted that we should all have long curtains pinned round us, to accustom us to the trains.

Arthur Cecil, who had been in partnership with Mrs. Wood, was a kindly old gentleman who always carried a small black bag; it contained a supply of sandwiches, in case he should suddenly feel the pangs of hunger. “Spy,” of Vanity Fair, did a wonderful drawing of him, complete with bag.

I remember Rosina Philippi, then as thin as a lamp-post, having a terrific row one day with Weedon Grossmith—what about, I cannot remember. He was playing “Mr. Lebanon”, a Jew, and “built up” his nose to meet the requirements of the part. In the heat of the argument, Rosina knocked off his nose; he was so angry. The more angry he got, the more she laughed!

I think it was before the run of The Cabinet Minister that I became engaged to Harry. I know that during the run Harry was playing at the Royalty in Sweet Nancy, and was apparently rather vague and casual about the duties of an engaged young man. I remember he used often to send his best friend to call for me and bring me home from the theatre. If he had not been such a very attractive young man himself, one might have thought this habit showed a lack of wisdom. He was very attractive, but very thin; I found out, to my horror, that he wore nothing under his stiff white shirts! Imagine how cold, riding on the top of ’buses—anyway, it struck me as dreadful, and my first gift to him was a complete set of underwear. He protested that it would “tickle”, but I know he wore them, with apparently no grave discomfort.

I went to Terry’s to play in Culprits—a tragic play so far as I was concerned. I really, for the first time, “let myself go” over my dresses. I spent £40. (Imagine the months of savings represented by that sum!) We rehearsed for five weeks, and the play ran three.

By this time my sister Jessie had gone on tour, first with Dr. Dee, by Cotsford Dick, later with D’Oyley Carte’s Company. Decima and I were sharing rooms which Jessie had taken with me. Decima had been at Blackheath at the College of Music, where she had gained a scholarship. On her own initiative she came up to the Savoy Theatre, for a voice trial, and was promptly engaged for the part of “Casilda” in the forthcoming production of The Gondoliers. I remember the first night of the opera occurred when I was still playing in The Middleman. Not being in the last act, I was able to go down to the Savoy. I was fearfully excited, and filled with pride and joy; it was a great night. After the performance, Decima cried bitterly all the way home, so convinced was she that her performance could not have been successful. It was not until the following morning, when she was able to read the notices in the morning papers, that she was reassured and finally comforted. Far from ruining her performance, she had made a big success.

During the time we shared rooms we were both taken ill with Russian influenza—and very ill we both were. Geraldine Ulmar came to see us, and brought, later, Dr. Mayer Collier, who proved “a very present help in trouble”. He rose high in his profession, and never ceased to be our very good friend, nor failed in his goodness to us all.

On October 31st, 1891, I find the following Press cutting appeared: “Mr. Esmond will shortly marry Miss Eva Moore, the younger sister (this, I may say, was, and still is, incorrect) of pretty Miss Decima Moore of the Savoy”. I was then playing in The Late Lamented, a play in which Mr. Ackerman May, the well-known agent, played a part. Herbert Standing was in the cast, though I remember very little about what he—or, for the matter of that, anyone else—played, except that he was supposed to be recovering from fever, and appeared with a copper blancmange mould on his head, wrapped in a blanket. It would seem that the humour was not of a subtle order.

We were married on November 19th, 1891, on the winnings of Harry and myself on a race. We backed a horse called “Common,” which ran, I imagine, in either the Liverpool Cup or the Manchester November Handicap. Where we got the tip from, I don’t know; anyway, it won at 40 to 1, and we were rich! Adding £50, borrowed from my sister Ada, to our winnings, we felt we could face the world, and we did.

The wedding was to be very quiet, but somehow ever so many people drifted into the Savoy Chapel on the morning of November 19th, among them Edward Terry, who signed the register.

As Harry was “on his way to the altar”, as the Victorian novelists would say, his best man, Patrick Rose, discovered that the buttons of his morning coat had—to say the least of it—seen better days. The material had worn away, leaving the metal foundation showing. He rushed into Terry’s Theatre, and covered each button with black grease paint!

We both played at our respective theatres in the evening, and certainly the best laugh—for that night, at least—was when Harry, in The Times, said: “I’m sick of ’umbug and deception. I’m a married gentleman! Let the world know it; I’m a young married English gentleman”.

Photograph by Gabell & Co., London, W. To face p. [28]
Wedding Bells
November 19th. 1891

CHAPTER III
WEDDING BELLS

“A wedding doesn’t change things much, except that the bride’s nearest relations can shut their eyes in peace.”

—Birds of a Feather.

And so we were married.... We had a funny wedding day. Harry, being an Irishman, and, like all Irishmen, subject to queer, sudden ways of sentiment, insisted that in the afternoon we should call on his eldest sister! I cannot remember that he had, up to then, shown any overwhelming affection for her, but that afternoon the “Irishman” came to the top, and we called on “herself”. We then dined at Simpson’s, and went off to our respective theatres to work.

I was rehearsing at the time for a musical play—The Mountebanks, by W. S. Gilbert. I went to him, rather nervous, and asked if I “might be excused the afternoon rehearsal”. He naturally asked “why?”; and blushingly, I don’t doubt, I told him “to get married”. He was most intrigued at the idea, and said I might be “excused rehearsals” for a week.

Three weeks after we were married, Edward Terry sent for Harry to come to his dressing-room—and I may say here that Terry’s Theatre only possessed three dressing-rooms: one, under the stage, for Edward Terry, one for the men of the company, and another for the women—the reason for this scarcity being that, when the theatre was built, the dressing-rooms were forgotten! I believe the same thing happened when the theatre was built at Brixton; if anyone has played at the theatre in question, and will remember the extraordinary shapes of the rooms, they will readily believe it! But to go back to Terry’s—Harry was sent for, and Edward Terry presented him with two books, which he said would be of the greatest use to him and me. They were Dr. Chavasse’s Advice to a Mother and Dr. Chavasse’s Advice to a Wife. I do not know if anyone reads Dr. Chavasse in these days, but then he was the authority on how to bring up children. Fred Grove assured me that he brought up a family on Dr. Chavasse.

Anyone who has seen my husband’s “evergreen play,” Eliza Comes to Stay, may remember the extract from the book—the very book that Edward Terry gave to us—which he uses in the play. I give it here; I think it is worth quoting:

“Question: Is there any objection, when it is cutting its teeth, to the child sucking its thumb?

“Answer: None at all. The thumb is the best gum-stick in the world. It is ‘handy’; it is neither too hard nor too soft; there is no danger of it being swallowed and thus choking the child.”

Photograph by Alfred Ellis, London, W. To face p. [30]
Harry as Howard Bompas
“The Times” 1891

It was during the run of The Late Lamented that I first met Fanny Brough, President and one of the founders of the Theatrical Ladies’ Guild, which has done so much splendid work. She worked with Mrs. Carson (wife of the then Editor of The Stage), who was the originator of the Guild. When the Music Hall Ladies’ Guild began, some years later, they ran their organisation on the same lines. Two of the founders, I think I am right in saying, of the Musical Hall Ladies’ Guild, were the unfortunate Belle Elmore (the Wife of Crippen, who killed her) and Edie Karno, the wife of Mr. Fred Karno, of Mumming Birds fame.

Speaking of Fanny Brough reminds me of others of that famous family. Lal Brough, who held a kind of informal gathering at his house, with its pleasant garden, each Sunday morning. It was a recognised thing to “go along to Lal Brough’s” about 10.30 to 11 on Sunday. About 1 everyone left for their respective homes, in time for the lunch which was waiting there. Looking back, thinking of those Sunday morning gatherings, it seems to me that we have become less simple, less easily contented; who now wants a party, even of the least formal kind, to begin in the morning? We have all turned our days “upside down”—we begin our enjoyment when the night is half over, we dance until the (not very) small hours, and certainly very very few of us want to meet our friends at 11 a.m. They were happy Sundays at Lal Brough’s, but they belong to a side of stage social life which is now, unhappily, over and done. They belong, as did the host, to “the old order”.

Sydney Brough, Lal Brough’s son, was a person of marvellous coolness and resource. I was once playing with him in a special matinée of A Scrap of Paper, in which he had a big duel scene. While the curtain was down, some thoughtful person had cleared the stage of all “unnecessary impedimenta”, including the daggers needed for the fight. When Brough should have seized them, they were nowhere in sight. Most people would have “dried up”—not Sydney Brough. He composed a long speech while he looked all over the stage for the missing daggers; he looked everywhere—talking all the time—and finally found them—on the top of a large cupboard, on the stage!

In 1892 I played in Our Boys with William Farren, who was “a darling”, and Davy James—he was very ill at the time, I remember, and very “nervy”. May Whitty (now Dame May Webster) and I used to dress above his room. We used to laugh immoderately at everything; poor David James used to hate the noise we made, and used to send up word to us, “Will you young women not laugh so much!” Speaking of May Whitty reminds me that one paper said of our respective performances in the play: “If these two young ladies must be in the play, they should change parts.”

Cicely Richards was in the cast too; she later played Nerissa in The Merchant of Venice, with Irving, at Drury Lane, and I took Decima—who, be it said, had never read or seen the play—to see it. Her comment, looking at Shakespeare’s masterpiece strictly from a “Musical Comedy” point of view, was “I don’t think much of the Rosina Brandram part”—the said part being “Nerissa,” and Rosina Brandram at that time the heavy contralto in the Gilbert and Sullivan operas.

It was in A Pantomime Rehearsal that I first met Ellaline Terriss; we were the “two gifted amateurs” who sing a duet. She was as pretty as a picture, and as nice as she was pretty. I also sang a song, called “Poor Little Fay”, and at the revival “Ma Cherie”, by Paul Rubens, which, I think, Edna May sang later on in the music halls. I know she came one evening to hear the song, and sat in a box, which made me very nervous. She was very quiet and rather shy—at least so I found her when we met.

Charlie Brookfield was in the Pantomime Rehearsal, playing the part created by Brandon Thomas. He was a most perfectly groomed man, and always wore magnificent and huge button-holes, as really smart young men did at that time. The bills for these button-holes used to come in, and also bills for many other things as well, for he was always in debt; it used to cause great excitement as to whether “Charlie” would get safely in and out of the theatre without having a writ served on him.

There are hundreds of good stories about Charles Brookfield, some of them—well, not to be told here—but I can venture on two, at least. When Frank Curzon was engaged to Isabel Jay, someone—one of the pests who think the fact that a woman is on the stage gives them a right to insult her—sent her a series of insulting letters, or postcards—I forget which. Curzon was, naturally, very angry, and stated in the Press that he would give £100 reward to find the writer. Brookfield walked into the club one day and said, “Frank Curzon in a new rôle, I see.” Someone asked, “What rôle?” “Jay’s disinfectant,” replied Brookfield. He was walking down Maiden Lane one morning with a friend, and then Maiden Lane was by no means the most reputable street in London. “I wonder why they call it Maiden Lane?” said his friend. “Oh,” responded Brookfield, “just a piece of damned sarcasm on the part of the L.C.C.” At the time when Wyndham was playing David Garrick, he was sitting one day in the Garrick Club under the portrait of the “great little man”. Brookfield came up. “’Pon my word,” he began, “it’s perfectly wonderful; you get more like Garrick every day.” Wyndham smiled. “Yes,” went on Brookfield, “and less like him every night.” When Tree built His Majesty’s, he was very proud of the building, and used to love to escort people past the place and hear their flattering comments on the beauty of the building. One day he took Brookfield. They stopped to gaze on “my beautiful theatre”, and Tree waited for the usual praise. After a long pause, Brookfield said: “Damned lot of windows to clean.” He could, and did, say very witty, but bitter and cutting, things, which sometimes wounded people badly; yet he said pathetically to a friend once: “Can’t think why some people dislike me so!”

About this time, or perhaps rather earlier (as a matter of fact, I think it was in Culprits), I met Walter Everard, who, though quite an elderly man, did such good work with the Army of Occupation in Cologne; he is still, I think, doing work in Germany for the British Army.

In Man and Woman I met the ill-fated couple, Arthur Dacre and Amy Roselle. She was the first well-known actress to appear on the music halls. She went to the Empire to do recitations. She was much interviewed, and much nonsense was talked and written about the moral “uplift” such an act would give to the “wicked Empire”—which was just what the directors of the Empire, which was not in very good odour at the time, wanted. She was a queer, rather aloof woman, who took little notice of anyone. He, too, was moody, and always struck me as rather unbalanced. They went to Australia later, taking with them a bag of English earth. There they found that their popularity had gone, poor things! He shot her and then killed himself, leaving the request that the English earth might be scattered over them.

Lena Ashwell was in the cast. She was not very happy; for some reason, Amy Roselle did not like her, and did nothing to make things smooth for her. Lena Ashwell, in those days, was a vague person, which was rather extraordinary, as she was a very fine athlete, and the two qualities did not seem to go together. She also played in a first piece with Charles Fulton. One day her voice gave out, and I offered to “read the part for her” (otherwise there could have been no curtain-raiser)—a nasty, nerve-racking business; but, funnily enough, I was not nearly so nervous as poor Charles Fulton, who literally got “dithery”.

Henry Neville was also in Man and Woman. A delightful actor, he is one of the Stage’s most courtly gentlemen, one of those rare people whose manners are as perfect at ten in the morning as they are at ten at night. Writing of Henry Neville reminds me that later he was going to appear at a very big matinée for Ellen Terry at Drury Lane, in which “all stars” were to appear in the dance in Much Ado. Everybody who was anybody was to appear—Fred Terry, Neville, my husband, Ben Webster, and many more whose names I cannot remember at the moment. At ten each morning down they went to rehearse. Edith Craig was producing the dance, and put them through their paces. Apparently they were not very “bright”, and Edie was very cross. Finally she burst out: “No, no, no—and if you can’t do it any better than that, you shan’t be allowed to do it at all!” Evidently after that they really “tried hard”, for they certainly were allowed to “do it”, as the programme bears witness.

In a special matinée at the old Gaiety I met Robert Sevier. He had written a play called The Younger Son, which I heard was his own life when he was in Australia. I don’t think it was a great success—at anyrate, it was not played again—but Sevier enjoyed the rehearsals enormously. After the matinée he asked all the company to dinner at his house in Lowdnes Square. His wife, Lady Violet Sevier, was present. Sevier enjoyed the dinner, as he had done the rehearsals, but she—well, she “bore with us”; there was a frigid kindness about her which made one feel that—to put it mildly—she “suffered” our presence, and regarded the whole thing as an eccentricity of “Robert’s” (I cannot imagine that she ever called him “Bob”, as did the rest of the world).

Photograph by Alfred Ellis, London, W. To face p. [37]
Pepita
“Little Christopher Columbus”

The same year, 1893, I played in Little Christopher Columbus. Teddie Lonnen was the comedian. May Yohe played “Christopher”, and played it very well too; I impersonated her, in the action of the play. We had to change clothes, for reasons which were part of the plot. She was not an easy person to work with, and she certainly—at that time, at all events—did not like me. This play was the only one in which I ever rehearsed “foxy”—that is, did not put in the business I was going to play eventually. The reason was this: as I gradually “built up” the part, putting in bits of “business” during the rehearsals, I used to find the next morning that they were “cut”: “That line is ‘out’, Miss Moore,” or “Perhaps you’d better not do that, Miss Moore.” So “Miss Moore” simply walked through the rehearsals, to the horror of the producer. I used to go home and rehearse there. But on the first night I “let myself go”, and put into the part all I had rehearsed at home. The producer was less unhappy about me after that first night! However, it still went on after we had produced. Almost every night the stage manager would come to my room: “Miss Moore, a message for you—would you run across the stage less noisily, you shake the theatre”; would I stand further “up stage”; or would I do this, or that, or the other. Oh! May Yohe, you really were rather trying in those days; still, things did improve, and eventually she really was very nice to me. It was in Little Christopher Columbus that I wore “boy’s clothes”. I thought they suited me—in fact, I still think they did—a ballet shirt, coat (and not a particularly short coat either) and—breeches. But, behold the Deus ex machina, in the person of my husband! He came to the dress rehearsal, and later we rode home to our little flat in Chelsea on the top of a bus, discussing the play. Suddenly, as if struck by a bright thought, he turned to me and said: “Don’t you think you’d look awfully well in a cloak?” I felt dubious, and said so, but that did not shake him. “I do,” he said, and added: “Your legs are much too pretty to show! I’ll see about it in the morning.” He did! Early next morning he went up and saw Monsieur Alias, the cloak was made and delivered to me at the theatre that very evening, and I wore it too. It covered me from head to foot; with great difficulty, I managed to show one ankle. But Harry approved of it, very warmly indeed.

There is a sequel to that story. Twenty years after, I appeared at a big charity matinée at the Chelsea Palace as “Eve”—not Eve of the Garden of Eden, but “Eve” of The Tatler. I wore a very abbreviated skirt, which allowed the display of a good deal of long black boots and silk stocking. Ellen Terry had been appearing as the “Spirit of Chelsea”. After the performance she stood chatting to Harry and me. “Your legs are perfectly charming; why haven’t we seen them before?” I pointed to Harry as explanation. She turned to him. “Disgraceful,” she said, adding: “You ought to be shot.”

I was engaged to follow Miss Ada Reeve in The Shop Girl at the Gaiety Theatre. It was a ghastly experience, as I had, for the few rehearsals that were given me, only a piano to supply the music, and my first appearance on the stage was my introduction to the band. I had to sing a duet with Mr. Seymour Hicks—I think it was “Oh listen to the band”—at anyrate, I know a perambulator was used in the song. Mr. Hicks’s one idea was to “get pace”, and as I sang he kept up a running commentary of remarks to spur me on to fresh efforts. Under his breath—and not always under his breath either—he urged me to “keep it up”, to “get on with it”, until I felt more like a mental collapse than being bright or amusing. This was continued at most of the performances which followed; I sang, or tried to sing, accompanied by the band—and Mr. Hicks. Then, suddenly—quite suddenly—he changed. The theatre barometer swung from “Stormy” to “Set fair”. Even then, I think, I had learnt that such a sudden change—either in the barometer or human beings—means that a storm is brewing. It was!

I remember saying to Harry, when I got home one evening after this change, “I shall be out of the theatre in a fortnight; Seymour Hicks has been so extraordinarily pleasant to me—no faults, nothing but praise.” What a prophet I was!

As I was going to the dressing-room the next evening, I met Mr. George Edwardes on the stairs. He called to me, very loudly, so that everyone else could hear, “Oh! I shan’t want you after next Friday!” I protested that I had signed for the “run”. I was told that, though I might have done so, he had not, and so ... well!

It was before the days when Sydney Valentine fought and died for the standard contract, before the days when he had laboured to make the Actors’ Association a thing of real use to artists—a real Trades Union; so I did not claim my salary “for the run”, but the fact that I received a cheque from the management “in settlement of all claims” is significant.

Another rather “trying time” was many years later when I appeared “on the halls”. Let me say here that I have played the halls since, and found everyone—staff, manager, and other artists—very kind; but at that time “sketches had been doing badly”, and when the date approached on which I was to play at the—no, on second thoughts I won’t give the name of the hall—the management asked me either to cancel or postpone the date. I refused. I had engaged my company, which included Ernest Thesiger, Bassett Roe, and several other excellent artists, for a month, and the production had been costly, so I protested that they must either “play me or pay me”. They did the latter, in two ways—one in cash, the other in rudeness. How I hated that engagement! But even that had its bright spot, and I look back and remember the kindness of the “Prime Minister of Mirth”, Mr. George Robey, who was appearing at that particular hall at the time. He did everything that could be done to smooth the way for me.

I seem to have been unlucky with “sketches” at that time. I had a one-act comedy—and a very amusing comedy too; my son later used it as a curtain-raiser, and I played it at several of the big halls: as the Americans say, “It went big.”

I thought I would strike out on my own and see an agent myself, without saying anything to anybody. This is what happened. (I should say that this is only a few years ago, when I had thought for some time that as an actress I was fairly well known.)

I called on the agent in question; he was established in large and most comfortable offices in the West End. I was ushered into the Presence! He was a very elegant gentleman, rather too stout perhaps. He sat at a perfectly enormous desk, swinging about in a swivel chair, and, without rising or asking me to sit down (which I promptly did), he opened the interview:

“Who are you?” I supplied the information.

“Don’t know you,” he replied. “What d’you want?” I told him, as briefly as possible. At the word “sketch” he stopped me, and with a plump hand he pounded some letters that lay on his desk. “Sketches,” he repeated solemnly, “I can get sketches three-a-penny, and good people to play ’em. Nothing doing.”

I stood up and walked to the door, then perhaps he remembered that he had seen me in a play or something—I don’t know; anyway, he called after me, “Here, who did you say you were?” “Still Eva Moore,” I said calmly, and made my exit.

All agents may not be like that; I hope they are not; but I fancy he is one of the really successful ones. Perhaps their manners are in inverse ratio to their bank balances.

Talking of agents, I heard of one who was listening to a patriotic ballad being sung at the Empire during the war. A man who was with him did not like it, and said, “You know, that kind of stuff doesn’t do any good to the Empire”—meaning the British Empire. “No,” was the reply; “they don’t go well at the Alhambra, for that matter, either.”

CHAPTER IV
PLAYS AND PLAYERS

“A good deal more work for all of us, my lord.”

—Love and the Man.

The year 1894 found me playing in The Gay Widow, the first play in which I ever worked with Charles (now, of course, Sir Charles) Hawtrey. I do not remember very much about the play except that I wore most lovely clothes, and that Lottie Venne played “my mother”.

This year does, however, mark a very important milestone in our lives—Harry’s and mine; it was the first time we attempted management on our own, and also his first play was produced. We, Harry and I, with G. W. Elliott, greatly daring, formed a small syndicate. We took the St. James’s Theatre for eight weeks while George Alexander was on tour, and presented Harry’s play Bogey. (In those days all big London managers went on tour for a few months, taking their London company and production.)

First, let me say that, whatever the merits or demerits of the play, we were unlucky. We struck the greatest heat wave that London had known for years; and that, as everyone knows, is not the best recipe in the world for sending up the takings at the box office. As for the play, George Alexander said—and, I think, perhaps rightly—the “play was killed by its title.” It was a play dealing with “spiritualism,” in a limited sense. I mean that it was not in any sense a propaganda play; it had, naturally, not the finish, or perhaps the charm, of his later work—he would have been a poor craftsman if it had been, and a less great artist if the years which came after had taught him nothing—but Bogey certainly did not deserve the hard things which one critic, Mr. Clement Scott, said of it. He wrote one of the most cruel notices which I have ever read, a notice beginning “Vaulting Ambition”—which, in itself, is one of the bundle of “clichés” which may be used with almost equal justice about anything. To say, as Mr. Scott did, that I saved the play again and again “by supreme tact” was frankly nonsense. No actress can save a play “again and again by supreme tact”; she may, and probably will, do her best when she is on the stage, but if she “saves the play” it is due to her acting capacity, and not to “tact”—which seems to me to be the dealing gracefully with an unexpected situation in a way that is essentially “not in the script”.

However, the fact remains that Mr. Clement Scott unmasked the whole of his battery of heavy guns against the play and the author, for daring to produce it while he was still under fifty years of age; and, after all, it was rather “setting out to kill a butterfly with a double-barrelled gun”. Still....

The following night another play was produced, at another theatre, and on this play (not at all a brilliant achievement) Mr. Clement Scott lavished unstinted praise. On the first night of a third play, as he went to his stall, the gallery—which was, as usual, filled largely by the members of the Gallery First Night Club—greeted him with shouts of “Bogey”, and continued to do so until, in disgust, he left the stalls. After that night, Clement Scott always occupied a box! But the sequel! Some days after the production of Bogey, the President of the Gallery First Night Club called at our little house in Chelsea. I remember his call distinctly: our maid was “out”, and I opened the door to him. He came to ask Harry to be the guest at the first dinner of the club. It was, I think, when that club held its twenty-fifth birthday, that we were both asked to be the guests of the club—a compliment we much appreciated.

The play Bogey was not a success, but I should like to quote the remarks of the dramatic critic of the Sporting Times, which seemed, and still seem, to me kind and—what is of infinitely greater importance—just: “Ambition is not necessarily vaulting, and it is a thing to be encouraged and not mercilessly crushed in either a young author or a young actor. Nor when the youngster figures in the double capacity of author and actor is the crime unpardonable.... This is all apropos of an ungenerous attack in a quarter from which generosity would have been as graceful as the reverse is graceless.... It was remarked to me by a London manager: ‘I don’t know any actor on our stage who could play the part better than Esmond does’, and, upon my word! I am inclined to agree with him.... Bogey is not a good play ... but it has a freshness about it, an originality of idea which is not unlikely to prove unattractive to a great many.”

However, Harry Esmond tried again; and the row of plays on a shelf in my study is proof that he was only “baffled to fight better”.

In Bogey we had a stage manager, I remember, who should, had the gods taken sufficient interest in the destinies of men, have been a maker of “props” and a property master. He played a small part, of a “typical city man”, and his one ambitious effort towards characterisation was to ask if he “might be allowed to carry a fish basket”. He evidently thought all city men call at Sweetings before catching their train home!

In The Strange Adventures of Miss Brown, which was my next engagement, I played with Fred Kerr, who wore a toupée. I remember at one place in the play, where I had to “embrace him impulsively”, he always said in a loud whisper, “Mind my toupée.”

Both Harry and I were in The Blind Marriage, at the Criterion. He and Arnold Lucy played “twins”, and Harry had to add a large false nose to the one with which nature had already very generously provided him. They wore dreadful clothes—knickerbockers which were neither breeches nor “plus fours” but more like what used to be known as “bloomers”. Herbert Waring and Herbert Standing were both in the cast, and on the first night the latter was very excited. Waring went on and had a huge ovation, while Herbert Standing, in the wings, whispered excitedly, “They think it’s me! they think it’s me!”

Herbert Standing was a fine actor, with more than a fair share of good looks. He was very popular at Brighton, where he used to appear at concerts. I remember he was talking one day to Harry, and told him how he had “filled the Dome at Brighton” (which was a vast concert hall). Harry murmured, “Wonderful; how did you do it?” “Oh,” said Standing, “recited, you know. There were a few other people there—Ben Davis, Albani, Sims Reeves,” and so on.

Mr. Standing came to see Harry one day, and was shown into his study, which was a small room almost entirely filled with a huge desk. Standing began to rail against the fate which ordained that at that moment he had no work. “I can do anything, play anything,” he explained, which was perfectly true—he was a fine actor! “Listen to this,” and he began to recite a most dramatic piece of work, full of emotion and gesture. As he spoke, he advanced upon “H. V.”, who kept moving further and further away from him. I came into the study, to find Harry cowering against the wall, which effectually stopped him “getting away” any further, and Standing, now “well away”, brandishing his arms perilously near Harry’s nose.

Standing was devoted to his wife, and immensely proud of his family. When she died, he was heartbroken. He met some friends one day, who expressed their sympathy with him in his loss. “Yes,” said Standing, “and what do you think we found under her pillow? This”—and he produced a photograph of himself, adding mournfully, “but it doesn’t do me justice!”

It was in Under the Red Robe that I first actually played with Winifred Emery (who used to give most lovely tea parties in her dressing-room). Cyril Maude, Holman Clark, Granville Barker, and Annie Saker (who were later to make such a number of big successes at the Lyceum, under the Brothers Melville’s management) were also in the cast. I only met the author, Stanley Weyman, once, but he was very generous to all the company and gave us beautiful souvenirs; I still use a silver cigarette box, engraved with a cardinal’s hat, which he gave to me. He was not one’s preconceived idea of a writer of romantic plays and books; as a matter of fact, he was rather like Mr. Bonar Law.

After this run, I went on tour for a short time with J. L. Shine, with An Irish Gentleman, and at one town—Swansea, I think—he gave a Press lunch. All kinds of local pressmen were invited, and, in comparison to the one who fell to my lot, the “silent tomb” is “talkative”. Soup, fish, joint, all passed, and he never spoke a single word. He was a distinctly noticeable person, wearing a cricket cap, morning coat, and white flannel trousers. I tried every subject under the sun, with no result, until—at last—he spoke. “I ’ave a sort of claim on you perfessionals,” he said. I expressed my delight and surprise, and asked for details. “Well,” he said, “in the winter I’m an animal impersonator, but in the summer I take up literature.” I have always wondered if he played the front or hind legs of the “elephant”!

Photograph by Gabell & Co., London, S.W. To face p. [48].
Madame de Cocheforet
“Under the Red Robe”

Soon after I returned to London, my husband’s second play was produced by Charles Hawtrey, One Summer’s Day—and thereby hangs a tale! Harry had sent the play to Hawtrey and, calling a month later, saw it still lying—unopened—on his desk. He determined that Hawtrey should hear the play, even if he wouldn’t read it himself; Harry would read it to him.

“I’ll call to-morrow and read my play to you,” he said. Hawtrey protested he was very busy, “hadn’t a minute”, had scores of plays to read, etc. But Harry only added, “To-morrow, at ten, then,” and went. The next morning he arrived, and after some difficulty obtained entrance to Hawtrey’s room. Again Hawtrey protested—he really had not time to hear, he would read the play himself, and so on; but by that time Harry had sat down, opened the book, and began to read. At the end of the first act, Hawtrey made another valiant effort to escape; he liked it very much, and would read the rest that same evening. “You’ll like the second act even better,” H. V. said calmly, and went on reading. When the third act was finished, Hawtrey really did like it, and promised to “put it on” as soon as possible.

“In a fortnight,” suggested the author. Oh! Hawtrey wasn’t sure that he could do it as soon as that, and the “summer was coming”, and Harry had had one lesson of what a heat wave could do to a play. So he said firmly, “The autumn then.” Hawtrey gave up the struggle, and the play was put into rehearsal and produced in the autumn. One Summer’s Day was a great success; it was in this play that Constance Collier played her first real part. She had been at the Gaiety in musical comedy, where, I remember, she entered carrying a very, very small parcel, about the size of a small handkerchief box, and announced “This contains my costume for the fancy dress ball!”

Mrs. Calvert played in this production, which reminds me that in the picnic scene we used to have “real pie”, which she rather enjoyed. After we had been running for some time, the management thought, in the interests of economy, they would have a “property pie”—that is, stuffed not with meat, but with cotton wool. Mrs. Calvert, all unknowing, took a large mouthful, and was nearly choked!

In One Summer’s Day we had a huge tank filled with real water, sunk at the back of the stage, and Ernest Hendrie, Henry Kemble, and Mrs. Calvert used to make an entrance in a punt—a real punt. One day they all sat at one end, with most disastrous consequences; after that, they “spread themselves” better.

Henry Kemble was a delightful, dignified person, who spoke in a “rolling” and very “rich” voice. He used, occasionally, to dine well—perhaps more well than wisely. One night, in the picnic scene, he was distinctly “distrait”, and forgot his line. As I knew the play backwards, I gave his line. He was very angry. We were all sitting on the ground at a picnic. He leant over the cloth and said in a loud voice, “You are not everybody, although you are the author’s wife.”

In this play a small boy was needed, and we sought high and low for a child to play the “urchin”. A friend told us one day he knew of the “very boy”, and promised to send him up for inspection. The following morning the “ideal urchin” arrived at the Comedy Theatre. He was a very undersized Jew, whose age was, I suppose, anything from 30 to 40, and who had not grown since he was about twelve. This rather pathetic little man walked on to the stage, and looked round the theatre, his hands in his pockets; then he spoke. “Tidy little ’all,” was his verdict—he was not engaged!

My next engagement was in The Sea Flower. I remember very little about it except that I wore a bunch of curls, beautiful curls which Willie Clarkson made for me. On the first night, Cosmo Stuart embraced me with such fervour that they fell off, and lay on the stage in full view of the audience.

Then followed The Three Musketeers, a splendid version of that wonderful book, by Harry Hamilton, with a magnificent cast. Lewis Waller was to have played “D’Artagnan”, which he was already playing on tour; Harry was to go to the touring company and play Waller’s part. Then there came some hitch. I am not very clear on the point, but I think Tree had arranged for a production of the same play, in which Waller was engaged to play “Buckingham”, and that Tree or the managers in the country would not release him. Anyway, Harry rehearsed the part in London. Then Waller managed to get released for a week to come to London and play for the first week of the production, while Harry went to the provinces. Waller came up to rehearse on the Friday with the London company, ready for the opening on Monday. I had lost my voice, and was not allowed to speak or leave my room until the Monday, and therefore the first time I met D’Artagnan was on the stage at the first night. If you will try and imagine how differently Lewis Waller and Harry Esmond played the part, you will realise what a nerve-racking business it was. For example, in the great “ride speech,” where Harry used to come in absolutely weary, speaking as an exhausted man, flinging himself into a chair, worn out with his ride and the anxiety attached to it, Waller rushed on to the stage, full of vitality, uplifted with the glory of a great adventure, and full of victory, leading me to the chair before he began to speak. You may imagine that on the first night I felt almost lost. I am not trying to imply that one reading was “better” than the other; both were quite justified; only, to me, the experience was staggering.

Waller was always vigorous, and particularly as D’Artagnan. One night when he entered and “bumped” into Porthos, he “bumped” so hard that he fell into the orchestra and on to the top of the big drum! Nothing daunted, Waller climbed out of the orchestra, by way of the stage box, back on to the stage!

The first time I played with Tree was in a special performance of The Dancing Girl. I played the lame girl, and I remember my chief worry was how, being lame, to get down a long flight of stairs in time to stop Tree, who played the Duke, from drinking the “fatal draught” of poison.

I was then engaged by Tree to play in Carnac Sahib, a play by Henry Arthur Jones. It dealt with military life in India. The rehearsals were endless, and not without some strain between the author and Tree. Henry Arthur Jones used to come to rehearsals straight from his morning ride, dressed in riding kit, complete with top boots and whip; Tree didn’t like it at all!

The day before the production there was a “call” for “words” at 11 in the morning. The only person who did not know their “words” was Tree; he never arrived! The dress rehearsal was fixed for 3; we began it at 5, and at 6 in the morning were “still at it”.

After the end of one of the acts—the second, I think—there was a long wait. This was at 2.30 a.m.! The band played, and for an hour we sang and danced on the stage. Then someone suggested that it might be as well to find out what had happened to Tree. They went to his dressing-room and found him; he had been asleep for an hour! At last we began the final act. Tree reclined on a bed of straw, and I fanned him with a palm leaf. There was a wait, perhaps three or four seconds, before the curtain rose. “Oh God!” said Tree, in the tone of one who has waited for years and is weary of everything: “Oh sweet God! I am ready to begin!”

It was soon after, in Marsac of Gascony, at Drury Lane Theatre, I made my entrance on a horse—a real stage horse; the same one, I think, that Irving had used. I may say this is the only time that I had—as you might say—known a horse at all intimately. It was a dreadful play: the audience rocked with laughter at all the dramatic situations. It was short-lived, and I went soon after to Harry’s play, The Wilderness, which George Alexander produced at the St. James’s Theatre. Aubrey Smith appeared in this play, looking very much as he does now, except that his moustache was rather longer. Phyllis Dare played one of the children—and a very dear child she was; so, too, was her sister Zena, who used to call at the theatre to take her home.

There were two children in this play, who had a “fairy ring” in a wood. (If anyone does not know what a fairy ring is, they should go into the nearest field and find one, for their education has been seriously neglected.) To this “ring” the two children used to bring food for the fairies, which they used to steal from the family “dustbin”. One of the “dainties” was a haddock, and this—a real fish—was carefully prepared by the famous Rowland Ward, so that it would be preserved and at the same time retain its “real” appearance. A party of people sitting in the third row of the stalls wrote a letter of protest to Alexander, saying that the “smell from the haddock was unbearable”, and it was high time he got a new one!

I remember that during rehearsals George Alexander was very anxious that Harry should “cut” one of the lines which he had to speak. In the scene in the wood, Sir Harry Milanor (which was the character he played), in talking to his elderly uncle, has to exclaim, “Uncle Jo! Look, a lizard!” George Alexander protested that the line was unreal, that no man would suddenly break off to make such a remark, and therefore he wished Harry would either “cut” or alter it. One day, shortly before the production, Alexander was walking in Chorley Woods with his wife, who was “hearing his lines”. When they reached a bridge, he leant over the parapet, still repeating his words. Suddenly he broke off in the middle of a sentence to exclaim, “Look! A trout!” “Lizard, Alex.,” his wife corrected quietly; and henceforth he never made any objection to the line which had previously caused such discussion.

It was when he took The Wilderness on tour that I had what I always say was “the best week of my life”. We were not only playing The Wilderness, but several other plays in which I did not appear, which meant that I sometimes had nights on which I was free. There was at that time a bad smallpox scare, and when we were in Manchester the whole company was vaccinated.

Harry was then going to America to produce a play, and I was taking my baby, Jack (from whom I had never been parted before), to stay with his grandmother in Brighton, while I went to Ireland. I left Manchester, took Jack to Brighton, feeling when I left him (as, I suppose, most young mothers feel when they leave their babies for the first time in someone else’s care) that I might never see him again, and on the Saturday morning I saw Harry off to the States.

I spent the evening with Julia Neilson and Fred Terry, who were playing Sweet Nell of Old Drury in Liverpool. They did all they could to cheer me—and I needed it! I left them to join the company on the landing-stage, to cross to Ireland. And what a crossing it was, too! The cargo boat which carried our luggage gave up the attempt to cross, and put into the Isle of Man, and the captain of our passenger boat seriously thought of doing the same thing. Finally we arrived at Belfast, to find the main drain of the town had burst, the town was flooded, and the stalls and orchestra at the theatre were several feet deep in most unsavoury water! There was no performance that evening—I remember we all went to the music hall, by way of a holiday—but the next evening we opened at the Dockers’ Theatre, the company which was playing there having been “bought out”. So the successes of the St. James’s Theatre—light, witty comedies—were played at the Dockers’ Theatre, where the usual fare was very typical melodrama.

The next day we all began to feel very ill—the vaccination was beginning to make itself felt—also I had developed a rash, and, in addition, I thought I must have hurt my side, it was so painful. I remember, at the hotel, George Alexander came to my door, knocked, and, when I opened it, said:

“Are you covered in spots?”

“Yes,” I told him.

“Don’t worry,” he begged; and, tearing open the front of his shirt, added: “Look at me!”

He, too, had come out “all of a rash”—due, I suppose, to the vaccination. My side got worse, and I had to see a doctor, who said I had shingles—a most painful business, which prevented me from sleeping and made me feel desperately ill. The climax came on the Saturday night. Alexander was not playing, his rash had been too much for him, and his doctor advised him not to appear. The understudy played in his stead, and, however good an understudy may be—and they are often very good—it is always trying to play with someone who is playing the part for the first time. At the end of the play, The Wilderness, I had a scene with my first lover, in which I referred to “my husband”. Some wit in the gallery yelled “And where’s the baby, Miss?”. I was ill, I hadn’t slept for nights, my husband was on his way to America, I was parted from my baby, my sister was in the midst of divorcing her husband—which had added to my worries—and this was the last straw! When the play ended, I walked off the stage, after the final curtain, blind with tears—so blind, indeed, that I fell over a piece of scenery, and hurt myself badly. This made me cry more than ever, up to my dressing-room, in my dressing-room, and all the way back to the hotel, and, as far as I remember, most of the night.

When we reached Dublin, fate smiled upon me. I met Mr. W. H. Bailey (afterwards the “Right Hon.”, who did such good work on the Land Commission), and he took me to his own doctor—Dr. Little, of Merrion Square (may his name be for ever blessed!), who gave me lotions and, above all, a sleeping draught, and gradually life became bearable again.

One dreadful day (only twenty-four hours this time, not weeks) was while I was playing at the St. James’s in The Wilderness. I was driving in a dog-cart (this is before the days of motor cars) in Covent Garden, when the horse slipped and fell, throwing me out. I picked myself up, saw that the horse’s knees were not broken, and walked into the bank at the corner of Henrietta Street to ask for a glass of water. I found that, not only had I a large bump on my head, but that my skirt was covered with blood. Round I went to the Websters’ flat in Bedford Street and climbed up five flights of stairs. May Webster found that I had a huge gash on my hip, and said the only thing to do was to go to the hospital. Down five flights I went, and drove to Charing Cross Hospital. There a young doctor decided he would put in “a stitch or two”, and also put a bandage on my head. He was a particularly unpleasant young man, I remember, and finally I said to him: “Do you know your manners are most unpleasant? You don’t suppose people come in here for fun, do you?” He was astonished; I don’t think it had ever dawned on him that he was “unpleasant”, and I suppose no one had dared to tell him. I only hope it did him good, and that he is now a most successful surgeon with a beautiful “bedside manner”.

I drove to the theatre, where there was a matinée, with my hat, or rather toque, perched on the top of a large bandage, plus a leg that was rapidly beginning to stiffen. I got through the performance, and decided to stay in the theatre and rest “between the performances”. I was to have dinner sent to my dressing-room. Harry thought I had said “someone” would see about it; I thought that he said he would see about it; the “someone else” thought that we were both seeing about it, and so, between them all, I had no dinner at all.

By the end of the evening performance I was really feeling distinctly sorry for myself, with my head “opening and shutting” and my leg hurting badly. When, at the end of the play, I fell into Alexander’s arms in a fond embrace, I just stayed there. He was just helping me to a chair, and I had begun to cry weakly, when H. H. Vincent came up, patted me firmly—very firmly—on the back, and said: “Come, come, now; don’t give way, don’t give way!” This made me angry, so angry that I forgot to go on crying.

CHAPTER V
MORE PLAYS AND PLAYERS

“Going to wander—into the past.”

—Fools of Nature.

When Anthony Hope’s play, Pilkerton’s Peerage, was produced, the scene was—or so we were told—an exact representation of the Prime Minister’s room at 10 Downing Street. One Saturday matinée the King and Queen, then Prince and Princess of Wales, came to see the play, and on that particular afternoon we, the company, had arranged to celebrate the birth of Arthur Bourchier’s daughter—in our own way.

He was playing the Prime Minister, and we had been at considerable pains to prepare the stage, so that at every turn he should be confronted with articles connected with very young children. For instance, he opened a drawer—to find a pair of socks; a dispatch box—to find a baby’s bottle; and so on. The King and Queen could see a great deal of the joke from the Royal box, and were most interested. In the second act, a tea-time scene, Bourchier, on having his cup handed to him, discovered seated in his cup a diminutive china doll, and the thing began to get on his nerves. He hardly dare touch anything on the stage, for fear of what might fall out. In the last act, a most important paper was handed to him in the action of the play. He eyed it distrustfully, and you could see him decide not to take it, if he could avoid doing so, for fear of what might happen. He did everything in his power not to take that paper; he avoided it with an ingenuity worthy of a better cause, but “the play” was too strong for him, and he finally had to “grasp the nettle”. He took it as if he feared it might explode—a pair of small pink woollen socks fell out! It was a disgraceful business, but oh! so amusing, and we all enjoyed it.

Photograph by The Biograph Studio, London, W. To face p. [61]
Kathie
“Old Heidelberg”

In 1903 Alexander put on that great success, Old Heidelberg, at the St. James’s. We were rehearsed by a German, who had one idea which he always kept well in the foreground of his mind—to make us all shout; and the louder we shouted, the better he was satisfied. He was blessed with an enormous voice himself—as all Germans, male and female, are—and saw no difficulty in “roaring” lines. The whole of the rehearsals were punctuated with shouts of “Louder-r-r-r!”

In this play Henry Ainley played one of the students—quite a small part. I have a picture of him, wearing a student’s cap, and looking so delightful! I remember nothing particular which happened during the run, except that one evening, when I was hoisted on to the shoulders of the “boys”, one of them nearly dropped me into the footlights; and another evening, when someone had recommended me to use some special new “make up” for my eyes, and I did so, the result being that the stuff ran into my eyes and hurt so badly that I had to play practically all the last act with my eyes shut! “Kattie”, in this play, has always been one of my favourite parts.

Then my husband’s play, Billy’s Little Love Affair, was produced, and proved very satisfactory from every point of view. Allen Aynesworth, Charles Groves, and Florence St. John were in the cast. She was a most delightful comedienne, of the “broad comedy school”. A most popular woman, always known to all her friends as “Jack”; she died a few years ago, very greatly regretted by everyone.

One evening during the run of this play, Allen Aynesworth made an entrance, and Charles Groves, who was on the stage, noticed that his face was decorated with a large black smudge. Funnily enough, Aynesworth noticed that the same “accident” had happened to Groves. Each kept saying to the other, “Rub that smudge off your face”, and each thought the other was repeating what he said. Thus, when Aynesworth whispered “Rub the smudge off your face”, Groves apparently repeated “Rub the smudge off your face”! Both became gradually annoyed with the other, and when they came off they faced each other, to ask indignantly, in one breath, “Why didn’t you do as I told you?”—then discovering the truth that they both had smudges.

When this play was to be produced in America, an amusing thing happened. The man who was playing the leading part (his Christian name was William, but he was usually known as “Billy” by most people), his wife was just at that time bringing a divorce suit against him. A wire arrived one day for Harry, saying “Title of Billy’s Little Love Affair must be altered; impossible to use under circumstances”. It was altered and called Imprudence instead, thanks to the courtesy of Sir Arthur Pinero, who had already used that title.

Then came Duke of Killiecrankie, with Grahame Browne, Weedon Grossmith, and Marie Illington. She was a dignified lady; a very excellent actress, as she is still. Grossmith, who loved to have “little jokes” on the stage (and, let me say, not the kind of jokes which reduce all the artistes on the stage to a state of helpless imbecility, and leave the audience wondering what “Mr. So-and-so has said now”), one evening at the supper scene held a plate in front of Marie Illington, whispering in ecstatic tones, “Pretty pattern, isn’t it? Lovely colouring”, and so on—not, perhaps, a very good joke, but quite funny at the time. She was furious, and on leaving the stage, said to him in freezing tones, “Kindly don’t cover up my face. You’re not the only ornament on the stage, you know!”

Then followed a Barrie play—or, rather, two Barrie plays—one, Josephine, a political satire; the other, Mrs. Punch. I recollect working like a Trojan to learn an Irish jig, and that is about the extent of my memories of the play.

It seems rather remarkable how easily one does forget plays. For the time being, they are a very actual part of one’s life; but, once over, they are very quickly forgotten, with all the hopes and fears, the worries and uncertainties, attached to them. For example, I once played the leading part in The Importance of Being Earnest, learnt the part in twelve hours, and played without a rehearsal. I only “dried up” once during the play; I worked at top pressure to learn the part, and now (though I will admit it is some years ago) not a single line of the play remains in my mind.

In Lights Out, one incident certainly does remain very vividly in my memory. Charles Fulton had to shoot me at the end of the play. I wasn’t too happy about the pistol, and Harry was frankly nervous. He besought Fulton to “shoot wide”, so that there might be no danger of the “wad” (which was, or should have been, made of tissue paper) hitting me. At the dress rehearsal, the wad (which was made of wash-leather), flew out and hit me on the arm. I had a bad bruise, but that was all; and I remember saying happily to Charles Fulton, “That’s all right; now it will never happen again!” However, on the second night, the property man, who loaded the pistol, put in, for some reason best known to himself, another wad made of wash-leather. The fatal shot was fired: I felt a stinging pain in my lip as I fell. When I got up, I found my mouth was pouring with blood; the wad had hit me on the mouth and split my lip. Fulton turned to me on the stage, preparing to “take his call”, saying brightly and happily, “All right to-night, eh, Eva?”

Then he saw what had happened. The curtain went up for the “call” with poor Fulton standing with his back to the audience, staring at me. My old dresser, Kate, had a cloth wrung out in warm water ready, and I sat on the stage mopping my lip. Everyone seemed to forget all about me, the entire company gathered round the pistol, and I sat watching H. B. Irving and Charles Fulton alternately squinting down the barrel, as if some dark secret was contained in it. They went so far as to stick a bit of white paper on the fireproof curtain and shoot at it, to see how far either way the pistol “threw”. It all struck me as so intensely funny that I roared with laughing, which recalled my existence to their memory. A doctor was sent for, and I was taken to my dressing-room. Meanwhile the car was sent to the Green Room Club to call for Harry, who finished early in the play. The chauffeur (who was a very fat youth) met Charles Hallard coming out of the club; very nervously he stopped him and said, “Oh, sir, will you tell the master the mistress has been shot!” Hallard, trying to be very tactful, went into the cardroom, where Harry was playing, leant over him, and said in a dignified whisper, “It’s all right, don’t worry, Eva’s not badly hurt.” Harry rushed round to the theatre, to find poor Fulton walking up and down in great distress. He tried to stop Harry to explain “how it happened”; all he got was a furious “Curse you, curse you!” from Harry, who was nearly beside himself; no doubt picturing me dead.

I asked the doctor to give me “the same thing as he gave the prize-fighters”, to stop my lip swelling; and he did; but when I played the following night, which I had to do, as my understudy did not know the part, I felt that I had enough superfluous face easily to “make another”.

I used to do a “fall” in Lights Out—which, by the way, I never rehearsed—which used to take the make-up off the end of my nose every night.

I have played in many costume parts—Powder-and-Patch—which I loved. There was “Lady Mary” (the “Lady of the Rose”, as she was called) in the famous play, Monsieur Beaucaire, when Lewis Waller revived that play. “Lady Mary” was not a very sympathetic part, but picturesque; and to play with Will (as he was lovingly called by all who knew him) was a joy. I had a lovely doll, dressed as “Lady Mary”, presented to me, and I have her still.

Sweet Kitty Bellaires, by Egerton Castle, was another Powder-and-Patch part; she was a delight to play, but, alas! that play was not one of those that ran as long as it deserved. In one scene, a large four-poster bed was required, in which Kitty in her huge crinoline and flowing train had to hide herself when she heard the arrival of unwelcome visitors; but it was not considered “nice” for a bed to be used, at anyrate in that theatre, so after the dress rehearsal the bed was removed, and Kitty had to hide behind window curtains.

Shortly after this play, Miss Jill Esmond made her first bow to the world; a wee but most amiable baby, all laughter and happiness; in fact, during one holiday at Puise, near Dieppe, where we spent a lovely family holiday, Jack used to make her laugh so much I quite feared for her.

Photograph by Alfred Ellis, London, W. To face p. [66]
Lady Mary Carlyle
“Monsieur Beaucaire”

When I played in Alfred Sutro’s play, John Glayde’s Honour, with George Alexander, Matheson Lang was playing, what I think I am right in saying was his first “lover” part in London, in the same play. My mother came to the first night, and watched me play the part of a wife who leaves her husband, going away with her lover. Her comment was: “I’m sure you were very clever, darling,” as she kissed me; “but I never want to see you play that part again.” “Muriel Glayde”, though not really a sympathetic character, was intensely interesting, and I loved playing her.

Which reminds me of another story of my mother, that I can tell here. After my father died, she came to live in London. She was then 73 years old. She had been up to town to see the flat which we had taken for her, and to make certain arrangements. She was going back to Brighton, and I was driving with her to the station, when she said, seriously: “Of course, darling, when I come to live in London, I shall not expect to go to a theatre every night.” To go to the theatre every night had been her custom during her brief visits to me when my father had been alive.

When I played in Mr. Somerset Maugham’s play, The Explorer, in 1908, I had a narrow escape from what might have been a nasty accident. Mr. A. E. George was playing my lover, and in the love scene he used to take from me the parasol which I carried and practise “golf strokes” with it to cover his (“stage”, not real, be it said) nervousness. One evening the parasol and its handle parted company; the handle remained in his hand, and the other half flew past my cheek, so near that I could hardly believe it had left me untouched, and buried itself in the scenery behind me. There was a gasp from the audience, then I laughed, and they laughed, and all was well.

That winter I played “Dearest” in Mrs. Hodgson Burnett’s Little Lord Fauntleroy. “Dearest” is a young widow, and I remember after Harry had seen the play his comment was: “Well, it is not given to every man to see his wife a widow!”

Earlier in that year I went to Drury Lane to play in The Marriages of Mayfair, one of those spectacular dramas for which the Lane was so famous. Lyn Harding and that delightful actor, Mr. Chevalier, who, alas! has lately died, were both in the play. There was one very dangerous—or, anyhow, very dangerous-looking—scene. Mr. Chevalier and I had to appear in a sledge which was supposed to be coming down the mountain-side. The platform—or, rather, the two platforms—on which Mr. Chevalier, myself, driver, horse, and sledge had to wait before appearing, was built up as high as the upper circle of the theatre. The horse, after a few performances, learned to know his cue for appearing, got very excited, and took to dancing, much to our alarm. The two platforms used slowly to divide, and we could see down to the depths of the theatre, right below the stage. Mr. Chevalier and I used to sit with one leg outside the sledge, in case it became necessary for us to make a hasty leap. Later, a horse that was a less vivid actor was given the rôle, much to our comfort. I remember it was suggested that Miss Marie Lloyd should appear and play herself, but Miss Lloyd did not fall in with the idea.

I have heard that she did not care for either pantomime, revue, or the drama, and did not consider herself suited to it. Which reminds me of a story which was told to me about an occasion when Marie Lloyd appeared in pantomime. Her great friend, Mrs. Edie Karno, came round after the performance, and was asked by the comedienne: “Well, dear, what do you think of me in pantomime?”

Edie Karno, who was nothing if not truthful, and who had herself been one of the greatest “mime” actresses of the last generation, replied: “I don’t think it suits you like your own work.”

“You don’t think I’m very good?” pursued Marie Lloyd.

“Not very, dear,” admitted the other.

“Not very good?” repeated Marie Lloyd. “You’re wrong; as a matter of fact, I’m damned rotten in it!”

Speaking of criticism reminds me of a story of the French authoress who went to see Sir John Hare rehearse “Napoleon” in her play, La Belle Marseilles. He did not look as she had expected, and she said, in broken English, “Oh! he is too old, he is too little, he is too sick, and besides he cannot act.” She had not seen him play in A Pair of Spectacles.

And again, when I was playing in The Dangerous Age, at the beginning of the war, a woman sent round a note to me, saying: “I have enjoyed the play so much. I can’t see at all, I’ve cried so much.”

When Looking for Trouble was produced in 1910, at the Aldwych, there was some litigation over it, and the case came up for arbitration. The judge’s decision is (I think I am right in saying) in these cases placed in a sealed box. The contesting parties have to pay a fee of (again I can only say “I think”) of £100 for the box to be opened. In this case neither of them was willing to do this, so the box remained unopened; and, as far as I know, the decision remains unknown to this day.

It was while I was rehearsing in Looking for Trouble that the news of the loss of the “Titanic” came through. I shall always remember that afternoon. I came out, with no idea what had happened, to find the whole Strand hushed. There is no other word for it; people quite unknown to each other stood talking quietly, and everyone seemed stunned by the news of the frightful disaster, which seemed an impossibility.

Then came our first short American tour, and the War. I did a short tour, and then “War Work” kept me busy until 1918, when, under the management of Mr. J. E. Vedrenne, I went to the Royalty to play in Arnold Bennett’s delightful play, The Title, with Aubrey Smith. The whole ten months I was at the Royalty in this play were sheer happiness. I had a management who were considerate in every way; I liked the whole company enormously; I had a wonderfully charming part—what could anyone want more? Cæsar’s Wife followed at the Royalty, and I stayed there to play in it. I remember I had to knit on the stage, and the work I managed to get through, in the way of silk sports stockings, etc., was very considerable.

Photograph by Foulsham & Banfield, Ltd., London, W. To face p. [71]
“Mumsie”

Again under Mr. Vedrenne’s management, I played “Mumsie” in Mr. Knoblauch’s play of the same name. Mumsie was a great play. Some day it will be revived; some day, when the scars left by the war are somewhat healed, we shall be able to watch it without pain; but then the war was too near, we still felt it too acutely, the whole play was too real, too vivid for the audience to be able to watch it with any degree of comfort. Mumsie was short-lived, but I look back on the play with great affection. My part was wonderful, and I say, without any undue conceit or pride in my own powers, it was my tour de force. I worked at the part very hard, for I had to acquire a French accent, and, as I do not speak French, it was difficult. I had my reward for all my work in the satisfaction of knowing that the author liked my work. Perhaps the greatest compliment that was paid to my accent was one evening when the Baron Emile d’Erlanger came to see me. He poured out what was, I am told, a stream of praise in French; and when I explained, as best I could, that I had not understood one word, he refused to believe me.

Then came The Ruined Lady; again Aubrey Smith and I were together. It was during the run of this play that I first met Sir Ernest Shackleton. I found him, as I think I have said elsewhere, delightfully unaffected and modest. He had a plan that Harry should turn his book, South, into a film, but the scheme never materialised. Our Canadian tour followed, and when I came back I found Mr. Norman McKinnel waiting for me to play in Sir Ernest Cochran’s play, A Matter of Fact, at the Comedy Theatre, a strong part of emotion which I thoroughly enjoyed. This was followed by my first white-haired part at the St. James’s, in The Bat, the play that made everybody who saw it thrill with excitement. This play had a long run, and during that time I played in a film, Flames of Passion, which led to my recent visit to Berlin to play in Chu Chin Chow for the same firm.

There, then, is the account of my life, as truthfully as I can record it. For I have never kept diaries, and have had to rely on what, I find, is not always as reliable as I could wish—my memory. And yet sometimes it is too fertile, too ready to remind me, to prompt me to remember fresh stories. Now, when I feel that I have finished and made an end, other recollections come to me, and I am tempted to begin all over again.

I have at least two in my mind now, which I must give you, though they have no bearing on what I have been writing. Still, after all, I am not attempting to give an accredited autobiography; I am only trying to tell things that happened. So here are the stories which refuse to be left out, or be put in their proper place in another chapter:

Camera Study by Florence Vandamon, London. To face p. [72]
Miss Van Gorder
“The Bat”

Sir Herbert Tree.—One night, during a performance at His Majesty’s, he walked on to the stage just as the curtain was going up. Suddenly he saw, standing at the far side of the stage, a new member of his company; he crossed over to him and asked, “Is it true that you were once with Granville Barker?” “Yes,” replied the man, nervously, “it is true.” “Oh, my God!” said Tree; then, turning to the stage manager, said, “Ring up.”

Again: The day he was to receive his knighthood, a rehearsal was called in the afternoon. Everyone knew that Tree was being knighted on that day, and much astonishment was expressed. The company assembled on the stage, and after a short time Tree appeared in the full glory of his ceremonial dress. He looked round at the company, slowly, then said: “Thank you, ladies and gentlemen; I don’t think I need detain you any longer. Good-bye,” and left the theatre.

CHAPTER VI
FOR THE DURATION OF THE WAR

“Oh, well, I shall explain to ’em that the country’s at war.”

—The Law Divine.

On August 3rd or 4th, 1914, when war was declared, we were at Apple Porch. My sister Decima was with us, and I can remember her sitting in the garden drawing up on a piece of paper, headed “H. V. Esmond’s and Eva Moore’s Tour,” the details of her scheme for organising women’s work, so that it might be used to the best advantage in the coming struggle.

We went to London, and by the Saturday following the offices of the Women’s Emergency Corps were opened. Gertrude Kingston lent the Little Theatre, and it was there the work began. I was playing at the Vaudeville Theatre each evening, and working at the Little Theatre all day. Women enrolled in thousands; trained women were grouped into their proper classes, and untrained women were questioned as to what they “could do”. Weekly lists were sent to the War Office, containing full particulars as to the numbers of women we could supply for transport, cooks, interpreters, and so forth; and each week a letter was received in acknowledgment, saying that women “were not needed”. That was in 1914. Eighteen months later the Corps was found to be the “front door”, the place where women could be found to meet any emergency. It would be impossible to give one-tenth of the names of the women who worked for and with the Corps, women who gave time and money, brain and endurance, to the work. The Emergency Corps was the first body of women in this country regularly to meet the refugees from Belgium, find them hospitality, clothes, and food. It was the first organisation to make a definite attempt to supply British toys; it sent women, capable of teaching French, to most of the large training camps throughout the country. I remember we issued a small book, called French for Tommies, which was remarkably useful. The Corps sent thousands of blankets to Serbia, ran the first ambulances, organised canteens for the troops in France, provided cheap meals for workers, and a hundred other things which I cannot remember. When the cry for respirators was first raised, the Corps took a disused laundry, and supplied them in thousands; they were a pattern which was soon superseded, but that was the pattern supplied to us at the time.

When I went on tour, I undertook to enrol members in the provinces, and met with considerable success; and it was a year later, 1915, at Bournemouth, that I met Miss Marie Chisholm and Mrs. Knocker, who had been in Belgium with Dr. Munro, and who had the first Ambulance Corps out in Belgium and did such fine work in the early days of 1914. They were home on leave, to return when it was ended to their dressing-station on the Belgian front line. I was very interested in their work, and promised to do what I could to help. Through the kindness and generosity of the British public, I was able to send them money and many useful things. I should like to quote one instance—one of many—which shows how the public responded to any appeal. At Birmingham I heard from Miss Chisholm that the Belgian “Tommies” were suffering very badly from frost-bitten ears; the wind, coming over the inundated fields in front of the trenches, cut like a knife. “I would give anything,” she wrote, “for a thousand Balaclava helmets.” On the Thursday night, at the Birmingham theatre, I made my appeal, and in a week 500 had been sent to me, and 1000 followed in less than three weeks’ time. Sandbags, too, I was able to send out in thousands, through the interest and kindness of those who heard my appeals. It was through the Emergency Corps that I really first met them. Miss Chisholm had been my messenger in the very early days of the war, and, before I pass on to other matters, I want to say a last word about that organisation. It was the parent of practically all the other war societies. The Needlework Guilds formed their societies on the lines we had used; the various workrooms, in which women’s work was carried on, came to us to hear how it was done; the W.A.F. and W.A.A.C., and other semi-military organisations, were formed long after we had started the Women’s Volunteer Reserve. Much concern had been expressed at the bare idea of Women Volunteers; but Decima and Mrs. Haverfield stuck to their point, and Mrs. Haverfield carried on that branch finely. Nothing but a national necessity could have brought women together in such numbers, or spurred them on to work in the splendid way they did. The Corps was a “clearing house” for women’s work, and when women settled down into their proper spheres of usefulness, the Corps, having met the emergency, ceased as an active body to exist; but, before it did so, it had justified its existence a dozen times over.

Major A. Gordon, who was King’s Messenger to the King of the Belgians, proved himself a great friend to the “Women of Pervyse” and myself. It was through his efforts that I was able to pay my memorable visit to the Belgian trenches in 1918, and later I had the honour of receiving the Order de la Reine Elizabeth. All we five sisters worked for the war in all different branches at home and abroad, and we all received decorations: Decima, the Commander of the British Empire, Medallion de Reconnaissance, and Overseas Medals; Bertha, the O.B.E. for home service; Emily (Mrs. Pertwee), Le Palm d’Or, for Belgian work; Ada, the Allied and Overseas Medals for services with the French and British, in both France and Germany, also, through her efforts in endowing a room in the British Women’s Hospital for the totally disabled soldier, Star and Garter. Speaking of this brings back the memory of the wonderful day at Buckingham Palace, when the Committee of the British Women’s Hospital, founded by the Actresses’ Franchise League in 1914, were commanded by the Queen to present personally to her the £50,000 they had raised for that hospital. If I remember rightly, about 23 of us were there. The Queen, after the presentation, walked down the line and spoke to each one of us with her wonderful gracious manner, and to many referred to the pleasure she had received from seeing our various theatrical performances. Before the Queen entered the room, we were asked by Sir Derek Keppel to form ourselves in alphabetical order, and Lady Wyndham (Miss Mary Moore), my sister Decima, Lady Guggisberg, and myself (Mrs. H. V. Esmond) all promptly grouped ourselves under the M’s as Moores.

In the spring of 1918, when the Germans were making their last big advance, I was able to arrange to pay a flying visit to Belgium, to see the dressing-station at Pervyse. We had to pass Fumes, and found it in flames. The sight of that town being steadily bombarded, with the houses flaming against a brilliant sunset, was one of the most terrible but wonderful coloured things I have ever seen. We arrived at the H.Q. of the 2nd Division of the Belgian Army, to find the evening strafe in full swing. I can see now the Belgian Tommy as I saw him then, quite unconcerned by the guns, planting little flowers, Bachelor’s Buttons, outside the General’s hut. I wished that I could have shared his unconcern; I found the noise simply ear-splitting, and when a particularly noisy shell burst, and I asked the General if “it was going or coming”, he roared with laughter. I have never felt less amused than I did at that moment!

He sent us over to Pervyse in his car, to collect some papers which Mrs. Knocker, who was returning to England in a few days, needed. The dressing-station was a small and much-shelled house, on the very edge of the flooded land which lay between the Belgian trenches and the enemy—from the little house you could actually see the German sandbags. The dressing-station itself was anything but a “health resort”, and there is no question that these two women faced great danger with enormous fortitude.

Afterwards we motored to G.H.Q., where the staff were at dinner—or, rather tragically for us, where the staff had just finished dinner. I have the Menu still, signed by all who were present. It consisted of “Poached Eggs and Water Cress”, with Coffee to follow. We did not like to say we were “starving for want of food”, and so said we had dined. I was very glad to remember that in our car reposed a cooked chicken, which had been bought in Dunkirk. We—that is, Miss Chisholm, Mrs. Knocker (who had become by then Baroness T’Scerelles), her husband, and I—slept at a farmhouse some distance from H.Q. The only tolerably pleasant part of the night, which was noisy with the sound of shells, was the eating (with our fingers) of the cooked chicken. I do not think I have ever been so hungry in my life!

The following day I was taken to the trenches at Ramskeppelle. The men were very much astonished to see a woman in mufti. What struck me most was the beauty of the day, for the sun was shining, and birds singing, yet from behind us came the noise of the 15–inch guns, firing on the Germans, and back came the thunder of their replies. The sunshine, the birds, the beauty of the day—and war!

I stayed at Boulogne, on the way back, for the night, as the guest of Lady Hatfield at the Red Cross Hospital, and then returned home, bringing with me the Baroness, who was suffering from shock and the awful effects of gas. If it has seemed, or did seem at the time, that these two women had perhaps overmuch praise for what they did, I would ask you to remember that they worked in that exposed position, continually running grave risks, for three and a half years. It was the sustained effort that was so wonderful, which demanded our admiration, as well as the work which received the grateful thanks of the whole of the 2nd and 3rd Divisions of the Belgian Army.

To go back to the theatrical side of things. In 1914, the first week of the war, some 200 touring companies were taken “off the road”, and we—my husband and I—were advised to cancel our provincial dates at once. This we decided not to do, but to “carry on” as we had already arranged. The financial side was not very satisfactory, but I must say that the managers in the country appreciated our efforts; and, apart from that, we had the satisfaction of knowing that we were providing work for, at anyrate, a few artists and the staffs in the provincial theatres, at a time when work was very, very difficult to obtain.

I look back on those years of the war as a rather confused series of emotions and pictures, when one worked, spoke at meetings, played in the evening, read the casualty lists, and always “wondered why”; when each day seemed to bring the news that some friend had made the supreme sacrifice, when each day brought the knowledge that the world was the poorer for the loss of many gallant gentlemen. Pictures that remain—tragic, humorous, and soul-stirring. The first detachment of men I saw leaving for the front! It was about a quarter to twelve; I had been playing at Kennington Theatre, and stood waiting for a ’bus at the end of Westminster Bridge. As I stood, I heard the sound of marching men, “the men who joined in ’14”. Out of the darkness they came, still in their civilian clothes, not marching with the precision of trained men, but walking as they would have done to their work. Not alone, for beside almost each man walked a woman, and often she carried his bundle, and he carried—perhaps for the last time—a baby. I wondered if King Charles, riding his horse in Trafalgar Square, had seen them pass and realised that in them was the same spirit as lived in the Englishmen who sent him to the scaffold—that England and the English people might be free? Nelson, watching from the top of his column, must have known that the spirit that lived in his men at Copenhagen, the Nile, and Trafalgar was still there, burning brightly; and His Grace of Cambridge, once Commander-in-Chief of the British Army, did he too watch the sons and grandsons of the men who fought in the Crimea, going out to face the same dangers, the same horrors, as the men he had known? So they passed, in silence, for at such times one cannot find words to cry “Good luck” or “God bless you”. Out of the darkness they came, and into the darkness again they went, in silence—“the men who joined up in ’14”.

And Southampton in the early days! One night men began to march past the Star Hotel at six in the evening, and at six the next morning men were still marching past, and all the time the sound of singing went with them, all night long—“Tipperary”. I wonder what “Tipperary” meant to them all; did it mean home, the trenches, or Berlin? Who knows! but they never seemed to tire of singing it.

In May, 1915, we went to Ireland, and in Dublin we heard of the loss of the “Lusitania”. No one believed it was true. It seemed impossible that England’s super-passenger ship could have been sunk almost in sight of land.

We reached Cork on the Sunday evening. Charles Frohman was one of the missing passengers. Early on the Monday, Harry and I went to Queenstown, to try and find his body. The sight we saw in the shed on the Cunard quay is beyond description. Lying on the concrete floor, their hands all tied with thick pieces of rope, lay nearly a hundred victims of war and German civilisation! Men, women, children, and little babies. I shall never forget the pathos of the dead children and babies! Dragged into the awful machinery of war, the Holy Innocents of the Twentieth Century, butchered by the order of a Modern Herod. In one corner lay a little girl, about nine years old; her face was covered with a cloth; the terrible pathos of her poor little legs, wearing rather bright blue stockings, the limp stillness of her! We found poor Mr. Frohman—the man who made theatrical destinies, launched great theatrical ventures, who had been sought after, made much of, and was loved by all those who knew him—lying there alone, although he was surrounded by silent men and women. We took him flowers, the only flowers in all that dreadful shed. They went with him to America, and later his sister told us they were buried with him. Outside in the streets and in the Cunard office were men and women, white-faced and dry-eyed: it was all too big for tears: tears were dried up by horror. Later in the week the streets from the station to quay had on each side of the road a wall of coffins.

I read in the papers accounts of the disaster, of the “wonderful peace which was on the faces of the dead”. That peace can only have existed in the minds of the writers—I know I did not see it. Horror, fear, amazement, and, I think, resentment at being hurled into eternity; but peace existed no more in the faces of the dead than it did in my heart. I came away from that shed and cursed the German nation. Yet even little children had done great things. Lady Allen, from Montreal, was on board with her two little girls. I was told by their sister, who was over doing Red Cross work, that they stood all three hand in hand, wearing life-belts, when a woman friend came up to them; she was without a belt. One of the little girls took off her belt, saying as she did so, “You take mine, because I have learnt to swim”. Lady Allen and the two children, holding hands, jumped into the sea; neither of the children was ever seen again alive.

I met an Australian soldier, in a tiny hotel (for every place was full to overflowing), who had been on board. He told me that in his boat there was a woman who sang steadily for hours to keep up the spirits of her companions; she was, he said, “perfectly wonderful”. After they had been on the water for five hours, they saw a man on a small raft; they had no oars, and neither had he. The Australian jumped overboard, swam to him, and towed the raft back to the boat. He did this with three ribs broken! The thing which he told me he regretted most was the loss of his concertina, which he had saved up for years to buy!

I do not mind admitting that I hated the sea trip back to England; apart from my own feelings, I felt that I was in a great measure responsible for the rest of our company. We left Dublin with all lights out, and went full steam ahead all the time. It was the quickest passage the boat had ever made. Immediately on going on board, I collected enough life-belts for every woman of the company to have one, piled them on the deck, and sat on them!

So the war dragged on, and one did what was possible. It is of no interest to record the visits to hospitals, the work, and so forth; everyone worked, and worked hard. My feeling was always, when some wounded man gave me thanks out of all proportion to what I had been able to do, that I should have liked to quote to him words from my husband’s play, Love and the Man: “I have done so little, and you have done so much”. Only the Tommy, being British, would have been very uncomfortable if I had said anything of the kind.

Then, at last, came that wonderful morning in November, when, riding on the top of a ’bus in Piccadilly, I heard the “maroons”, and saw all the pent-up emotion of the British people break loose. They had heard of disasters, lost hopes, the death of those they loved best in the world, almost in silence, but now—“it was over”, and a people thanked God that “England might be Merrie England once again”. I went on to my Committee meeting, a meeting for the organisation of a scheme to raise funds for St. Dunstan’s Blind Soldiers, and I remember, when it was ended, walking up the Haymarket with Forbes Robertson, and noticing the change that had come over everything. If we lost our heads a little that day, who can blame us? For four years we had, as it were, lived in dark cellars, and now, when we came out into the light, it blinded us—we were so unaccustomed to “being happy”.

That night Harry was playing at Wyndham’s Theatre in The Law Divine. He told me that the audience certainly only heard about half of the play, owing to the noise in the street outside.

My sister Decima, after having been attached to the French Army in January, 1915, ran the Leave Club in Paris, which did such fine work and made a home for thousands of British soldiers in 1917; it continued there after the Armistice, till 1920. I shall not attempt to describe it, as I hope she may one day do so herself. When the Armistice was signed, she went at once to Cologne. She was one of the first women to get to the city, and began at once to organise a club for the Army of Occupation, on the same lines as the one in Paris. Before she left, the work of the club had come to an end, owing to the large reduction of the Army of Occupation. I went over, and together we did a tour of the battlefields. With my sister were her Commandant, Miss Cornwallis, Mrs. Carter, whose husband did fine work with the submarines and went down in the one he commanded, and Miss Fisher, who was my sister’s chauffeuse in Cologne. We took the same route as the Germans had taken into Belgium in 1914, and travelled over a thousand miles of devastated land. From Ypres to Verdun, everywhere the Graves Commission were busy. We saw cemetery after cemetery full of little wooden crosses, which Rupert Brooke said made “some corner in a foreign field ... forever England”. We saw the parties of Annamites who collected the dead from the battlefields; they were most repulsive looking, and I was told that they were the only people who could be persuaded to do the work. From Fort Fleure, in the valley, we saw the little village of wooden huts where they lived, under the direction of one British soldier, who lived there with his wife. Through all the battle area were dwarfed, distorted trees, twisted into almost sinister shapes; and among them moved the blue figures of the Annamites from Tonkin, looking for the dead.

It was spring-time, and on Vimy Ridge the cowslips were growing, and at Verdun the ground was thick with violets. I gathered bunches and placed them on lonely graves. Looking in my note-book, I see under “Verdun” the words, “miles of utter desolation”. I shall never forget those miles and miles of wasted land, torn and churned up by the guns, the ground still scarred by trenches and pitted with shell-holes, here and there a grave with a wooden cross, and often a steel helmet on it—a pathetic loneliness. I thought what England had escaped: we still had our green fields, our wonderful trees; our villages were still standing, and our factories still held machinery that was useful and might be worked:

“This fortress built by Nature for herself,

Against infection and the hand of war;

· · · · ·

This precious stone set in a silver sea.”

England was unchanged. The memory of what I saw there in France made me understand why the French people demand reparations from the nation that wasted France.

Outside Arras we met an R.A.C. man and asked him to tell us of an hotel where we might stay for the night. He told us of one, and we went on our way. When we got to the town we could not find the hotel, and asked a Tommy near the ruined Cathedral if he could direct us. He offered to show us the way, and got on to the step of the car beside Miss Cornwallis, who was riding outside. She asked him what part of England he came from, and found he came from the same small place in Kent that she had lived in all her life. He gave her the additional information: “I know you quite well; I’ve driven your father’s cows scores of times!” We reached the hotel, which was a kind of large bungalow, with canvas walls, run by an Australian—and very well run, too. I went to my room, which I was sharing with my sister, and realised that every word which was said in the next room could be heard. The next room was occupied by the R.A.C. soldier who had directed us to come to the hotel. He was not alone, but was saying “Good-bye” to his French sweetheart. Poor girl, he was leaving for England the next day, and she wanted very much to come with him. It was rather pathetic, and I wished so much the walls had not been so thin.

When one thinks now of the “Lights out”, the marching men, the ambulances at the stations, the men in khaki, and the air raids, it all seems like something that happened hundreds of years ago! Talking of air raids reminds me that some time ago I was rehearsing with an American producer for an American play. Everyone on the stage had to be in a great state of tension, and, to convey his meaning, he said to me: “You’re all as if you were waiting for a bomb to drop. Do you understand what I mean? Have you ever heard a bomb drop?” I assured him that I had, and knew exactly what “it was like”. I thought, too, “What do some of you know of England, and England in war time!”

CHAPTER VII
THE SUFFRAGE