PLAYERS AND PLAYS IN LONDON

Charles Aubrey Fenwick

An Interview with Ellen Terry, Comments on an Interesting Wedding and Notes on Current Productions

ELLEN TERRY left England the other day for what may be the last of her globe-trotting adventures. She is on her way to Australia where she will deliver her series of lectures on the Heroines of Shakespeare. If the ship was late in leaving Tilbury Docks, that was because the train from London was late and the train from London was late because Ellen Terry was late. The usual gathering of her admirers waited on the platform, and Miss Terry's husband, James Carew, waited in the reserved carriage. But the world has always been willing to wait for the fair Ellen, and she arrived in the calm knowledge of that fact. Age has done much to alter her, but it never can destroy the great personal charm she wields. There is still no woman on the English-speaking stage whose gift of magnetism is so great as Miss Terry's or whose heart has remained younger through the years.

I called on Miss Terry one day last year at her house in Chelsea. My appointment was for eleven and I arrived at 11:30 with the hope of seeing her at 12. The house is in the King's Road, Chelsea, one of a modest looking row which sits back from the street with its sill about two feet below the level of the roadway. Upon entering, one finds oneself in a fifteenth century interior with oak paneling, a fine old carved oaken stairway leading down into the middle of a large living-room. It is in such an interior as this that Miss Terry will generally be found, whether she is at her house at Winchelsea, by the sea, or whether she is at her latest acquisition at Tenterden, some twelve miles farther inland. At Tenterden she took what seemed an ordinary workman's dwelling and scraped the walls until she discovered the original oak, and discovered the new bricks with which the old windows had been closed. Straightway she took out the bricks and restored the old windows and bricked up the windows of the later period, and before long she had a fine old Elizabethan cottage back in its pristine beauty.

HERE in her old-world garden, Miss Terry leads a happy life. Her house is the goal for many pilgrims, and she receives visits from many distinguished contemporaries from all over the world. Miss Terry has always been a generous giver and lavish in the expression of her feelings. She has a husband, a son and a daughter and two sets of grandchildren, and the demands upon her resources are many. Hence this farewell to England in acceptance of the large offer made to her from Australia.

When at length she came down to see me, all her old responsiveness, her quick interest, her all-compelling smile shone out as of yore. For a moment she sat conventionally on the sofa in the way in which perhaps her daughter might have suggested to her was the most proper for a woman of her years and dignities. Then as she grew animated, she pulled her feet up beneath her. As she grew more animated, she rose and sat on the table swinging her feet, and as I paced up and down in front of her, she finally drew up her feet and sat cross legged on the smooth old refectory table top, swinging about to keep in touch with what I was saying. She was quite as girlish then as she would have been forty years ago, and if she had not disdained the resources of the make-up box, yet there was a remarkable smoothness in her cheek and a remarkable clearness in her eye. People are always asking what personal magnetism is. If personal magnetism is optimistic and benevolent vitality; vitality great enough to take care of all selfish needs with plenty to spare for interest and good will and sympathy as to the lives of other people, then Miss Terry certainly possesses it.

She says that now-a-days she has reduced life to its simplest elements. "I don't worry any more about clothes," she told a friend. "One skirt and one more garment and you'll find Ellen Terry."

THE fact that Mrs. Patrick Campbell has married the divorced husband of the lady, who is now again Lady Randolph Churchill, is no one's business save that of the parties to the marriage. But the event has excited much comment in London. When in 1900 Lady Randolph Churchill married Mr. Cornwallis-West, who was we will not say how many years her junior, Lady Churchill was reported to have said that at any rate she looked forward to at least ten years of happiness. There was in this remark the wisdom of a mature woman of the world, if not the rosy illusionment of young romance. April 6, 1914, saw the decree of divorce nisi, which had been granted a year previous, made absolute; and two hours later Mr. Cornwallis-West married the widow of the late Patrick Campbell. In .his second marriage Mr. Cornwallis-

West showed a tendency to narrow the gap of seniority between himself and his wife. Mrs. Campbell is only a trifle over 49. As at this age she is playing the gutter girl in Shaw's "Pygmalion," we may assume that she has still the charm of youth for such astute judges as Sir Herbert Tree and Bernard Shaw. Taking Lady Randolph Churchill's estimate as to the probable duration of her own married life, which was fairly well borne out by yesterday's event, and altering the other factors in the equation—with a reasonable allowance for wear and tear—a mathematician might arrive at a close estimate of Mrs. Campbell's prospects for duration of married bliss. But even mathematicians disagree, and the probable figures are variously quoted on the above basis as from four to six years. All this is strictly nobody's business but that of the parties concerned, which is what makes it interesting to everybody.

SOONER or later the successful American dramatist takes up his residence for a term of years in London. Charles Klein, the author of "The Music Master" and many other successes, has now lived in London for a year and bids fair to remain there for some years to come. He has taken a house in Hampstead conveniently near to that of his friend, Henry Arthur Jones. As is well known, Klein is a great lover of music and he has installed a magnificent pipe organ in his huge ballroom. Some of Klein's observations of English life and customs will be reflected in one of the new plays which will be produced by Lee Shubert.

Apart from Shaw's "Pygmalion" the month has given us no new production of striking importance. American playwrights still hold their own—the 450th performance of "Within the Law" will probably be announced ere this is printed; and Edward Knoblauch's "Kismet," revived at the Globe, is again doing an enormous business; while "Broadway Jones," after several weeks at the Prince of Wales, transfers to the Lyceum at popular prices. There is a new play by the author of "The Little Damozelle," Monckton Hoffe: "Things we'd like to know." The play, in which Mr. Charles Hawtrey gives a very fine impersonation of Mr. Charles Hawtrey—which is what London expects to see when it goes to see Mr. Charles Hawtrey—contains a very excellent first act. This is in the Bohemian vein which Mr. Hoffe handled so successfully in "The Little Damozelle."

The second and third acts are condemned by the critics as wanting in probability and in a convincing quality of sentiment. This is, however, only another way of saying that the interest and humor have not been sustained to the point of making the audience forget the realities. The writing of first acts is proverbially easier than the writing of second and last acts, and yet more than one play has been sold by a dramatist on the strength of his having written only the first act. Indeed, it is the practice of Alfred Sutro to submit to a manager only the first act of a given play, together with a scenario of the remaining acts.

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RS. FRANCES HODGSON BURNETT has arrived in London after an extended sojourn on the continent. Mrs. Burnett, like so many other distinguished authors, has succumbed to the cinematograph. "Little Lord Fauntleroy" and "The Lady of Quality" have been filmed, and "The Little Princess" and "The Pretty Sister of Jose" have been arranged for.

Mrs. Burnett says that once she had her doubts as to the dignity of being presented on the "Movies." But one day in Berechtsgarten, she strayed into what in that part of the world is called a "Kino," where peasant girls and men in their picturesque costumes were drinking beer at little tables set on a sanded floor, while moving pictures were being shown. In a land so far away, both as to distance and as to manners and customs, she saw stories of American life appreciated and applauded by people who could not have understood a word of English. Mrs. Burnett was so struck by the universality of the appeal of the moving picture that from that time forward she became an ardent student of the cinema, keenly interested in both the entertainment and the audience, as she wandered through the picturesque spots of Southern Europe.

Now Mrs. Burnett is disposed to write an original story for the cinematograph, and undoubtedly she will give it that human touch which has made her work famous throughout the world. It is to such authors as Mrs. Burnett that the film manufacturers are looking ahead for the time when all the famous books and plays of the past, which are supplying the bulk of the feature films of the moment, are exhausted.

THERE are two interesting phenomena to be observed in the London theatres at present. Everyone in the dramatic profession knows with what anxiety plays are followed in rehearsal with regard to their effect on the sympathies of the audience. The more brutal scenes of "The Land of Promise" have been softened for London; yet, in the scene where the rough Canadian brings home his London-bred bride to his shack on the Manitoba prairie and forces her to accept entirely a marriage she had only expected to accept in part, the audience shows unmistakably that it is stirred the wrong way. Every night there are utterances of "beast!" from the women, from all parts of the auditorium. The interesting point is that this does not seem to interfere with the success of the play. Yet any producer, if he thought this word was going to be applied to the hero of the piece, would hasten to alter the lines and action. It goes to prove a fact that would aid the discrimination of managers if they would realize it: there are one hundred elements in perfection, and what contains eighty per cent, of them is bound to succeed. It does not matter which twenty per cent, is left out.

ONE important element in the success of a Jewish play is undoubtedly that it should interest the Jews. At "The Melting Pot" one evening, I took a careful look over the stalls and pit, and I could see but three people who unmistakably were Jewish. Where Zangwill fails to carry his race with him is in his obsession about the racial question. Most of the Jews would prefer that the question never should be raised, least of all by a Hebrew. They are, by every influence that can be inbred, sick of it. Zangwill married a Gentile, and he is fond of dwelling on the intermarriage of the races. This play and the coming of "Potash and Perlmutter" remind one of "The Ghetto," Heijermann's play done in London some years ago. In that play it was desired to make all the supers look as Jewish as possible in the scene in the crowded Ghetto. At the dress rehearsal one of the supers appeared with an enormous nose of the most Hebraic persuasion. "You've overdone it, my lad," the manager said. "You just run back to the dressing-room and take that nose off!" "I vish I could," the super said.