Harry Lauder
By JAMES BRIDIE M.AY I tell three rather dull little stories ? A small, sliort- legged man with a biggish head was capering on a huge stage before a huge audience. He was dressed in Balmoral tartan, and his songs and jokes were simple to the verge of imbecility. My brother was sitting in a stall. Like the rest of the audience he was entranced, taken out of himself, as they say. When the audience had reluctantly allowed the next number to go up, an elderly man leaned across to my brother. He said: "If I were starting the game again, I know what I'd do. I'd give them something they could beat time to with their feet. . .. You may not think I know what I'm talking about, but I do. I'm Eugene Stratton."
In the second story I was the guest of a Scottish musician, and Lauder was there too. It was only last year. It was a pleasant party, with a good deal of talk and performance of music, much of it well above my head. Our host asked Lauder to sing, and he said that he didn't mind giving us two hundred pounds' worth. He gave us much more, leaning on the piano and singing what he could remember. He sang to about thirty people, crowded in a small room. I was two yards away from him. I realised then that he had affinities to the French diseur. Every line of his face and body was concentrated on his task. Everf drop of sentiment and fun was wrung out of his verses. We did not beat time with our feet. We were entangled in intense and intimate subtleties. A whole gallery of humble lovers was created for us, with a flick of the facial muscles.
The third story goes further back. A friend of mine went to the Empire Theatre in Glasgow to see Lauder rehearsing with the orchestra. He wore a raincoat and carried an umbrella. "That's very good, boys," he said, "but when I sing ta-ta-taa, tak' it on the upstroke of your fiddles. You get a thrrrob that way."
He once asked me to write a play for him. I am not boasting of this. Every actor asks every playwright to do that some time or another. It is common change. But, when I was doing a play for Malvern, I asked H. K. Ayliff if he thought we might invite Harry Lauder to play the lead. He asked me if I wanted the other actors reduced to ciphers, the play burst to pieces and the roof taken off the theatre. I said, No; but I thought Lauder was a fine enough artist to play down. Ayliff said, "He can't play down. You can't put a personality of that size into a straight play."
Perhaps he was right. The only "personality of that size" I can remember was Marie Lloyd. Irving himself had less instant command over his audiences. With the help of this personality and a strong, pleasant, baritone voice, he "put over" a series of ditties which are the nearest thing to folk songs in our time. I have hinted that there was much more artistry in it than his critics and his enormous audiences saw. His occasional broadcasts gave some suggestion of this. The songs themselves are no great matter. They have a heartening swing about them, and the airs are often of respectable antiquity. Old, subtle phrases are cleverly introduced, now and again, to give distinction to common, foot-beating passages. There is no doubt that the tunes are good and that the simple words fit them extraordinarily well. But better tunes and words have had their vogue and died. "I Love a Lassie," "Roaming in the Gloaming" and "The Wedding of Sandy MacNab " stick. They look very like being immortal. It may be because they carry with them—even to those who have never seen Lauder—the rolling, light-footed swagger, the elfish chuckle, the thunderous " rs " and the friendly hypnotism of their first singer.
Many of his serious-minded countrymen detested Lauder's creation of a comic Scot. They thought that it had no relationship to reality, that it was borrowed from English caricatures. On the first point they were right and on the second wrong. It was not intended to have any relationship with reality. It was a surrealist invention. That Lauder could easily handle reality if he wished to do so was demonstrated in his village idiot (" The Saftest o' the Family ") and his convivial artisan (" Fu' the Noo ") ; but the Low- land-Highlander with the curly stick was simply a convention of his
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own making—and a very useful convention too. If part of the picture was borrowed from English caricature, it was borrowed only to mock mockery, like his delighted use of the legend of his own meanness in money matters. Indeed, he loved his countrymen too well to make any direct comment on their foibles. His goblin figure was a pure piece of fantasy, like Robey's clerical- looking rake.
In his heart he was an unabashed kailyarder, and that, too, irritated the perfervid Scots. In Scotland we are all too conscious of the kailyard in our nature and flinch at its exposure. When men of genius like Lauder and Barrie, consciously or unconsciously, play the part of Lot's daughters the heat of our shame expresses itself in acerbity. This can be discounted. We are genuinely proud of Lauder and Barrie, though, from time to time, they "give us a red face." The red face is the mask of Scottish snobbery, and we know it.
In the old days, when his audiences grew hysterical with delight and refused to let him leave the stage, he used to calm them by singing "Rocked in the Cradle of the Deep." The effect he made by this was a temptation to him, and latterly he could not resist it. He developed a tendency IP preach. Yet, however deplorable this might be from the artistic view-point, it was part of the man. He had a great affection for mankind and he wanted to do them good. His sermons were short and often pithy. At the worst, they sprang from a nobler impulse than that which impels other entertainers to season their performances with irrelevant filth. At the best, they helped many silly people to mend their ways. "Keep Right on to the End of the Road" may not have been our greatest hymn, but it kept some of our troops going on many a weary route march and it happened to be good advice.
It is sad that this great, droll and very happy man will not sing to us again in his own person ; but he will live longer than most of his fellows. Whatever the literati may think, his nation has long ago accepted his gift of songs and will remember him long after it has forgotten those who made its laws. He was no Burns or Scott or Fergusson or Dunbar or Ramsay ; but he never pretended to be. He wanted to please us, and he succeeded.
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