UNDERGRADUATE PAGE

Tribute to Mrs. Bates

By D. A. STONE (Queens' College, Cambridge)

THE importance of Mrs. Bates in the history of the develop- ment of English drama is something that one never reads

about in chronicles of the theatre. No one ever shakes his head as he walks down St. Martin's Lane and mutters: " That was a woman." Yet in her day this pale, but never fragile, lady sounded a trumpet the blasts of which still echo in the abundance of pro- ductions on our stages. We first met her in " Atalanta in Calydon." About this monument of Pre-Raphaelite faith the story is told of Oxford undergraduates chanting its wonderful, sensuous choruses in unison in the High. The thought of the young men who throng Petty Cury today even murmuring: " When the hounds of spring are at winter's traces " is quaint and even humorous. But that was Oxford. And that was then.

Not that Mrs. Bates chanted anything in the streets. Perhaps she boomed occasionally at an ineffective commissionaire on one of her rare visits to town, or rebuked the small daughter of one of her acquaintances—but chant, no. Her voice, we like to think, was still, despite her departing youth, young and possessed of that vibrant liveliness of tone that goes with few years. But we never heard her speak ; we missed, missed by more than thirty years, what must have been one of the most moving and adventurous productions of the present century When one talks about seeing again the great moments of the past one never really wants to have been there: that would mean that one would not be enjoying the present, which is always, always golden. But to have seen Mrs. Batis!

Let Mr. Rylands have his Macready. We would give his Lear for Mrs. Bates, magnificent as the Chief Huntsman, exquisite as the Second Messenger, and, as the Chorus', ethereal, dancing along on the rippling words, drowning in the multi-coloured whirlpool of Swinburne's fancy. And it is all gone.

" The houses are all gone under the sea The dancers are all gone under the hill."

That gaslit evening in the village hall, with the newly-demobilised heroes of the Kaiser's war walking proudly and a little self- consciously to their seats, with the vicar, smiling to show his im- partiality, and his wife, determined not to show that she would have liked a part, and the children, already bored and fidgety, Miss Marchdale, so weary after four years of smiling, of keeping up morale—all, all is part of a time that may live on in some bend of a far-off spectrum but that to us is quite dead, quite irrecoverable.

Lamb's immortal dream-children could not make us feel any sadder than these bold-pencilled names against " The Persons " in a thirty-year-old second-hand copy of " Atalanta." They might have been the idle fancy of a rainy afternoon, a pleasant joke of casting acquaintances in a play ; but surely no fancy, no joke would give us people like these. The figures force themselves from their uneven column and wring their hands in front of us, asking to be remembered. Mr. Kirby, Mrs. Johnson, Mrs. Vale, Mr. Dent and, soaring superbly to their head, Mrs. Bates, matchless, incomparable.

What can be the magic in these names ? What is the unique force that held back the hand from erasing that which might have been dismissed, so easily, as scribble ? It is easy to explain it as sentiment, as a foolish, maudlin nostalgia for a temps perdu. Perhaps. Perhaps it is because we know, deep down, unmentioned, in our hearts that we shall never meet them. Given life by imagination, they can be painted in the brightest of colours with a certainty that no disillusioning rain, no carping wind will ever fade them. When the idols lie broken in the dust, when age and ruin mock early ambitions, these will be unchanged. We used to think it would be nice to meet someone who knew them ; but then we might not have met the right pellon. It is probably best to exist with our thoughts and keep our 'picture unspoilt.

They must have lived in a village, th actors ; a village in a backwater, with sleepy, pink-walled cottages and honey-coloured thatch. No town could contain the wild faun-like Mrs. Bate( Gentle moors and soft-turfed meadows were her environment ; and it must have been on one of her walks, with the dog Skip surelg that the great idea came to her. To act " Atalanta," to push aside' the vicar's wife with her " Madras House," a little ambitious, an4 " Caste," so old, and dazzle the war-weary village with Swinburne. There were the usual tea-party mutterings ; sides were taken, spies sent out. A compromise was suggested, but Mrs. Bates stood firm and unmoved. The vicar, traditionally the arbiter in village wars, found himself racked by fear of Mrs. Bates and his duty to the parish. With hope he preached the following Sunday on Galatians Iti, 1. Mrs. Bates thought the sermon strange but stimulating, and congratulated the vicar on its excellence. With a sigh the village capitulated and rehearsals began.

The weeks slipped by ; rain, snow, thaw and always a wind that rattled through the broken window in the school. It made itself felt in the costumes, too ; these changed with the temperature from the sunlit plains of a Grecian Arcady to the army of Peter the Great on the Neva. But over the costumes not a great deal of trouble was taken. After all, it would be said, and we can hear the words meet with solemn approval, the words are what matter. Mrs. Bates's pencil roamed easily through the script. Her beautiful chorus-speeches alone remained unmarked ; one or two passages indicate the sotto-voce assistance of Mrs. Johnson, but not for the wildest lyrics of this purple decadence. These were Mrs. Bates's. How she reconciled her frequent appearances in various guises is a feat of production unrivalled before or since. But she carried it off. Of that there can be no doubt.

A glance through the play shows apparently chaotic censoring, but, on inspection, it can be seen that the text has been judiciously edited not only to give Mrs. Bates the principal role, but to facilitate her numerous transformations as well. And she was aided, too, by her cast. For one thing, Mr. Bates was Meleager. He was not the man the village would have chosen, nor indeed had he any great ambition to carry on to a public stage his domestic situation. He stands there, moustache drooping, rather tired. His lines are appropriate: " For the flesh of my body is molten, the limbs of it molten as lead."

There is a scuffle in the wings, a heavy tread, and, then, there stands Mrs. Bates, breathing deeply and perspiring freely from the effort of getting out of the Second Messenger's costume in time. She braces herself, glares at the vicar's wife, and speaks: " 0 thy luminous face, Thine imperious eyes! "

The vicar's wife, who has already had one attack of the vapours after Mrs. Bates had roared at her: " Being mixed and made one through desire With Enipeus and all her hair Made moist with his mouth, and her breast Filled full of the foam of the river."

quietly subsides under the seat—and then the bubble bursts, the dream fades. It is just a book which no one wanted, even for two shillings. It had to go for one. Only a few names. No more. But Mrs. Bates. . . .