MR. JOHN HOLLLNGSHEAD.*
THE writer of the records before us has played a conspicuous part in the life of his time. A man of letters by profession and by taste, and one of the most trusted and versatile of the band of contributors who made such a feature in the literary life of the day which was made notable by Charles Dickens's career as an editor of magazines, he drifted into theatrical management without any apparent bias or wish of his own, made a fortune and lost it with an equal mind, and not in theatrical fields only was a steady and undaunted pioneer. He was the first to introduce the electric light in London, and there are many who remember the wonder with which the world stood at gaze under the mysterious radiance which beamed from the portico of the Gaiety upon an unready age, only to be extinguished by the law as causing some inter- ference with the vested rights of the gas companies. It is amusing to read how the alarmed gas companies met together and prophesied the utter extinction of the dangerous innovation in Paris before the season's end. But it is as curious to mark how slowly we advance. While the streets of Madrid and medimval Seville are as light by night as by day, a return from Spain to London seems to plunge us into darkness. The Gaiety light was put out, and Mr. Hollingshead gained nothing by his enterprise, any more than by his effort to allow the neighbouring restaurant to be connected by a door. The door was closed and the danger of fire magnified, because such a door must not be. Another and a more successful enterprise was the war he waged against the curious system of closing on Ash Wednesday only such theatres as were within the local jurisdiction of the Lord Chamberlain, and opening all the rest. For this pur- pose he made use of the advertisement columns of the news- papers with as little scruple and as much tactical skill and effect as did the Irish Members of the rules of the House of Commons. A strong protest from Captain Shaw in the inno- vator's favour was set aside in the first case ; but by perpetu- ally recurring to his point, and showing bow half a dozen theatres or so were obliged to keep the Ash Wednesday only for the benefit of the rest, he at last secured his reform in the interests of fair play. In the theatrical world he was the most ardent of Progressives, and in his early days, before the reign of burlesque was finally established in his realm, almost an ideal manager. He brought under his banner at different times every leading actor and actress of his day. With him Charles Mathews played his last engagement, and Henry Irving what was nearly his first. Mathews, Phelps, and Toole were induced by his tactical power to appear together in the same play, with men like Hermann Vezin and the late Arthur Cecil to stand at their side. For him poets and novelists put on the horse-collar, to adopt his phrase, and wrote burlesque, or anything else he asked them for. For him Smtley appeared in a round of opera, and " starred " in tenor parts transposed. For him Gilbert and Sullivan first com- bined their forces, and wrote a musical play called Thespis ; or, The Gods Grown Old, which was before its time, as many of his experiments were, but was the prelude of the famous alliance. For him Swinburne composed an especial song, and everything that was tempting in dance and dress and tune combined to make the Gaiety extravaganza—when the public frivolity grew confirmed in that seductive direction—the most attractive spectacle of its kind that has been seen, except, perhaps, when Vestris ruled over the Lyceum in the days long gone. When "Nellie Farren " pranced and Kate Vaughan danced, an evening at the Gaiety was a thing to enjoy. And it is pleasant to note that, amongst all the world of artists
• Gaiety Chronicles. By John Hollingshead. London : Constable and Co. [211.]
over whom be ruled, Miss Farren is, unconsciously perhaps, the chronicler's favourite, as, after all, she deserves to be. Whether it might have been better used in higher directions we cannot say, but there was more of the electric quality of sacred fire con- cealed somewhere about her than about any other figure on our stage, except Charles Warner, since the day when Robson died. We mean no disparagement to the different qualities of intellect and art, which lend such interest to many stage personalities. But to "carry you off your feet" is a rare attainment with an actor. It was Alfred de Musset, with a very different percep- tion from that implied in "taking pains," who called genius the "spark which no industry can kindle, and no negleot can quite extinguish." And in her own odd way there were times when Nellie Farren disarmed criticism.
But the most interesting part of the chronicle to many will be Mr. Hollingshead's amusing description of how he made a " star " of Sarah Bernhardt, when he transplanted the Francais company to what might at first sight seem the uncongenial soil of the Gaiety. It is the public, not the manager, who really make the stars, by the simple process of going to a theatre when certain performers appear, and staying away when they do not. And in the teeth of their unsound prejudices the baffled actor- manager oft "stars himself" in vain. Sarah Bernhardt's first visit with the Francais company was a revelation to that level-headed lady. In Paris till then she had been but one twinkler in tfiat unequalled galaxy which before her day had numbered in Regnier and Bressant, Favart, Delaunay, and the Brohans, a combination not to be forgot. Bat London, unlike Paris, came when she acted and refrained when she did not, and the receipts on her nights were always more than double. Discovering this, she commercially proposed to Hollingshead to come again another year with a cheap com- pany of her own, and he as commercially and wisely accepted. Hence—and hence alone—the disruption of the famous Francais company, and the stellar migrations of the erratic French actress all about the world. Of course Got and Coquelin, and all the rest, were at once fired with a desire to do the like, Got being especially convinced that he could make a fortune in pantomime, and Coquelin being inflamed with the ambition which was one day to blossom into the nose of Cyrano. Art has suffered—and very severely—by the revolution in the dramatic system which the revolt of the stars occasioned. But it paid the lucky individuals to the hurt of all the rest ; and to pay is the final argument. Finance is lord and syndicates are managers ; and lawsuit after lawsuit proves that productions professedly successful have spelt nothing but financial loss. Mr. Hollingshead, in his ardent desire for progress and action, must be credited with having done much to upset the ancient steady system. To him also is due the invention of the matinee, which up to his day had been the rare exception and possession of panto- mime seasons ; and he deplores its consequences in his own cynical fashion, sympathising deeply with the dramatic critic, whom he, who was one of them, prefers to style the "theatrical reporter," called upon to do so much extra work for the same stipend, and to blunt his perceptive faculties by all the experimental ephemerals which the matinee has called into life. The stage, which "holds the mirror up to nature" in one and the same sense as it always did, is in a state of solution like the world it typifies in little, and no one knows how it will emerge.
It is perhaps a pity, as far as that curious personage "the general reader " is concerned, that Mr. Hollingshead should have filled out his pages with long reproductions of playbills and newspaper advertisements, which even within the professional limits must be very dull reading. The lover of playbill literature, with its odd revolutions of type and form, gathers originals about him like the lover of autographs, or stamps, or any other colligible article. But playbills in a book look curious'y unreal. Very much more interesting are the chronicier's portraits of notabilities, some of whom come out in colours entirely new. We never remember to have seen a more vivid picture of the kind-hearted and bluff Charles Reade—with his vigorous faith in his own dramatic pro- ductions, more than once forcibly justified by the money he made through bringing them out himself —and the original letters in which he speaks of them. Hollingshead describes him as sitting at the club table and writing letters with a male of peculiar berevolence on his face, which indi- cated that he was engaged in calling some literary opponent by all the most ferocious names he could in- vent. We imagine that it was this literary ferocity and want of government which, coming out at times in his writings, prevented Reade from ranking higher among the novelists of his generation. The Cloister and the Hearth is a noble work of fiction, and Reade was one of the kindest men who has lived. It is within the knowledge of the present writer that after the death of a literary opponent of his, the widow took up arms in defence of her husband, and abused Reade roundly in his own fashion in the papers. Hearing that she was left very poorly off, he rushed down to her house, though he had never seen her, thrust £50 in bank-notes into her hands, and rushed off again as promptly. They became fast friends. Of Hollingshead's more theatrical associates, the most interesting to ourselves is Charles Mathews, the most individual and peculiar of the comedians of his time, as be was the most addicted to rushing into print against everybody, as much so as our chronicler himself. It is much to his credit that amongst the many and various figures which his story evokes, Hollingshead's own stands out as the most individual and distinctive of all, though he had certainly no such purpose in his writing. And it is more the individual than the book whom we wish to bring before our readers.
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