HERBERT BEERBOHM TREE.*
I MOST confess that when I came to the reading of the collection of the little memoirs which make up the present biography of Sir Herbert Tree, I came full of prejudice against the actor. To me he always represented a school which I called in my own mind " real rabbits." Who will forget the wonderful newspaper paragraphs about these real rabbits with which ho desecrated A Midsummer Nights Dream ; the admiring descriptions of how the great man scattered bran about the stage for them to eat, and the critic's raptures about the entirely delightful and beautiful way in which they loped about the stage, interrupting the beat passages of the blank verse ?
Much of Lady Tree's section of the book strengthened me in my opinion—for example :— " The Last of the Dandies was a delicious play—perfectly put upon the stage. For the first act--D'Orsay's dressing-room- London was looted for priceless Empire furniture (the cheval- glass still survives), and Herbert was lent an heirloom of a silver-gilt dressing-case, historic, superb. For the second act —a boating.scene--a river of real water was let into the stage of the theatre, to Herbert's intense and almost childish appre- ciation. A wonderful effect ensued. How he loved to try and bring woods and streams and founts and skies and mountains on to the stage ! And pillared palaces, and long-drawn aisles : stately castles, grim battlements, battlefields, pine forests, beech woods, fields jewelled with daisies, and yellow sands ! Who has striven towards all those so lovingly, so persistently ? Herbert condescended to ' curtains' for a brief space in the course of his career—but he hung them to prejudice, not to conviction. Ho knew perfectly well that the writer of plays, be he Pinero or Shakespeare, requires—nay, demands—every- thing that the art of the stage can do for him."
When the reader turns to Mr. Bernard Shaw's valuation of him
it is to find the same sort of thing. Tree, Mr. Shaw complains, was always trying to do the author's part of the work. Henever could get into his head that if a play is worth anything it can
stand on its own legs " and hold you breathless if it is merely read by a circle of people in black coats sitting on chairs "
" I have seen him try to help a very able Shakespearean actor, and, incidentally, to help Shakespeare, through what he thought a tedious scene, by pretending to catch flies, with ruinous consequences to both player and Bard. He put a new complexion on Brieux's Lee Poi, with effects on the feelings of that illustrious author which I shall not attempt to describe. He meant equally well on both occasions. . . . Tree was giving Shakespeare, at Immense trouble and expense, and with extra- ordinary executive cunning, a great deal that Shakespeare had not asked for, and denying him something much simpler that he did ask for, and set great store by."
To make a play of interest is the author's business, not the actor's :— " The function of the actor is to make the audience, imagine for the moment that real things aro happening to real people. It is for the author to snake the result interesting. if he fails, the actor cannot save the play unless it is so flimsy a thing that the actor can force upon it some figure of his own fancy and play the author off the stage."
In common with many other people, too, I did Sir Herbert Tree the injustice to believe him an ordinary money-maker. But now let me confess I am completely converted. Having read this wholly delightful book about him, I have fallen under the fascination of this completely absurd but very attractive creature.
He was not a great actor, but that was his misfortune, not his fault, and what a wonderful creature to have gladdened Edwar- dian London He was a sort of fantastic from the Renaissance ; full of enthusiasm, full of ignorance, full of energy. When you admit the man's limitations and the high goals at which he aimed, his belief in " real rabbits " becomes endearing in its simplicity. He must have been exceedingly witty, too. Not only arc there a number of his good stories related in this book, but the whole book—all the contributions from all the different • Herbert Beerbohm Tree. Memories collected by Max Beerbohm. London: Hutchinson. Int sources are in the mass so sparkling, that it is clear that for so many hands to write so amusingly, they must have been inspired by a thoroughly witty and amusing subject. No one who has bad the shocking experience of writing about dull books or dull plays will doubt that. They will recall from their own experience the lamentable extent to which the dullness " comes off" upon the commentator. Miss Viola Tree records her father's surprising admiration for Gordon Craig's production of Hamlet, which he saw in Moscow. As a rule, however, his unsophisticated mind demanded realism.
His daughter took him to the Russian Ballet. It seemed to him simply queer. " These things will soon be Bakst numbers, my dear." He hated theatrical technical terms. Consequently he often had a difficulty in making himself understood at rehearsals. He would, for instance, exclaim, apropos of a refractory piece of lighting, "More mystery, more mystery," "which the stage manager, in his capacity of interpreter, would translate in a raucous whisper to the limelight man above, ' Biff your Number three's.' " Lady Tree contributes another story :-
" Herbert used to tell an actor's story of a villain whom it was necessary to dispatch by a shot through the bare of the window that he was forcing. No shot was forthcoming, how- ever, and yet he had to die—and rather than fail the situation,
he cried, ' My Cod ! I have swallowed the file fell dead, and saved the play."
I thoroughly advise anybody who is interested in the theatre to read this book, for it is impossible here to do justice to the variety of amusement which it will afford the reader. There is the succulence of Lady Tree's contributions ; there is Mr. Shaw's astringency, with his admirable general comments on the art of the theatre; there is Mr. Max Beerbohm's delightful affectionate irony, and there are the witty contributions by Sir Herbert Tree's daughters. In fact, the level of wit and writing in Mr. Max Beerbohm's collection is almost suspiciously high.
TARN.
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