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Forty Years on the Stage ; Others (Principally) and Myself

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Forty Years on the Stage ; Others (Principally) and Myself 1 • UV L ^ ' Jturvfo^^ 7^ &L ebi Cb^^ * A^- flur* ,-Ox^ccyxcw lC (J, el' T9_ .c* o VCSS J FORTY YEARS ON THE STAGE OTHERS {PRINCIPALLY) JND MYSELF [Frontispiece 3. II. HAKNKS ( I S74) FORTY YEARS ON THE STAGE OTHERS {PRINCIPALLY) AND MYSELF BY J. H. BARNES LONDON CHAPMAN AND HALL, Ltd. 1914 Richard Ci.ay tz Sons, Limited, RRCNBWICK STREET, STAMFORD STREET «. E. AND BDNOAT. SUFFOLK. LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS To fact 'page J. H. BARNES (1874) Frontispiece JOHN BARNES OF WATLINGTON (OXON) 3 J. C. M. BELLEW .... 5 AUGUSTUS HARRIS THE ELDER (STAGE MANAGER, COVENT GARDEN OPERA) ..... 12 MISS ADELAIDE NEILSON .... 19 WILLIAM TERRISS (1872) .... 19 MRS. WYNDHAM AND R. H. WYNDHAM (OF EDINBURGH) 28 MRS. SCOTT SIDDONS 31 H. J. (HARRY) MONTAGUE 33 CHARLES MATHEWS 33 THE ORIGINAL CAST OF " THE AMERICAN LADY " WITH WHICH THE CRITERION OPENED, 1874 40 J. H. BARNES AS CLAUDIO (" MEASURE FOR MEASURE") 56 SAMUEL PHELPS 67 SALVINI .... 79 J. H. BARNES AS SERJEANT TROY (" FAR FROM THE MADDING CROWD ") 134 MADAME RISTORI . 136 J. H. BARNES AS INGOMAR 145 MISS MARY ANDERSON AS GALATEA 146 J. H. BARNES AS PYGMALION . 147 VI LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS • J. M. BARNES IN "A PRISONER FOB 1.UT." . 150 FRED ARCHES (1885) ...... 158 CHARLES ii. E, BROOKFIELD as TRIPLET . 155 KR8. JOHN DREW AS MRS. KALAPROP . 190 I'.nniN BOOTH ....... 193 J. 11. BARNES AS MICHAEL DENNIS (" HER ADVOCATE ") 205 J. II. BARNES AS HINDERS (" PROFESSOR'S LOVE STORY ") 20G J. II. BARNES AS W.M.. DRURY LANE LODGE, NO. 2127, i.a.m 244 J. II. BARNES AS JOHN PEERYBINGLE (" THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH ') . 2G7 .1. II. BARNES IN "THE FINISHING SCHOOL" . 269 .1. II. BARNES AS 1 ATIIER DEMPSEY (" JOHN BULL'S OTHER ISLAND") ....... 278 J. H. BARNES AS ROEBUCK RAMSDEN (" .MAN AND SUPER- MAN*) 280 .). II. BARNES AS FATHER JOSEPH (" RICHELIEU ") . 290 SIR JOHNSTON FORBES-ROBERTSON AS HAMLET AND J. H. BARNES AS POLONIUS .... 306 FORTY YEARS ON THE STAGE " I think I hear the reader say, What ! another actor's reminiscences ? " and I am fain to admit that there has been a plentiful crop of them in the last few years. Let me hasten to give my reason and ask excuse for adding mine to the list. In some articles I wrote on stage matters in the Nineteenth Century a few years ago, I was able to say with perfect truth, " I have never been interviewed. I have never inspired a paragraph. I have never made speeches," and I may add I have never been photographed except at the request of my manager at the time. I was taught, in my early days on the stage, that the actor's duty was behind the proscenium, and that his best and most telling pronouncements were those made when the curtain was up. In that faith I have lived and worked earnestly and sincerely. It is an old-fashioned and out-of-date creed in these self- asserting days, but in the autumn of one's career it is too late to change, and it follows as a matter of course that I am not one of those who consider their lives, their doings or their thoughts of general or public interest. But in my forty-odd years on the stage I have been brought in contact, and in a representative — — FORTY YEARS ON THE STAGE capacity, with nearly every great artist, male and female, on both sides of the Atlantic, and it is of them I propose to write principally. In short, I hope to make my own career a peg on which to hang impressions and anec- dotes of men and women and places and circumstances which can hardly fail to prove entertaining reading for many, both inside and outside my own calling. I shall 4t " nothing extenuate nor set down aught in malice ! First, then, to clear the ground as to myself. I was born in the little old-fashioned town of Watlington, in Oxfordshire, on February 26, 1850. In this quaint, old-world place with its genuine Norman Church tower, its genuine Tudor market-place and its " white chalk mark " on the Chiltern Hills under which it nestles, I passed my childhood. My mother died when I was quite an infant, and under the loving care of a remarkable father, and a dear sister, whom I helped to lay to rest only three years ago, I led the ordinary life of an English country boy. In speaking of my father as " remarkable," I do not think I am over-stating my case. A finer specimen of the best yeoman blood of " Old England " (that blood which has done so much for Britain in the past ages) never lived. Upright, fearless, kindly, courteous and loving, and withal humorous, he was indeed " A man, take him for all in all, I shall not look upon his like again." Had he lived at the right time, he might well have been the original of the line in Gray's " Elegy " " Some village Hampden, that with dauntless breast." He lived respected and beloved, and died regretted by JOHN BARNES OF \\ A'l 1. 1 \< .1 i >N (oxiix) [To face page 3 FORTY YEARS ON THE STAGE 3 all, and it often occurs to me that, if in our last long sleep, we are ever permitted to " revisit the glimpses of the moon," I should rest a little easier and sleep a little happier if I dare hope that my own dear son will be able to remember his father in the same way that I remember mine. There was plenty of grit about him, too ; and often when I have found myself stubbornly resisting humbug and charlatanism, of which the actor's calling presents a goodly variety, I am inclined to think I inherit some of my good father's characteristics in that respect, and I hold to my tenets all the more strongly. So much for my father. I make no apology for the enthusiasm. If the expression, " a nature's noble- man," was ever justified, he was a notable instance. For myself, I went to the only really fairly good school there was in the neighbourhood, without any particular distinction except one. I had quite an extraordinarily good memory. My brother, a little older than myself, had frightful trouble with his lessons. I could always study mine (and be quite perfect) on the three-quarters of a mile of road that lay between my home and the school. One instance of this is perhaps worth relating as strongly bearing on my future. Our master was fond of poetry and recitations, etc., and we used to have one afternoon every second week devoted to such studies. I was rather known as the Reciting Boy. On one occasion our master said he considered that Milton was perhaps the finest and also the most difficult blank verse to commit to memory, and he would give a special prize to any boy who would commit the first book of Paradise Lost to memory within the term. On i FORTY YEARS ON THE STAGE the eighteenth day from the time he said it I repeated the whole of the first book, and I still have the little school prize book bearing this inscription on the fly- leaf— "' Presented to John Barnes as a reward for his com- pliance with a wish that he should commit the first book of Milton to memory—expressed by his friend and tutor, " Joseph Brothwood. " Christinas, 1861." Considering that I was then eleven and a half years old it might be considered an achievement. How this memory was to serve me in after years in the career I was to choose for myself I shall have more than one occasion to refer to. The agricultural depression that set in in Great Britain about the middle of the nineteenth century, caused by so much cultivation of food products in other parts of the world, and the consequent lowering of prices of the home-grown articles, caught my father (amongst many others) in its toils, and " times " became bad in the old home, and it was advisable (indeed, necessary) for me to consider what I was going to do for a living. Those were the days of firm apprenticeships in busi- ness, and, following in the footsteps of an elder brother, it was arranged for me to go to London and take my place in a business house. This was when I was thirteen years old only. And within a few months an event occurred which was destined to have an enormous influence on my after life. One Sunday morning I found myself attending the Photo] IF. H. Fry J. C. M. BELLEW ( To lace page 5 FORTY YEARS ON THE STAGE 5 service in Bloomsbury Chapel, of which the Rev. J. C. M. Bellew was the pastor. Bloomsbury Chapel, long since pulled down, was situated to the south-west of New Oxford Street, in Bloomsbury Street, on the site of what is now a clothing store, etc. Its pastor was a most extraordinary man—well known as a great reader on both sides of the Atlantic and in India. His was undoubtedly one of the most attractive person- alities conceivable. With a juvenile set of features, of great character, and white hair, which lay wherever he chose to shake it, and a wonderfully beautiful hand, his appearance alone arrested attention. Add to this a glorious voice, capable of modulation and vibration to every kind of emotion and character, and the fact that he was the very best reader and elocutionist that I have ever heard down to to-day, and his magnetism and charm may be fairly estimated.
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