Delphi Complete Works of Jerome K. Jerome (Illustrated) (Series Four) (515 page)

As already stated one of Jerome’s ambitions was to write a successful play. In 1886 his play
Barbara
was accepted by Charles Hawtrey (afterwards Sir Charles) who thought very highly of it. He offered Jerome a hundred pounds if he would sell the play outright. This was a sore temptation to a young man, still a solicitor’s clerk, with a salary of twenty-five shillings a week; but he wisely refused to sell it. The play had a long run in London. It was performed for years in the provinces, and was a great favourite with amateurs.

In 1888 his one-act play
Sunset
was produced at the Comedy Theatre, and scored its hundredth performance. This play is founded upon Lord Tennyson’s poem “The Sisters”. It was treated, however, with originality of thought, and at the conclusion of the first performance there were loud calls for the author.

His next play was a curtain-raiser,
Fennel.
This was produced at the Novelty Theatre in March, 1888. It is a one-act play adapted from François Coppées’ “The Violin Makers of Cremona”. There was at that time a demand for adaptations; moreover, Shakespeare himself began his career by rehandling plays that were not his own. Jerome carried out his task reverently and preserved the poetic spirit of the original.

Fennel
is a touching story of the self-sacrifice of an old violin-maker. It contains much excellent dialogue, and proves the young adapter to be a dramatist in the true sense of the word.

While
Fennel
was running Mr. Coulson Kernahan, who has since won world-wide fame, wrote the following rondeau, which was published in a stage journal.

“Yes, things are changed! — so changed, in fine,

That folk who fared ertswhile to dine

Till the show farce’s feeble fun,

And vapid, vulgar jokes are done,

Now take their place in rain or shine

At Panton Street, and sit aline

In pit or stall, or boxed recline,

And all to see the raiser run,

   Yes, things are changed.

Yes, they are changed, let me entwine

A moral with this song of mine —

No more the ‘Curtain-raiser’ shun,

Go to see
Fennel,
take your son,

Be there at eight, and leave at nine,

For things ARE changed!”

Jerome wrote another little piece, entitled
Pity is Akin to Love,
which was performed as a curtain-raiser at the “Olympic” in September of the same year.

It must be borne in mind that all the above-mentioned plays were produced in London theatres while Jerome was still in his twenties. Bernard Shaw, J. M. Barrie, and John Galsworthy were all in their thirties when they attained that coveted honour.

Jerome had therefore made a good start towards the goal at which he was aiming. To have advanced so rapidly proves that he had method in his work. Life is very like a battle. There must be a plan of campaign; but no general can foresee to what extent his plan may be rendered useless. Neither can any man trying to reach his ideal foresee how future events, or the influence of inherited tendencies, may thwart his plan.

Jerome had met with obstacles which would have disheartened a weaker man, but, strengthened by adversity, he rose superior to them.

Up to this period he had forged ahead single-handed. Henceforward, as seen in the last chapter, he was to have the assistance of a devoted wife.

New Lamps for Old
was produced in 1890. The cast included W. E. Penley and Bernard Partridge (afterwards knighted). Later it was taken to America by Augustus Daly, where it proved a great attraction.

In 1891 his three-act play
Woodbarrow Farm
was produced at the Comedy Theatre. This was more ambitious than any of his previous plays, and certainly contained merit far in advance of most new productions of that period. It has a capital story with many touches of pathos, as well as much humour of the best quality. At one moment the audience is moved to tears, then it rocks with laughter; there are no dull moments. At the conclusion of the first performance the author was called to the stage and offered the hearty congratulation of the crowded audience. This play afterwards had a successful run in America.

There is a little romance in connection with
Woodbarrow Farm
that must be recorded. This play was running in the provinces and Miss Mary Ansell was acting in it. At the same time J. M. Barrie was producing
Walker, London.
He asked Jerome if he could recommend him a leading lady. She was to be “young, beautiful, charming, a genius, and able to flirt.” Jerome could think of no one except Mary Ansell. He was anxious to help Barrie. He also thought it would be a good thing for Miss Ansell. He therefore cancelled the contract and released his most important actress. The next time they met, Barrie introduced her to Jerome as his wife.

Jerome wrote several plays in collaboration with other dramatists. The first time he did this was with Mr. Addison Bright in a play they wrote for Miss Eastlake, a popular actress of the day, who was Wilson Barrett’s leading lady. Then he joined Mr. Haddon Chambers, a leading pre-war dramatist, in writing a play specially for America. By this time Jerome’s name was well-known there. He was paid a good sum for it, but it was never produced. He also collaborated with Mr. Eden Phillpotts in
The Prude’s Progress
and
The Mac Haggis.
Finally he joined Mr. Justin McCarthy in another play for New York, which also came to nothing. Jerome remarked that the failures seemed always to be the ones he loved best.

Jerome himself did not like collaborations. He jokingly said: “It was like the old tandem bicycle; each man thinks he is doing all the work.” A deeper reason was probably the difficulty in keeping the aesthetic imagination of two men, when under the stimulus of emotion, under equal control. There is, of course, the classic example of collaboration in Beaumont and Fletcher of Shakespeare’s time. Their dramas are generally regarded as being among the finest in the world after those of Shakespeare. These two poets were closely allied spiritually, as well as being fellow-students, lifelong co-workers, and close friends.

Jerome and Phillpotts, too, had much in common. One was a bishop’s grandson, the other, the son of a Congregational minister. They both had dramatic instincts, and were great friends. Their play,
The Prude’s Progress,
met with a large measure of success. Wherever it was performed there were crowded houses. It has a cleverly evolved story and is lit up with wit and humour, and was one of the smartest and brightest comedies then running.

The Mac Haggis
of these two dramatists had a successful, but brief, existence. The good people of those days were shocked when, for the first time, the principal actress rode a bicycle and smoked a cigarette on the stage. W. E. Penley was running it, but, owing to illness, which turned out to be mental, he suddenly closed the theatre.

The Rise of Dick Halward
was Jerome’s play entirely, and was produced in 1896. There was a good deal of dissatisfaction with the unwholesomeness of some of the drama of the day. The public, therefore, turned with pleasure to such a story as was told in this play.

“Dick met with temptations and fell; but rose each time he fell. In the story Jerome sounded the old-fashioned note that ‘honesty is the best policy’; only the note was sounded in a new key. Human weakness and sorrows were the material in which he worked, as, indeed, all writers must who seek to touch the emotions. But he took care to show that the fallen could always ‘rise on stepping-stones of their dead selves to higher things’.”

There are in this play interesting episodes, a healthy morality and a genial vein of humour. Indeed, it was to London as a breath of fresh air. The warm reception given to the
Rise of Dick Halward
by London playgoers, and the generous appreciation expressed by the dramatic critic of
The Times
and other London journals, might reasonably have given Jerome the idea that he had reached his goal as a successful dramatist. But he had greater heights to climb.

Jerome, like other dramatists, had some trouble with theatrical managers. He himself always stood for sincerity in all work. He believed that if a play was to be successful it should be so as a specimen of sincere dramatic literature.

When Wagner adapted the symphony to opera, he accomplished exactly what literary people desire to see accomplished in a play. Theatrical managers said: “That is all very well; but so far as we are concerned, we want the play to be successful whether it is literature or not. We can’t go on if the theatre doesn’t pay.” The public generally did not demand literature on the stage. They were, rather, bent upon being amused. Jerome’s great gift of humour easily enabled him to amuse an audience; but he believed he could not only amuse people, but make them think; and, at all costs, he had to be true to his ideals. When he had really seen and felt something that appealed to his imagination, he put it on the stage in such a way as to make other people feel it regardless as to whether it would pay or not. The reward he most cared for was that awarded by his own conscience when his work rang true.

Honour
(adapted from the German of Sudermann) came next. This was followed by
Miss Hobbs,
which was produced in America and was a big success. It also became very popular in Russia and Italy, and, perhaps, even more popular still in Germany. Mr. Jerome was staying in Dresden at the time and the Kaiser sent him his congratulations through an official of the Saxon Court.
Miss Hobbs
was Jerome’s first real moneymaking success.

Tommy
is a three-act play and a clever adaptation by Mr. Jerome himself of his book “Tommy and Co”.

The Passing of the Third Floor Back calls for special notice.

Students of Shakespeare state that by the time he wrote
The Merchant of Venice
the great dramatist had acquired a thorough mastery of his art.
The Passing of the Third Floor Back
similarly revealed the fact that Jerome had thoroughly mastered the difficult technique of the playwright.

One winter’s night he followed a stooping figure through the foggy streets of London. The man paused every now and then to look up at a door. Jerome never saw the man’s face, but for some unaccountable reason his imagination was stirred by the striking figure and strange clothing. The man passed out of sight in the thick fog.
The Passing of the Third Floor Back
grew out of this incident. It was first written as a story, but he was advised to alter it into a play. Jerome said: “It was not an easy play to write; I had to feel it rather than think it.” It was written in a lonely country place, the serenity of which was helpful.

He was conscious that he was working upon a great theme, and that it was his supreme effort to bring to the drama that important quality, sincerity. He well knew the vicissitudes through which the drama had passed. That as early as the twelfth century a drama was used by the priests as a mode of teaching the people a knowledge of religion. That the Elizabethan period was the high tide of English drama, which ended with Charles I. That the Puritans prohibited plays of all kinds and theatres were closed. That under Charles II the drama reappeared, but with a licentiousness unequalled by that of any other Christian country; and that, later, such men as Cibber, Congreve, and Sheridan did much to improve matters. The improvement, no doubt, continued during the nineteenth century, and in Jerome’s time dramatists were becoming more serious and sincere in their work, and the public had become more ready to support their efforts. The time, therefore, was ripe for such a play as “The Passing”.

The lodgers in a sordid Bloomsbury boardinghouse are visited by a “Stranger”, who is, in fact, the better self, or the real self of each. The personality of Christ was undoubtedly in Jerome’s mind when he adumbrated the part of the “Stranger”.

When asked, as he often was, who the stranger represented, he always replied that he preferred people to form their own opinions. Those who were in close touch with him at the time state that he hesitated to put words into the mouth of any great man; least of all would he venture to do so with Jesus of Nazareth.

This Christ-like Stranger, who comes mysteriously upon the scene, occupies the back room of the third floor of the lodging-house. The character of “The Stranger” is conceived quite apart from theology and dogma; it is more in the spirit of that fine line of poetry: “The first true gentleman that ever breathed.”

In the boarding-house there are a Cheat, a Slut, a Bully, a Painted Lady, a Hussy, a Rogue, and a Cad. Into this welter of sensuality and selfishness “The Stranger” brings an atmosphere of mutual kindness and forbearance, of honesty and courage, of clean living and love. He gives expression to deep, yet simple religious sentiments, the energy of which brings about the regeneration of the whole of the mercenary inmates. After this he passes on as mysteriously as he came.

This was a daring experiment, and might have led to disaster, but Jerome most skilfully steered clear of all rocks of offence. Much has been said about “art for art’s sake”, but here is “art for humanity’s sake”.

The dialogue of this play is worthy of study. Dramatic dialogue is perhaps the most difficult part of the literary art. The playwright will pause many times, hesitating between putting another word here, or taking one out there. The true literary play is one in which a word cannot be added or subtracted without deterioration. Another feature of this play is that it can never be dull to any part of the house. Some plays contain parts which are unintelligible to the illiterate, and touch neither their hearts nor heads. But “The Passing” appeals as powerfully to the humble artizan, or the domestic servant, as to the highly educated.

The part of “The Stranger” calls for elocutionary technique of the finest order, and it was vitally important that an actor should be found who could feel and interpret the part with sufficient fervour.