The Selected Works of Arnold Bennett: Essays, Personal Development Books & Articles. Arnold Bennett
I made scarcely any friends in the theatre. After all those years of assiduous first-nighting, I was almost as solitary in the auditorium on the evening when I bade a blase adieu to the critical bench as when I originally entered it. I fancied I had wasted my time and impaired my constitution in emulating the achievements of Theophile Gautier, Hazlitt, Francisque Sarcey and M. Jules Lemaitre, to say nothing of Dutton Cook and Mr. Clement Scott. My health may have suffered; but, as it happened, I had not quite wasted my time.
“Why don’t you write a play yourself?”
This blunt question was put to me by a friend, an amateur actor, whom I had asked to get up some little piece or other for an entertainment in the Theatre Royal back-drawing-room of my house.
“Quite out of my line," I replied, and I was absolutely sincere. I had no notion whatever of writing for the stage. I felt sure that I had not the aptitude.
“Nonsense!” he exclaimed. “It’s as easy as falling off a log.”
We argued, and I was on the point of refusing the suggestion, when the spirit of wild adventure overcame me, and I gravely promised my friend that I would compose a duologue if he and his wife would promise to perform it at my party. The affair was arranged. I went to bed with the conviction that in the near future I stood a fair chance of looking an ass. However, I met with what I thought to be an amusing idea for a curtain-raiser the next morning, and in the afternoon I wrote the piece complete. I enjoyed writing it, and as I read it aloud to myself I laughed at it. I discovered that I had violated the great canon of dramatic art,—Never keep your audience in the dark, and this troubled me (Paul Hervieu had not then demonstrated by his L'Énigme that that canon may be broken with impunity); but I could not be at the trouble of reconstructing the whole play for the sake of an Aristotelian maxim. I at once posted the original draft to my friend with this note: “Dear —, Here is the play which last night I undertook to write for you.”
The piece was admirably rendered to an audience of some thirty immortal souls—of course very sympathetic immortal souls. My feelings, as the situation which I had invented gradually developed into something alive on that tiny make-shift stage, were peculiar and, in a way, alarming. Every one who has driven a motor-car knows the uncanny sensation that ensues when for the first time in your life you pull the starting lever, and the Thing beneath you begins mysteriously and formidably to move. It is at once an astonishment, a terror, and a delight. I felt like that as I watched the progress of my first play. It was as though I had unwittingly liberated an energy greater than I knew, actually created something vital. This illusion of physical vitality is the exclusive possession of the dramatist; the novelist, the poet, cannot share it. The play was a delicious success. People laughed so much that some of my most subtle jocosities were drowned in the appreciative cachinnation. The final applause was memorable, at any rate to me. No mere good-nature can simulate the unique ring of genuine applause, and this applause was genuine. It was a microscopic triumph for me, but it was a triumph. Every one said to me: “But you are a dramatist!” “Oh no I” I replied awkwardly; “this trifle is really nothing.” But the still small voice of my vigorous self-confidence said: “Yes, you are, and you ought to have found it out years ago!” Among my audience was a publisher. He invited me to write for him a little book of one-act farces for amateurs; his terms were agreeable. I wrote three such farces, giving two days to each, and the volume was duly published; no book of mine has cost me less trouble. The reviews of it were lavish in praise of my “unfailing wit”; the circulation was mediocre. I was asked by companies of amateur actors up and down the country to assist at rehearsals of these pieces; but I could never find the energy to comply, save once. I hankered after the professional stage. By this time I could see that I was bound to enter seriously into the manufacture of stage-plays. My readers will have observed that once again in my history the inducement to embark for a fresh port had been quite external and adventitious.
I had a young friend with an extraordinary turn for brilliant epigram and an equally extraordinary gift for the devising of massive themes. He showed me one day the manuscript of a play. My faith in my instinct for form, whether in drama or fiction, was complete, and I saw instantly that what this piece lacked was form, which means intelligibility. It had everything except intelligibility. “Look here!” I said to him, “we will write a play together, you and I. We can do something that will knock spots off—” etc. etc. We determined upon a grand drawing-room melodrama which should unite style with those qualities that make for financial success on the British stage. In a few days my friend produced a list of about a dozen “ideas” for the piece. I chose the two largest and amalgamated them. In the confection of the plot, and also throughout the entire process of manufacture, my experience as a dramatic critic proved valuable. I believe my friend had only seen two plays in his life. We accomplished our first act in a month or so, and when this was done and the scenario of the other three written out, we informed each other that the stuff was exceedingly good.
Part of my share in the play was to sell it. I knew but one man of any importance in the theatrical world; he gave me an introduction to the manager of a West End theatre second to none in prestige and wealth. The introduction had weight; the manager intimated by letter that his sole object in life was to serve me, and in the meantime he suggested an appointment. I called one night with our first act and the scenario, and amid the luxuriousness of the managerial room, the aroma of coffee, the odour of Turkish cigarettes, I explained to that manager the true greatness of our play. I have never been treated with a more distinguished politeness; I might have been Victorien Sardou, or Ibsen . . . (no, not Ibsen). In quite a few days the manager telephoned to my office and asked me to call the same evening. He had read the manuscript; he thought very highly of it, very highly. “But—” Woe! Desolation! Dissipation of airy castles! It was preposterous on our part to expect that our first play should be commissioned by a leading theatre. But indeed we had expected this miracle. The fatal “But” arose from a difficulty of casting the principal part; so the manager told me. He was again remarkably courteous, and he assuaged the rigour of his refusal by informing me that he was really in need of a curtain-raiser with a part for a certain actress of his company; he fancied that we could supply him with the desired bibelot; but he wanted it at once, within a week. Within a week my partner and I had each written a one-act play, and in less than a fortnight I received a third invitation to discuss coffee, Turkish cigarettes, and plays. The manager began to talk about the play which was under my own signature.
“Now, what is your idea of terms?” he said, walking to and fro.
“Can it be true,” I thought, “that I have actually sold a play to this famous manager?” In a moment my simple old ambitions burst like a Roman candle into innumerable bright stars. I had been content hitherto with the prospect of some fame, a thousand a year, and a few modest luxuries. But I knew what the earnings of successful dramatists were. My thousand increased tenfold; my mind dwelt on all the complex sybaritism of European capitals; and I saw how I could make use of the unequalled advertisement of theatrical renown to find a ready market for the most artistic fiction that I was capable of writing. This new scheme of things sprang into my brain instantaneously, full-grown.
I left the theatre an accepted dramatist.
It never rains but it pours. My kind manager mentioned our stylistic drawingroom melodrama to another manager with such laudation that the second manager was eager to see it. Having seen it, he was eager to buy it. He gave us a hundred down to finish it in three months, and when we had finished it he sealed a contract for production with another cheque for a hundred. At the same period, through the mediation of the friend who had first introduced me to this world where hundreds were thrown about like fivers, I was commissioned by the most powerful theatrical manager on earth to assist in the dramatization of a successful novel; and this led to another commission of a similar nature, on more remunerative terms. Then a certain management telegraphed for me (in the theatre all business is done by telegraph and cable), and offered me a commission to compress a five-act Old English comedy into three acts.
“We might have offered this to So-and-so or So-and-so,” they said, designating persons of importance. “But we preferred to come to you.”
“I assume my name is to appear?” I said.
But my name was not to appear, and I begged