ROBERT WILLIAMS BUCHANAN (1841 - 1901)

Pillicoddy, Buchanan and Jay

Extracts from the ‘Round About’ column of The Stage, written by ‘Pillicoddy’, with references to Robert Buchanan and Harriett Jay:

The Stage (7 November, 1918 - p.9)

     So many American producers are over here that it seems like a golden chance for a good English producer to create a new atmosphere on the American stage. I am convinced the opportunity is not lacking, but, as the late Robert Buchanan once said to me, “the clever man makes the opportunity.”

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The Stage (4 September, 1919 - p.15)

     It is astonishing to note from what right causes inspiration comes to authors. During the rehearsals of a play by Robert Buchanan some years ago, the author complained that the incidental music did not quite carry out his idea of the support that the music should give to the scene, and over lunch he hummed a tune to me that he considered would be of very great value to the scene. The air seemed familiar, and I asked him had he composed it. “No,” he answered; “I heard it sung by a woman with a guitar, outside the Adelphi, to the queue waiting to go into the pit and gallery, but I don’t know the name of it, and cannot trace its origin. I tried to find the woman, but she must have moved off to a more successful production elsewhere. You know the itinerant singers are a wonderful guide as to the success or failure of a play—the moment they find the gallery and pit dropping off, they immediately, by some strange instinct, disappear, taking their rivals with them, it seems.” We discussed the matter at length, and I promised to find out who the song was by, and, if possible, secure it. Buchanan’s parting words were: “Don’t forget! That music of the people inspired the scene, and without that music the scene would never have been written.”

* * *

     I searched in vain, but could not get any idea of either the song or the singer, although I hummed it to everyone I knew. In due course, the play was produced, minus the inspiring music, and it was not one of the outstanding successes of the time. How much this was due to the lack of sympathetic music I do not know, although I do know there seemed to be something missing—something we wanted and could not get—which depressed the author very much. In the end it was forgotten, as these things are usually forgotten, and we all got busy on other plays, other ideas, and other hopes. Some months later I had occasion to visit a south-side music-hall, and, arriving in the middle of the performance, was surprised to hear the identical song Buchanan had hummed over to me. It was known by the common-place title of “Three Pots a Shilling,” the plaintive song of a flower-seller lamenting the decline of summer. It was a curiously tender refrain written by a man who didn’t know a note of music, Harry Bedford, that excellent comic singer and dancer. In a chat with him some years later, he told me he got the air from a few bars in a song in one of the old Boucicault Irish dramas, and was surprised and gratified to find from me that so eminent an author as Buchanan had felt its influence.

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* * *

     Are we in for a fresh crop of “Cromwells.” The papers during the week have mentioned several Cromwells of the past, but I have not noticed any reference to the late Robert Buchanan’s Adelphi production of “The White Rose,” wherein Charles Cartwright was a notable Cromwell. Mrs. Pat Campbell, Evelyn Millard, and Clara Jecks were also in the cast. Flockton, a well-known actor of his day, also did a play on this subject. Victor Hugo’s famous “Cromwell,” an early specimen of the romantic school that arose about ninety years ago, has had its influence on our drama to this day. The danger of a Cromwellian subject is that the author is liable to “take sides,” and so offend half the audience. Doubtless, John Drinkwater will avoid this risk.

                                                                                                                                               PILLICODDY.

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The Stage (19 August, 1920 - p.15)

. . . Why shouldn’t one be commercial? There is nothing mean or sordid in looking after one’s interests. It’s done in every other branch of life without comment, and no excuse of “artistic temperament” will efface it.
     Robert Buchanan, the great poet, was a splendid business man when he negotiated for his work. Not that he was mean or small minded, for he gave most of his money away as he got it, but if he hadn’t made good contracts he wouldn’t have had the money to give away, and one of his big pleasures in life would have been denied him.

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The Stage (13 April, 1922 - p.15)

     It was a great day for old Drury, and revived many a memory of mine of times that are gone, when I visited the theatre in old John Coleman’s time. I remember on one occasion I was in a box with Robert Buchanan the poet, and Coleman sent round for us and insisted upon our “cracking a bottle for luck” in the dingy old property room. This was served in old pewter pots that had done honourable service for many a long year, and had earned their living by appearing in many an old drama with sorry substitute wine, whereas at last they were brought out to do the real thing; but, strange to say, it tasted like property wine on this occasion.

                                                                                                                                               PILLICODDY.

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The Stage (14 September, 1922 - p.15)

ROUND ABOUT.

     I suppose the disappearance of the Café Royal from our midst will not mean so much nowadays as it would have done, say, twenty years ago. The Café Royal is really one of the most familiar landmarks of London, and is known in all parts of the world. I was a very young man when first taken there by Robert Buchanan, the poet and dramatist, and was truly fascinated by the to me quite regal surroundings and the hosts of celebrities on every side of me. Everyone of note seemed to be there, including a sprinkling of the extremist section of advanced literature and art, and many eccentrics I had previously come in contact with at the Solferino, with its mirrored ceilings and walls, wherein they seemed to make their home. Apart from the artistic side of the Café Royal patrons, there was also the prosperous stockbroker, very much in evidence during the height of the Kaffir boom, mostly attracted there by the report that “Nichol possessed the finest cellars in London, by Gad, sir,” which was certainly true at the time, and I am told it has retained this distinct merit.

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The Stage (10 January, 1924 - p.17)

     The following letter from Mr. Shear is of great interest to me, reviving, as it does, memories of the struggles of the giants of the past. “Venderdecken” was one of the few Irving failures at the Lyceum, when everyone thought it would be one of his great successes. “The Flying Dutchman” of Robert Buchanan might have been the great success for which Herman Vezin waited so long. Who knows? There is tragedy always in the telling of lost chances, and that fine actor, Herman Vezin, seemed to be always losing them. Such is fate. I am always glad to hear from Mr. Shear, who is a chronicler from the pure love of the theatre, and his letters of correction are always welcome on that account; but in this particular instance I was referring to the modernised version of “The Flying Dutchman,” in which Vanderdecken appears part of the time in modern garb, and this was written from the old version to suit Beerbohm Tree.
     Your true dramatist seldom wastes good material, and after one or two successes under the Tree management, Buchanan prepared Vanderdecken to fit in with Tree’s modern style of production, still retaining parts of the old version wherein Tree’s versatility would find full scope. The Compliments of the Season to you, Mr. Shear, and many of them.

Playgoers’ Club,
     20, Cranbourne Street,
                               W.C.2.
                       Dec. 30, 1923.

Dear Pillicoddy,
     In a letter I received from Herman Vezin, in June, 1878, occurs the following:—
     “The fact is Robert Buchanan wrote a ‘Flying Dutchman’ for the Queen’s when I was there to suit the company. I think it a magnificent play, and that it would have saved the theatre, but the malign influence that suggested the production of a series of bad plays at that theatre first accepted, then rejected the ‘F.D.’ It was a great pity, but the failure of ‘Vanderdecken’ still leaves a field for Buchanan’s play. When my luck turns I may have a chance with it.—Yours,
                                                                                                                               “(Sgd.) HERMAN VEZIN.”
     The theatre mentioned was the old Queen’s, in Long Acre, then under the management of Mr. Henry Labouchere, and “Vanderdecken” had just previously been produced by Henry Irving at the Lyceum. Beerbohm Tree was just emerging from the ranks of the amateurs. With best wishes for the New Year, yours faithfully,
                                                                                                                               (Sgd.) EDWIN H. SHEAR.

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The Stage (4 September, 1924 - p.15)

     Some years ago, in the stalls of the Kingsway, during one of Laurence Irving’s first nights, Miss Harriet Jay remarked to me, “Who is that beautiful girl who came on as though she had bought the place?” After inspecting the programme I told her it was Mary Forbes. “Wouldn’t she be splendid in the leading part in my new play? I must meet her.” I don’t know what came of it, but I didn’t see Miss Forbes for several years, although I heard many good accounts of her performance in “The Terrorist,” a vivid one-act Russian play by Laurence Irving in which he shared the lead. Now I hear she has returned to England, and is not only to appear at the new venture at the Grand, Fulham, with the Partnership Players, but is also to be married to Charles Quartermaine.

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The Stage (8 July, 1926 - p.15)

     It is strange that after years of silence the mere fact of one of his plays being revived, if only at the Elephant and Castle Theatre, should draw so much attention to Robert Buchanan, the poet and dramatist, and his works. “A Man’s Shadow” was only an adaptation of his, of the Ambigu production “Roger la Honte,” but he was so clever at this craft that his adaptations came out, as a rule, largely original work. He certainly put original thought into them. It is strange to relate that “A Man’s Shadow” was originally produced at the Elephant and Castle in 1888 for copyright performance before going to the Haymarket in 1889. A contemporary says:—
     “Buchanan’s career was extraordinary, for he actually came to London with the traditional half-crown in his pocket. Before he ‘arrived’ he used to write reviews for the Athenæum, then edited by Hepworth Dixon, at half-a-guinea a column, and for the Literary Gazette, then edited by John (Lord) Morley, at seven-and-six. Long after, Lord Morley wrote to him: ‘I well remember when you, a boy, came to me, a boy, in Catherine Street.’”

     I can supplement this out of Buchanan’s own mouth. He told me that when he made his way from Glasgow without any money he should have been accompanied by another young poet, Robert Grey, but the latter failed him at the last moment. Nothing daunted, Buchanan came south alone. He had an attic room in Stamford Street, Blackfriars, where he worked all day writing, only emerging in the evening to call upon editors in the vain hope of selling his wares, which meant, on many occasions, that he broke his fast only where he had effected a sale. Many were the adventures he would relate of that sordid district from Blackfriars to Waterloo Bridge, where his sole companions for conversation were the outcasts; and it was on one of these midnight peregrinations that he came across Robert Grey, who had followed him to seek his fortune, but had fallen by the way, and was on the point of starvation when Buchanan met him and took him to his attic, where he had to do double work to provide food for both. One would have thought such experiences would have hardened his nature, and made him mean, or careful in money matters. Not a bit of it. He paid in a princely manner, was a great host, and utterly careless in money matters when fortune came his way and everyone sought his favours. He was a great worker, who never forgot a friend. I have an idea that one day—perhaps not in my time—but some day, the name of Robert Buchanan will again be in the forefront of literary writers. He was one of the few successful dramatists who could evolve drama in poetic thought, and still win the popular verdict.

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The Stage (15 July, 1926 - p.13)

     We all make mistakes at times, especially at this time of the year, when one only desires to get out of one’s flesh and sit in one’s bones. Last week I made a slip when referring to Robert Buchanan; and that excellent actor, Fred Grove, writes to me, “I always read your article with great interest. In to-day’s issue you speak of Robert Buchanan’s friend as Robert Gray, I think it was David. I knew Robert Buchanan well, as I was at the Vaudeville in all his plays there. What a splendid farce was ‘Poor Pillicoddy,’ I feel sure those old farces would go to-day.”

                                                                                                                                               PILLICODDY.

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The Stage (21 October, 1926 - p.15)

     Some people assert that, as Robert Buchanan wrote, “Bohemianism died out when Thackeray got into the habit of going out to dinner in a boiled shirt!” This may be true, or it may not, but we still have Bohemians among us, the oldest at the moment being undoubtedly Odell. There may be older Bohemians, but not active ones, for I heard Odell, who has turned 92, recite the other night a very difficult piece in a flawless manner that would have surprised some of our young jazz actors. Another Bohemian was present in the shape of that lively lad Arthur Roberts, who is rising 76, and Odell, pointing him out to another member of the club, remarked, “That’s Arthur Roberts, a wonderful old man for his age, isn’t he?”

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