© R S Denton August 2013
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ACT 1 SCENE 3: 28 Dec 1881 – from Patience to Iolanthe
(The curtain is down, Carte enters in front of the curtain to some recorded applause)
Carte My Lords, Ladies and Gentlemen. You are present at an extremely auspicious moment. You are being given a glimpse of the future for theatre.
As you may know, when the Savoy Theatre opened its doors just two months ago it was the first theatre, nay the first public building, ever to be illuminated by electric lighting. We viewed it as an experiment and therefore still retained the gas lighting for use if the electrical system failed.
For those here present with an interest or some knowledge in engineering science, it is lit by one thousand two hundred incandescent lamps made by Messrs J W Swan of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, the electricity is supplied by 120 horse-power steam engines located on open ground adjacent to the theatre.
As you might appreciate this was an enormous technical undertaking and initially we took the decision to continue in the short term with gas lighting for the stage area and to use electric lighting only in the auditorium.
The new lighting not only improved the illumination but also the atmosphere in the auditorium. Unhelpfully a gas light consumes the same amount of oxygen as several people while adding unhelpful smells and increasing the heat for the audience. Our new incandescent lamps give off little heat, do not consume oxygen and do not create a smell.
Tonight, during this matinee performance on Wednesday the 28th December 1881 we are proud to announce the stage area from here on in will be lit electrically. Let me assure you that this new lighting is perfectly safe. As you can see I have wrapped a muslin cloth around this lamp while it is switched on. (He takes out a hammer and smashes the bulb). As you can see the broken lamp is extinguished but it has not even singed the muslin.
Tomorrow too is an important moment for Gilbert and Sullivan’s ‘Patience’ it will be the performance of Patience here in London and its 100th performance at the Standard Theatre in New York. To mark this occasion we have prepared a souvenir programme and as you leave the theatre you will have the opportunity to acquire a copy.
My sincerest apologies for delaying your entertainment, I will now hand over the stage to ‘Patience, or Bunthorne’s Bride’.
(Carte exits to cheers, returns for two calls before he leaves the curtain lifts to the set of Patience)
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Patience: I cannot tell what this love may be
PATIENCE: ANGELA: PATIENCE: ANGELA: SAPHIR: PATIENCE: CHORUS: PATIENCE: CHORUS: ANGELA: PATIENCE: SAPHIR: |
(The curtain drops and a table setting with a wood panelling surround moves in from one side. It is mid-1894 – the Savoy Grill – Carte, Shaw and Wilde are sat at a table. During the dialogue they are served.)
Carte I took the liberty of inviting Oscar to join us for lunch here at the Grill.
Shaw He is most welcome.
Wilde Who am I to refuse a meal prepared by Auguste Escoffier? He and your invention of the after-theatre supper have raised the standards of gastronomy in London.
Carte You two know each other of course?
Shaw There does appear to be some belief that everyone from the old country must know every other. But of course in this case we have met several times before. Carte, you provide management for Wilde I believe? (Carte nods)
Carte The additional six chapters of ‘The Importance of Being Earnest’ are coming along?
Wilde They progress, but it becomes difficult to concentrate. I cannot help but keep returning to the Marquess of Queensberry’s recent tirade. Last month he turned up unannounced at Tite Street. He burst in and spluttering foul words and loathsome threats, “I do not say that you are it, but you look it, and pose at it, which is just as bad. And if I catch you and my son again in any public restaurant I will thrash you.”
Shaw And reported far and wide that you showed the white feather!
Wilde Far from it I replied, “I don’t know what the Queensberry rules are, but the Oscar Wilde rule is to shoot on sight.”
Carte How is Bosie taking it?
Wilde He is wonderful, as always. (He looks off wistfully.)
Carte (Embarrassed he turns to Shaw) Receipts for ‘Arms and the Man’ are still strong?
Shaw Yes and plans for taking it to New York are well in hand.
Carte Oscar, we were discussing the trials and tribulations that arose between Gilbert and Sullivan.
Wilde Let me declare that there is absolutely no truth in the rumours circulating that my new play ‘The Importance of Being Earnest’ was in any manner inspired by Gilbert’s ‘Engaged’, I absolutely refute the claim that I have borrowed several incidents from it. I plan for ‘Earnest’ to open next year.
Carte Oscar’s arrival in to our discussion is impeccable because of course the next G&S piece to consider, ‘Patience’, and the personage of Oscar Wilde are so inextricably intertwined.
Shaw I thought Gilbert denied modelling Bunthorne on Wilde?
Wilde (With a clear glint in his eye) You see it is Gilbert that is plagiarising me, for ‘Earnest’ is about bunburying, Bunthorne can only be a direct allusion to my work!
Shaw (Realises Carte is not familiar with the term) It’s a term for a person who maintains two different lives, two different personas, one while in town and quite another when in country. It permits the individual to avoid the normal social constraints.
Carte (He takes this in, but moves on) Gilbert insists that he did not aim to parody an individual, he wanted to enlist George du Maurier’s assistance, to draw upon the many characters in his Punch cartoons. But he realised that Edward Burne-Jones paintings provided him all that he might require. Certainly the costumes were purchased from the new Regent Street store, Liberty’s, to seek to emulate those paintings.
Wilde I believe that Grossmith in playing Bunthorne has effected the mannerisms, dress and features rather more like that of James Whistler. I always believed myself to be more the Grosvenor character than Bunthorne himself. Grosvenor says something about his irksome gifts being for the enjoyment and delectation of others. In that one line Gilbert captured the essence of me!
Carte I believe that he wished to create a character composed of many aesthetes. The poet Charles Algernon Swinburne influenced him too; at one stage the character Grosvenor’s first name was stated as Algernon. But of course he originally planned his protagonists as curates, based on his Bab Ballad ‘The Rival Curates’, but he feared he might be attacked for blasphemy.
Shaw Ah! All great truths begin as blasphemies!
Carte By switching his attention to aesthetes he could freely use his words to challenge their affectations, the so-called stained-glass poses adopted by followers of the movement, without fear of complaint.
Shaw But Oscar, you styled yourself as the ‘Professor of Aesthetics’, so it is little wonder that the common assumption is that Bunthorne is you.
Wilde Gilbert and I met on one occasion and he stated, quite rudely I thought, ‘I wish I could talk like you. I’d keep my mouth shut and claim it as a virtue’. I replied ‘Ah, but that would be selfish! I could deny myself the pleasure of talking, but not to others the pleasure of listening!’
Carte I can imagine his reaction to that. But I was not referring to the general view of Bunthorne being Wilde. The two are as much interwoven because I arranged for Oscar a lecture tour of America, promoting him as the ‘originator of the aesthetic idea’ and to talk about the English Renaissance. It launched him there while preparing the ground for ‘Patience’ to follow.
Wilde I did notice that my speaking engagements appeared to presage your touring companies arrival into a city! Eleven months, 140 lectures, 15,000 miles travelled yet I was merely a sandwich-board man for the opera. But then I love talking about nothing, for it is the only thing I know anything about.
Shaw Was it this New York tour where you stated to the American customs man that you had nothing to declare but your genius?
Wilde I also suggested that America had never been discovered, but had merely been detected.
Carte Let us not underestimate the power of what you achieved, America was recovering from the horrors of its Civil War and you helped to fashion it so that it would appreciate art and beauty rather than mere materialism.
Wilde (Wilde waves a dismissal arm, but clearly enjoys the praise.) It was not without danger too. As I arrived in New York they were holding the trial of the assassin of their President Garfield and one of my lectures in the Wild West took place just two weeks after the famous outlaw Jesse James had been betrayed and killed by someone he believed to be a friend. At some stage Mr P T Barnum even offered me £200 if I would ride Jumbo the Elephant while holding a sunflower!
Carte I have little doubt however that ‘Patience’ helped Oscar and vice versa Oscar sustained an interest in ‘Patience’, they each profited from the other.
Shaw But Oscar were you not offended by the allusions in Patience?
Wilde Not at all, in fact I attended its opening night and absolutely enjoyed the whole experience. I think if you look closely at the show’s audiences you will see that it is very popular among the aesthetic community; for they abhor moderation, nothing succeeds like excess!
Carte The Company issued a statement before the show to explain we were not ridiculing the true aesthetic spirit, merely those who masqueraded in its likeness.
Shaw I believe that the absolute joy in the opera is when the aesthetic poet with all his affectations is confronted by one of Gilbert’s standard paragons, the innocent who has absolutely no appreciation of the point or purpose of the aesthete.
(Curtain rises to the Patience set as the Savoy Grill set slides off)
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Patience: Bunthorne’s Poem BUNTHORNE: ANGELA: SAPHIR: BUNTHORNE: (to Patience) PATIENCE: (much frightened) BUNTHORNE: PATIENCE: BUNTHORNE: “Oh, Hollow! Hollow! Hollow!” What time the poet hath hymned When from the poet’s plinth Is it, and can it be, (Exit Bunthorne) ANGELA: SAPHIR: PATIENCE: SAPHIR: |
(Curtain comes down and Savoy Grill set moves in)
Shaw I believe that there was some chance that you three, the author, the composer and the manager, might have been broken asunder on your return to the UK, Patience might never have been.
Carte I came back from ‘Pirates’ in America fully expecting that we would pursue together the spirit of our agreement. Gilbert afforded me no credit for my ‘copyright’ in the development of the English comedy opera, when I had spent a full decade to bring this about. He may have believed that another could have done this, but the plain truth is that they did not. I wrote to them clearly explaining why a man of salary could not have achieved what I did.
Shaw Nor did he credit you for the work you did to get them together, and keep them together!
Carte I had been hurt by Gilbert’s comment in New York that they might take their own theatre and employ some other manager. As soon as I was back he changed our agreement expecting quarterly payments instead of waiting until the end of the run. He became increasingly dissatisfied with the accounts we prepared. He would argue about a paltry sum of £50 expended in a period of nine months that had turned over £30,000.
Wilde Did Sullivan not come to your aid?
Carte Sullivan was concentrating on his ‘Martyr of Antioch’ and so offered no mediation, or even comment! In fact he also left me having to fund his legal action against the Comedy Opera Company. I paid his solicitor twenty guineas when there was no expectation of me sharing in any damages he might derive from the action.
Shaw Yet his ‘Martyr of Antioch’ was not particularly well received?
Carte At one stage he showed me his accounts for the year of 1880, an overall income of a little under £10,000 from which a sum of less than £300 earned for his teaching at the school of music, some £300 for his Leeds Festival work, around £40 each from ‘Cox & Box’ and his work on the Tennyson poems. Thus £13 in every £14 he earned that year was from his work with Gilbert.
Shaw Back then that was a very comfortable living; probably twice what Gladstone earned as the British prime minister. Though of course Disraeli supplemented his salary with his writing.
Carte The time he spent on ‘Antioch’ merely served to underline his growing belief that he should seek to spend most of his attention on grand works and not prostitute himself on comic opera. On the day after the opening of ‘Patience’, Sullivan advised me that he would write only one more piece with Gilbert and that he planned to concentrate for the future on Grand Opera.
Shaw Neither of them credited you for founding the new school of English comic opera, and your raising it to the standard of a fine art. You had plans of your own of course?
Carte I had taken both Gilbert and Sullivan to see the land that I intended to buy well before we went to America. I explained that I planned a theatre behind my offices in the Beaufort Building, but they showed no interest in investing in it. Michael Gunn who had run the touring companies in Britain and had looked after the Opéra Comique while I was away in America, not only invested himself but helped me in attracting other businessmen to the project.
Shaw You would have liked them as partners in the Savoy Theatre?
Carte Of course, it was being built largely to house their future works! But Gilbert mistrusted me to handle our accounts, he therefore could not see my plans in a favourable light. But my Savoy Theatre could seat thirteen hundred, the Opéra Comique fewer than nine hundred. I never even bothered to explain my subsequent plans for the Savoy Hotel.
Wilde I have always believed that in person Gilbert is very like a number of his more military comic characters.
(Curtain rises to the Patience set as the Savoy Grill set slides off)
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Patience: The Heavy Dragoon Song COLONEL: CHORUS: COLONEL: CHORUS: COLONEL: CHORUS: |
(Curtain comes down and Savoy Grill set moves in)
Shaw In the event your Court case with the Comedy Opera Company was something of a pyrrhic victory?
Carte Yes the Judge ruled for us concluding that either the ‘Pinafore’ run had ended at Christmas when the Ministry of Works closed the theatre or the summer after we changed theatres. But he awarded just one shilling in damages. Had he awarded more it would have had no effect because the Comedy Opera Company was wound up a matter of weeks later.
Shaw So had you insisted upon a full share in the damages this would have amounted to four pence! In preparing for this meeting I notice that you claim ‘Pinafore’ had 571 performances, so in point of fact the Court was incorrect to conclude that its run had ended after just 250!
Carte I spent very little time worrying about this. If I talk only of the work that I was doing for Gilbert and Sullivan; I was managing companies performing ‘Sorcerer’, ‘Pinafore’ and ‘Pirates’ around the country; I had four provincial touring companies of ‘Patience’ to organise; I had to arrange for its opening in the Standard Theatre in New York. All the while completing the building work, and finalising the move of the London production of ‘Patience’ across to the Savoy. Not to forget all the effort we applied to license amateur theatrical societies, few appreciated how valuable this would become, not just in the sales of the libretti and scores, the rental of band parts, but they also assisted greatly in nurturing the growth of interest in English comic opera.
Shaw Did ‘Patience’ move to the Savoy without difficulty?
Carte It was very smooth, in fact the only late problem we had was when Sullivan inspected the orchestra pit and we had to raise it by eight inches upon his request. At the time he was burning the candle at both ends. He conducted the opening night at the Savoy then caught the midnight train to Norwich where he had a festival rehearsal at 10am. Gilbert did his usual trick of walking the nearby streets while the show was being performed, arriving back just in time for his curtain call and encores.
Wilde One thing I never enjoyed in the piece was Gilbert’s cruel attack on the lady who was passing her prime, it was terribly hurtful.
Carte One of his recurring themes I am afraid, Sullivan’s orchestration does manage to make her more of a sympathetic character, rather than a sad one. I have often wondered whether this view of ageing women is something to do with his dire relationship with his mother?
Shaw A glass mirror shows your face, a work of art shows your soul.
(Curtain rises to the Patience set as the Savoy Grill set slides off)
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Patience: Sad is the woman’s lot RECITATIVE – JANE: JANE: Fading is the taper waist, |
(Curtain comes down and Savoy Grill set moves in)
Carte As we entered ’82 Gilbert had four shows running in London. ‘Patience’ at the Savoy, ‘Princess Toto’ at the Opéra Comique, ‘Engaged’ at the Court and ‘Foggerty’s Fairy’ at the Criterion. Privately he was engaged on building his house in Kensington with innovations – central heating and four bathrooms.
Shaw Was it this that inspired you to so many bathrooms in the Savoy Hotel?
Carte No, I was inspired by American hotels, planning to give American tourists a de luxe place to stay in London. We have 268 rooms and 67 bathrooms, we use electrical lighting throughout and even have an electric elevator. The Hotel Victoria on Northumberland Avenue advertises itself as one of the ‘Finest in the World’, it does have 500 apartments but just five bathrooms!
Wilde We live in an age when unnecessary things are our only necessities.
Carte Sullivan was travelling to Egypt while his Queens Mansions home was being completed. I set sail for America on New Year’s Day leaving Gunn in charge. I had plans for part of the trip to be a holiday. But Gilbert chose the time of my absence to declare increasingly alarm about the expenses of the Savoy.
He challenged the need for us to spend £210 per week on advertising. He announced concern that the gas bill at the Savoy, despite its electric lighting, was £10 per week more than the Opéra Comique. He had calculated that if we sustained nightly receipts of £120 that in the Opéra Comique they would make £9,000 a year but that they would lose £3,000 a year at the Savoy.
Yet he felt perfectly free to spend £20 installing a telephone at his home and another £20 on one for the prompt desk so that he could listen in to performances and later be advised of the takings. We had to use the letters in his code word FAVOURITES to represent the numeral 1, 2, 3 up to 0, so that nobody could overhear or understand the actual takings, so that £128 would be F, A, T and so on.
Shaw He had clearly come to mistrust your management.
Carte His tone became more strident and I wrote to Sullivan to complain that I had worked like a slave for five years, had built a theatre expressly for their operas and deserved the semi-holiday I was taking, and certainly did not deserve the hectoring tone of Gilbert’s letters. He had raised no objection to the deal with the new theatre, until I was three thousand miles away!
Shaw Did Sullivan reply?
Carte At the time he was too engrossed in his time in Egypt. The only thing that piqued his interest was my plan to build a National Opera house, where his grand works might be performed. But when we three were finally able to assemble back in the UK, Sullivan’s mother regrettably died.
Shaw He wrote ‘In Memoriam’ for his father’s death, ‘The Lost Chord’ for his brother. What about his mother?
Carte I believe he was just as affected by the death of his mother and invested this grief in to his work on ‘Iolanthe’. That is why his music for this is so tender, I think it is his best score. Fortunately ‘Patience’ was able to run to the end of March in New York and almost to the end of November ‘82 at the Savoy. Progress on the new opera stuttered what with Sullivan’s jaunts to Cornwall and to the Continent and with Gilbert lavishing time upon his new yacht, ‘Chloris’.
(Curtain rises to the Patience set as the Savoy Grill set slides off)
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Patience: It’s clear that medieval art alone retains its zest TRIO DUKE, COLONEL, MAJOR: If this is not exactly right, we hope you won’t upbraid; COLONEL: (attitude) MAJOR: (attitude) DUKE: (attitude) COLONEL: MAJOR: COLONEL: (They strike fresh attitudes, MzSopr as Angela and CAltoas Saphir enter.) ANGELA: (seeing them) (The Officers have some difficulty in maintaining their constrained attitudes.) SAPHIR: (in admiration) |
(Curtain comes down and Savoy Grill set moves in)
Shaw So Sullivan had declared to you that ‘Iolanthe’ would be his last collaboration with Gilbert?
Carte He had stated quite clearly that there would be just one further collaboration; which was extremely frustrating. ‘Patience’ had such a success and perhaps most importantly had clearly moved them away from the theme of ‘Pinafore’ and ‘Pirates’; many viewed these as a matched pair. Their future course could take them anywhere they chose. But he was adamant.
Shaw The ‘Peer and the Peri’ was to be the last then?
Carte Thankfully when Gilbert presented his early thoughts for ‘Iolanthe’ Sullivan promptly agreed it. But he did not have the courage to tell Gilbert that it would be his last, it was therefore to be my dreaded secret. You might imagine that I worked to do everything I could to change his mind.
Shaw ‘Iolanthe’ was something of a return to Topsy-Turveydom?
Carte This story too was derived from an earlier Bab Ballad that had been based around curates. It was his ‘Fairy Curate’, a tale about a curate who was the product of the union of an attorney and a fairy. Gilbert realised that there was more to satirise if the humans were not from the legal world, but politics. He played with the idea of the fairy marrying the Prime Minister, but then wisely settled on the action being set in the House of Lords.
Wilde But Iolanthe became in essence ‘Fairyland comes to Parliament’. But then wasn’t the House of Lords always the case?
Shaw It is such a private club for the rich and privileged. It should not exist in a true democracy.
Wilde I believe that the only form of government suitable to the artist, is no government at all!
Carte Back in ’73 he had of course parodied Gladstone and others in the Cabinet in his ‘The Happy Land’, The Lord Chamberlain had ordered the parodies to be removed; though the fuss did no harm to the piece’s fortunes.
Shaw But during preparation I believe ‘Iolanthe’ had another name?
Carte Yes, still fearful of the American pirates we called it ‘Perola’. This was what was displayed on the score for the cast and musicians during rehearsals.
Shaw Presumably Perola picked per prior profitable plays Pinafore, Pirates, Patience? (they laugh) However despite all of your precautions the ‘World’ was able to describe a fairly accurate detailed plot of the opera before it was premiered?
Carte It appears to be impossible to maintain a secret with so many involved in rehearsals. Gilbert was angry and created a fairly compelling case for the information having been supplied by the player Frank Thornton. He had been with the company since ‘Sorcerer’ but Gilbert had provided no part for him in the new piece; and had taken this news badly.
Shaw Plausible then, is that why you rejected him as the stage manager for the New York company?
Carte That was Helen’s decision she was there organising the American production. It was only at the final dress rehearsal that Gilbert asked the cast to substitute ‘Iolanthe’ for ‘Perola’. There was much consternation among the players who feared they might forget to use the new name. Sullivan rather mischievously told them to use any name they wished. “Nobody in the audience will be any the wiser, except Mr Gilbert – and he won’t be there!“
Wilde Iolanthe was a courageous choice given Irving’s earlier play of the same name. Wasn’t there also some fuss about facial adornment?
Carte Gilbert had in fact sought and obtained Irving’s agreement. But as to your other point, Gilbert wanted the Peers’ chorus to be clean-shaven, many players were very proud of their manly moustaches and protested, but as usual Gilbert had his way with most of them.
Shaw You were opening it in New York on the same day?
Carte Yes Alfred Cellier was there in Sullivan’s stead. He had hurriedly despatched copious notes and the orchestration across to him at the last possible moment. Once more there was not a completed overture so Cellier was asked to compose his own.
Wilde I was amused that Gilbert dressed the Queen of the Fairies as a caricature of Richard Wagner’s Brünnhilde, presumably to engage with the current enthusiasm around the country for ‘Götterdämmerung’?
Shaw And of course Iolanthe rising from the river is perhaps a parody of Wagner’s ‘Das Rheingold’.
(Curtain rises to the Iolanthe Arcadian set as the Savoy Grill set slides off)
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Iolanthe: Iolanthe’s release QUEEN: INVOCATION – QUEEN: CELIA: ALL: (Iolanthe rises from the water. She is clad in water-weeds. She approaches the Queen with head bent and arms crossed.) IOLANTHE: QUEEN: IOLANTHE: ALL: (Her weeds fall from her, and she appears clothed as a fairy. The Queen places a diamond coronet on her head, and embraces her. The others also embrace her.) CHORUS: |
(Curtain comes down and Savoy Grill set moves in)
Carte Then it was as if Providence had intervened. It was as implausible as something out of a Gilbert libretto. I had signally failed to change Sullivan’s mind on the matter of writing more light opera. During the summer of ’82 Sullivan’s stockbroker friend, Edward Hall, asked him for and received a £1,000 loan. He promised to repay it in twenty days. I feel sure on another occasion Sullivan might have refused, but he was perhaps preoccupied with composing Iolanthe.
Shaw It was not an insignificant sum.
Carte It was on the morning of the opening of Iolanthe that Sullivan learned that the firm of Cooper, Hall & Co was ruined and it had taken most of his savings, over £7,000, with it! This was virtually all that he had accumulated from his twenty-five years of composing.
Shaw I understand he was something of a gambler and had frittered a great deal away in casinos.
Carte He has always denied this, but there is enough evidence to suggest that he often lost heavily.
Wilde You said that Providence had intervened?
Carte Of course because now he had to revisit his decision not to collaborate further with Gilbert. Now, he realised that he needed Gilbert and the income that this would derive, though he would come to that conclusion reluctantly.
Shaw Yet none would have guessed his inner turmoil on that opening night.
Carte Whenever he lifted his baton any sign of his illness or in this case his financial concerns were completely banished.
Shaw He is completely the professional, but how was that opening night received?
Carte One thing we had not expected was the great attraction of the printed libretto. The electric house lights at the Savoy could not be completely dimmed and as a result many of the audience seldom looked up from the text, there was a great rustling as pages were turned in unison.
Wilde I feel sure they would have paused from their studies for the procession, Gilbert’s attention to detail with the peers’ costumes and insignia was exemplary.
Carte The state costumes we used came from the Queen’s own robe-maker. Further, on the opening night Gilbert had arranged for part of the Band of the Grenadier Guards to presage the procession. It had an amazing impact.
(The Savoy Grill set moves off and the curtain rises to the Procession of Peers.)
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Iolanthe: Procession of the Peers CHORUS: Bow, bow, ye lower middle classes! We are peers of highest station, (Enter the Lord Chancellor, followed by his train‑bearer.) LORD CHANCELLOR: ALL: A pleasant, etc. LORD CHANCELLOR: ALL: Which rather, etc. LORD CHANCELLOR: ALL: Which is, etc. (Enter Tenor as LORD TOLLALLER.) LORD TOLLALLER: |
(Curtain drops and rises again.)
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Iolanthe – When I went to the Bar as a very young man LORD CHANCELLOR: Ere I go into court I will read my brief through I’ll never throw dust in a juryman’s eyes In other professions in which men engage |
(Curtain drops, BBar as PRIVATE WILLIS enters on patrol)
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Iolanthe: Private Willis’ song PRIVATE WILLIS When in that House M.P.’s divide, |
(Willis exits as the Savoy Grill set moves in)
Carte I gave Sullivan time to deliberate. In February ’83 I was able to agree a five-year partnership agreement with both Gilbert and Sullivan. The contract obliged them to create new operas upon my providing six months’ notice. Finally I had precisely what I wanted a long-term arrangement between the three of us.
Shaw But this turned them effectively in to your employees, surely that would prove the very root for the later resentment and arguments?
Carte True, but at the time it appeared to be the basis for us all to move forward. It was clear that Sullivan could recoup his financial losses more speedily and assuredly from his collaboration with Gilbert. Chappell despatched over 10,000 copies of the vocal and piano scores of ‘Iolanthe’ in a single night! Further, within a few months, Sullivan was knighted at Windsor for his contribution to music.
Wilde More cause for resentment I imagine when Gilbert was not knighted at the same time?
Carte Gilbert made rather too much of not being bothered by this, protesting his disinterest far too strongly. Sadly what it did achieve was to remind Sullivan that his last grand works were well in the past, his last oratorio ‘The Light of the World’ had been a full ten years before, his last serious work ‘Martyr of Antioch’ had been completed three years before. General opinion among his peers grew strongly to suggest that a musical knight should concentrate on grander works and not be engaged in comic opera.
Shaw Not very helpful to your cause.
Carte Yet I did have that five-year contract! We would share a third each of the profits after a rental of £4,000 per year for the Savoy, plus rates and lighting, and any repairs incidental to the performances and rendered necessary from time to time by ordinary wear and tear.
Shaw But the seductive lure of grander works, would not have helped you sleep easily at night.
(Savoy Grill set exits, Bedroom set appears before curtain)
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Iolanthe: Nightmare song LORD CHANCELLOR: For your brain is on fire – the bedclothes conspire of usual slumber to plunder you: Then the blanketing tickles – you feel like mixed pickles – so terribly sharp is the pricking, Then the bedclothes all creep to the ground in a heap, and you pick ’em all up in a tangle; Well, you get some repose in the form of a doze, with hot eye-balls and head ever aching. For you dream you are crossing the Channel, and tossing about in a steamer from Harwich – And you’re giving a treat (penny ice and cold meat) to a party of friends and relations And bound on that journey you find your attorney (who started that morning from Devon); Well, you’re driving like mad with this singular lad (by the by, the ship’s now a four‑wheeler), But this you can’t stand, so you throw up your hand, and you find you’re as cold as an icicle, And he and the crew are on bicycles too – which they’ve somehow or other invested in It’s a scheme of devices, to get at low prices all goods from cough mixtures to cables You get a good spadesman to plant a small tradesman (first take off his boots with a boot-tree), From the greengrocer tree you get grapes and green pea, cauliflower, pineapple, and cranberries, The shares are a penny, and ever so many are taken by Rothschild and Baring, You’re a regular wreck, with a crick in your neck, and no wonder you snore, for your |
(Lord Chancellor falls exhausted on a seat.)
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© R S Denton August 2013