A FEARED WIT

Evening Star, Issue 21890, 29 November 1934, Page 15

A FEARED WIT

THE GREAT GILBERT ROUTING A CRITIC The chib I love best in London is the old Garrick, of which I became a member in the early 1900’s (writes william .Dana Orcutt, the famous book designer, in the ‘ Christian Science Monitor ’). The Garrick Club has an atmosphere all its own. This is not due to its antiquity, as buildings and institutions go in London, for the club only celebrated its centenary in 1931; but rather to the extraordinary galaxy of original and interesting personalities .who have left their memories behind. How could it be otherwise with the shades of Charles Dickens, Wilkie Collins, Charles Reade, -John Forster, and Bulwer-Lytton hovering over the historic relics? “Do we, its happy inwmates, ever speak of it as ‘ The Garrick Club’?” Thackeray once demanded. “No; but as ‘The G,’ ‘the little G,’ the dearest place in the world.’’

Formality does not exist at the Garrick. In the thirty years since I was first included as a member I have met there at luncheon dr dinner, at suppers after first nights at the theatres, or in that holy of holies, the “ members’ lounge,” Sir Janies Barrie, Lord Burnham, Sir Arthur Pinero, Sir Herbert Beerbohm-Tree, Sir Sidney Lee, Sir W. S. Gilbert, Captain Marshall, Sir Johnston Forhes-Robertson, Cyril Maude, Arnold Bennett, Sir Gerald Du Manner, Sir Gilbert Parker, Hugh Walpole, and a host of other celebrities —not only as representatives in art or music, or drama, or literature, but as fellow-mem-bers of “ the little G.” The late William J. Locke and I discussed this phase of the club life one day at his beautiful villa des Arcades at Cannes. There .is no such bouhommie, Locke declared, in any other club in the world, and the enforced absence from the Garrick was his chief regret in living out of England. AS A HOST. ■ My acquaintance with Gilbert began with the fortunate accident of sitting next to him at the delightfully informal supper given after the first night of Beerbohm-Tree’s production of ‘ Henry Esmond.’ Gilbert was a tall man who carried himself erect, and looked, with his ruddy complexion and iron-grey moustache, like a typical retired English colonel rather than the witty, whimsical author of the ‘ Bab Ballads, and in collaboration with Sir Arthur Sullivan of such immortal comic operas as ‘ Pinafore,’ ‘ Pirates of Penzance, and ‘ The Mikado.’ With the traditional Garrick courtesy of an old member of an “ overseas ” initiate, he constituted himself my host. During later meetings we discovered much in common, and I found his conversation as brilliantly witty as his libretti. At the Garrick Gilbert was famous for perpetuating subtle pranks upon his fellow-members —even within the sacred precincts of the dignified club itself. One cold January night I was part of a group sitting around the blazing open fire in the members’ lounge. Gilbert left the club early that evening, and after he had retired Cyril Maude, with whom I had been conversing, asked me if I had heard of the joke Gilbert had recently played upon a fellow-Ganrickian whose admiration for Shakespeare amounted to an obsession. ON SHAKESPEARE. As the story goes, Gilbert met this friend (whose name is internationally known, but whom I shall call Brown to preserve his incognito) in the members’ lounge after dinner. As Gilbert entered Brown remarked good-humouredly: “ Hello, Gilbert, what have you been doing lately? .Wasting your time, as usual?” . ~ “ Yes,” Gilbert admitted frankly, “ reading Shakespeare.” . “ Oh, well,” Brown retorted, reiusing to rise to the bait; “ it takes a poet to appreciate a poet, and a genius to understand a genius.” “ I don’t dispute Shakespeare’s genius,” Gilbert declared with assumed petulance; “ but I’ll never admit that everything he wrote was inspired." “ You don’t have to admit anything,” Brown retorted calmly. “ The fact remains that there is more between the lines of Shakespeare’s works than any other author ever wrote.” Gilbert made an impatient gesture. “ Look here,” he exclaimed. “ Listen to these lines I read last evening and tell me if you can find n single trace of sense of beauty in them: I would as lief leap through a thickset hedge As say “ plosh ” to a throstle. “ Did you ever hear such arrant nonsense?” “ CLASSIC ” LINES. Brown instantly became tense. “At last you expose your ignorance,” he declared impatiently. “ Those lines are classic ” Gilbert showed what appeared to be genuine surprise. “Classic?” he repeated. “ You really mean that they are ” . “ Good heavens, man!” Brown interrupted. “In reading those words can’t you see the dew glistening on the grass, the buds bursting into bloom, the birds twittering in the trees —all Nature waking up? _ They form nothing less than an inspired invocation to spring. Don’t be a fool!” Gilbert beamed. “ Shakespeare didn’t write those lines, Brown?” he said, shaking his finger indulgently at his critic and chuckling to himself — I wrote them.” Gilbert had again proved himself a consummate master of metre. His power of imitation was unique, beyond which he created many metres which were absolutely original. I have never met a man quicker in repartee or to whose lips more promptly came delicious quips and fantastic paradoxes. Yet anyone who failed to take him seriously did so at his own peril.