ISA BOWMAN AS DUKE OF YORK
“Ch. Ch. Oxford,
“Ap. 4, ’89.
“My Lord Duke,—The photographs, which Your Grace did me the honour of sending arrived safely; and I can assure your Royal Highness that I am very glad to have them, and like them very much, particularly the large head of your late Royal Uncle’s little little son. I do not wonder that your excellent Uncle Richard should say ‘off with his head!’ as a hint to the photographer to print it off. Would your Highness like me to go on calling you the Duke of York, or shall I say ‘my own own darling Isa?’ Which do you like best?
“Now I’m going to find fault with my pet about her acting. What’s the good of an old Uncle like me except to find fault?
“You do the meeting with the Prince of Wales very nicely and lovingly; and, in teasing your Uncle for his dagger and his sword, you are very sweet and playful and—‘but that’s not finding fault!’ Isa says to herself. Isn’t it? Well, I’ll try again. Didn’t I hear you say ‘In weightier things you’ll say a beggar nay,’ leaning on the word ‘beggar’? If so, it was a mistake. My rule for knowing which word to lean on is the word that tells you something new, something that is different from what you expected.
“Take the sentence ‘first I bought a bag of apples, then I bought a bag of pears,’ you wouldn’t say ‘then I bought a bag of pears.’ The ‘bag’ is nothing new, because it was a bag in the first part of the sentence. But the pears are new, and different from the apples. So you would say, ‘then I bought a bag of pears.’
“Do you understand that, my pet?”
“Now what you say to Richard amounts to this, ‘With light gifts you’ll say to a beggar “yes”: with heavy gifts you’ll say to a beggar “nay.”’ The words ‘you’ll say to a beggar’ are the same both times; so you mustn’t lean on any of those words. But ‘light’ is different from ‘heavy,’ and ‘yes’ is different from ‘nay.’ So the way to say the sentence would be ‘with light gifts you’ll say to a beggar “yes”: with heavy gifts you’ll say to a beggar “nay”.’ And the way to say the lines in the play is—
‘O, then I see you will part but with light gifts;
In weightier things you’ll say a beggar nay.’
“One more sentence.
“When Richard says, ‘What, would you have my weapon, little Lord?’ and you reply ‘I would, that I might thank you as you call me,’ didn’t I hear you pronounce ‘thank’ as if it were spelt with an ‘e’? I know it’s very common (I often do it myself) to say ‘thenk you!’ as an exclamation by itself. I suppose it’s an odd way of pronouncing the word. But I’m sure it’s wrong to pronounce it so when it comes into a sentence. It will sound much nicer if you’ll pronounce it so as to rhyme with ‘bank.’
“One more thing. (‘What an impertinent old uncle! Always finding fault!’) You’re not as natural, when acting the Duke, as you were when you acted Alice. You seemed to me not to forgot yourself enough. It was not so much a real prince talking to his elder brother and his uncle; it was Isa Bowman talking to people she didn’t much care about, for an audience to listen to—I don’t mean it was that all through, but sometimes you were artificial. Now don’t be jealous of Miss Hatton, when I say she was sweetly natural. She looked and spoke like a real Prince of Wales. And she didn’t seem to know that there was any audience. If you are ever to be a good actress (as I hope you will), you must learn to forget ‘Isa’ altogether, and be the character you are playing. Try to think ‘This is really the Prince of Wales. I’m his little brother, and I’m very glad to meet him, and I love him very much,’ and ‘this is really my uncle: he’s very kind, and lets me say saucy things to him,’ and do forget that there’s anybody else listening!
“My sweet pet, I hope you won’t be offended with me for saying what I fancy might make your acting better!
“Your loving old Uncle,
“Charles.
X for Nellie.
X for Maggie.
X for Emsie.
X for Isa.”
He was a fairly constant patron of all the London theatres, save the Gaiety and the Adelphi, which he did not like, and numbered a good many theatrical folk among his acquaintances. Miss Ellen Terry was one of his greatest friends. Once I remember we made an expedition from Eastbourne to Margate to visit Miss Sarah Thorne’s theatre, and especially for the purpose of seeing Miss Violet Vanbrugh’s Ophelia. He was a great admirer of both Miss Violet and Miss Irene Vanbrugh as actresses. Of Miss Thorne’s school of acting, too, he had the highest opinion, and it was his often expressed wish that all intending players could have so excellent a course of tuition. Among the male members of the theatrical profession he had no especial favourites, excepting Mr. Toole and Mr. Richard Mansfield.
He never went to a music-hall, but considered that, properly managed, they might be beneficial to the public. It was only when the refrain of some particularly vulgar music-hall song broke upon his ears in the streets that he permitted himself to speak harshly about variety theatres.
Comic opera, when it was wholesome, he liked, and was a frequent visitor to the Savoy theatre. The good old style of Pantomime, too, was a great delight to him, and he would often speak affectionately of the pantomimes at Brighton during the régime of Mr. and Mrs. Nye Chart. But of the up-to-date pantomime he had a horror, and nothing would induce him to visit one. “When pantomimes are written for children once more,” he said, “I will go. Not till then.”
Once when a friend told him that she was about to take her little girls to the pantomime, he did not rest till he had dissuaded her.
To conclude what I have said about Lewis Carroll’s affection for the dramatic art, I will give a kind of examination paper, written for a child who had been learning a recitation called “The Demon of the Pit.” Though his stuttering prevented him from being himself anything of a reciter, he loved correct elocution, and would take any pains to make a child perfect in a piece.