Part 97

At the bier Augustus Thomas delivered an eloquent address that fittingly summed up the life and purpose of the greatest force that the English-speaking theater has yet known. Among other things he said:

"A wise man counseled, 'Look into your heart and write': 'C. F.' looked into his heart and listened. He had that quoted quality of genius that made him believe his own thought, made him know that what was true for him in his private heart was true for all mankind. That was the secret of his power. It was the golden key to both his understanding and expression.

"He was a fettered and a prisoned poet, often in his finest moments inarticulate. Working in the theater with his companies and stars, with the women and the men who knew and loved him, he accomplished less by word than by a radiating vital force that brought them into his intensity of feeling. In his social intercourse and comradeship, telling a dramatic or a comic story, at a certain pressure of its progress where other men depend on paragraphs and phrases he coined a near-word and a sign, and by a graphic and exalted pantomime ambushed and captured our emotions.

"His mind was clear and tranquil as a mountain lake, its quiet depths reflecting all the varied beauty of the bending skies. He had the gift of epitome. The men who knew him best valued his estimate, not only of the things in his own profession, but of any notable event or deed or tendency. Often his spontaneous comment on a cabled utterance or act laid stress upon the word or moment that next day served as captions for the significant review. The printed thought of the leading statesman, the outlook of the financier, the decision of the commanding soldier, or the vision of the poet found kinship in his sympathy, not because he strove tiptoe to apprehend its elevation, but because his spirit was native to that plane."

Coincident with the New York funeral, services were held at Los Angeles at the instigation of Maude Adams; at San Francisco under the sponsorship of John Drew; at Tacoma at the behest of Billie Burke; at Providence under the direction of Julia Sanderson, Donald Brian, and Joseph Cawthorn. Thus a nation-wide chain of grief linked the stars of the Frohman heaven.

Nor did foreign lands fail to render homage to the memory of Charles Frohman. A memorial was held at St.-Martins-in-the-Fields, in London, almost within stone's-throw of the Duke of York's Theater, in which he took so much pride. In the presence of a distinguished company that included the chivalry and flower of the British theater, the sub-deacon of St. Paul's conducted services for the self-made American who had risen from advance-agent to be the theatrical master of his times.

In Paris the French Society of Authors eulogized the man who had been their sympathetic envoy and sincere sponsor at the throne of American appreciation.

Thus fell the curtain on Charles Frohman. As in life he had joined two continents by the bonds of his daring and courageous enterprise, so on his death did those two worlds unite to do him honor. He had not lived in vain.

Hath borne his faculties so meek, hath been So clear in his great office, that his virtues Will plead like angels, trumpet-tongued, against The deep damnation of his taking off.

--"Macbeth," I, vii.

Appendix A

THE LETTERS OF CHARLES FROHMAN

Unlike many men of achievement, Charles Frohman was not a prolific letter-writer. He avoided letter-writing whenever it was possible. When he could not convey his message orally he resorted to the telegraph. Letters were the last resort.

He had a sort of constitutional objection to long letters. The only lengthy epistles that ever came from him were dictated and referred to matters of business. They all have one quality in common. As soon as he had concluded the discussion of the topic in mind he would immediately tell about the fortunes of his plays. He seldom failed to make a reference to the business that Maude Adams was doing (for her immense success was very dear to his heart), and he always commented on his own strenuous activities. He liked to talk about the things he was doing.

The really intimate Frohman letters were always written by hand on scraps of paper, and were short, jerky, and epigrammatic. Most of these were written, or rather scratched, to intimates like James M. Barrie, Paul Potter, and Haddon Chambers.

As indicated in one of the chapters of this book, Frohman delighted in caricature. To a few of his friends he would send a humorous cartoon instead of a letter. He caricatured whatever he saw, whether riding on trains or eating in restaurants. If he wanted a friend to dine with him he would sketch a rough head and mark it "Me"; then he would draw another head and label it "You." Between these heads he would make a picture of a table, and under it scrawl, "Knickerbocker, Friday, 7 o'clock."

Frohman seldom used pen and ink. Most of his letters were written with the heavy blue editorial pencil that he liked to use. He wrote an atrocious hand. His only competitor in this way was his close friend Barrie. The general verdict among the people who have read the writing of both men is that Frohman took the palm for illegible chirography.

Frohman could pack a world of meaning into his letters. To a fellow-manager who had written to Boston to ask if he had seen a certain actress play, he replied: "No, I have had the great pleasure of not seeing her act."

His letters reflect his moods and throw intimate light on his character. He would always have his joke. To William Collier, who had sent him a box for a play that he was doing in New York, he once wrote: "I do not think I will have any difficulty in finding your theater, although a great many new theaters have gone up. Many old ones have 'gone up' too."

His swift jugglery with words is always manifest. To Alfred Sutro he sent this sentence notifying him that his play was to go into rehearsal: "The die is cast--but not the play."

Through his letters there shines his uncompromising rule of life. Writing to W. Lestocq, his agent in London, in reference to the English failure of "Years of Discretion," he said: "It is a failure, and that is the end of it. You can't get around failure, so we must go on to something else."

* * *

The number of available Frohman letters is not large. The following, gathered from various sources, will serve to indicate something of their character:

To an English author whose play, a weak one, was rapidly failing:

No; it is not the war that is affecting your business. It is the play--nothing else.

To Cyril Maude, whose penmanship is notably indecipherable:

I can't read your handwriting very well; but I wonder if you can read my typewriting. Just pretend I typed this myself.... Speaking of hits, Granville Barker arrived yesterday, and the city suddenly became terribly cold--awful weather. Barker will do well.

To Haddon Chambers: