In America, the early plays of J.M. Barrie were inextricably linked with producer Charles Frohman and actress Maude Adams.
Between 1897 and 1914, Frohman and Adams were associated with five full-length plays by Barrie: The Little Minister (1897), Quality Street (1901), Peter Pan (1905), What Every Woman Knows (1908), and The Legend of Leonora (1914); plus, the one-act plays The Ladies’ Shakespeare (1911) and Rosalind (1914). A sixth play, A Kiss for Cinderella, starring Maude Adams, was staged the year after Frohman’s death.
J.M. Barrie
Scottish playwright James Matthew Barrie (1860-1937) is best remembered today for writing Peter Pan (1904), a play that epitomises his unique imagination and love of whimsy. Of his other forty plays and sketches The Admirable Crichton (1902), The Little Minister (1903), What Every Woman Knows (1908) and Dear Brutus (1917) are perhaps the best known. Barrie was knighted in 1913 and received the Order of Merit (OM) in 1922. In 1929, he gifted the copyright of Peter Pan to London’s Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children, and in 1988 (ahead of the copyright expiring), an amendment to the Copyright Designs & Patents Act was enacted to ensure the hospital would receive royalties from Peter Pan in perpetuity.
Working first as a journalist, Barrie had ambitions to become a full-time novelist. His early novels—Better Dead (1887), Auld Licht Idylls (1888), A Window in Thrums (1889), and The Little Minister (1891) preceded his playwriting, though he had written a couple of slight one-act pieces—Caught Napping (1883), Richard Savage (1891) and Ibsen’s Ghost (1891)—prior to achieving success with Walker, London (1892) and The Professor’s Love Story (1892). These last two plays proved popular on both sides of the Atlantic (and in Australia), but it wasn’t until 1897, when Charles Frohman staged The Little Minister in the USA that Barrie’s career as a playwright took off and his dreams of becoming a full-time novelist were superseded. However, he did write the occasional novel, including Sentimental Tommy: The Story of His Boyhood (1896), the biographical Margaret Ogilvy (1896), Tommy and Grizel (1900) and The Little White Bird (1902)—which included the genesis of the character of Peter Pan as an extended story within the main narrative—together with the novelisation of Peter and Wendy (1911); as well as a number of monographs: My Lady Nicotine (1890), Courage (1922), The Author (1925) and Cricket (1926).
J.M. Barrie, 1902.
Photo by George Charles Beresford.
National Portrait Gallery, London
Charles Frohman, 1914
From Charles Frohman: Manager and Man (1916)
Charles Frohman
In the late 1890s, American theatre producer Charles Frohman (1856-1915) was a big name on both sides of the Atlantic. As well as running several theatres in New York, he also collaborated with leading London producers including George Edwardes, Seymour Hick, Cyril Maude and Dion Boucicault to stage shows in the West End. From 1897, he was lessee of the Duke of York’s Theatre in London, where many of his biggest successes were staged. Frohman was also known for launching the careers of dozens of stage stars, including Ethel Barrymore, Henry Miller, John Drew, E.H. Sothern, Julia Marlowe and Maude Adams. In 1915, at the height of his success, he was to perish in the sinking of the Lusitania, while making one of his regular trips between New York and London. Frohman’s brother Daniel was also a prominent Broadway producer.
Maude Adams
Maude Adams (1872-1953) was still a teenager when she joined Charles Frohman’s company in 1890. Frohman had big plans for “the demure little girl” from Salt Lake City, and in 1892 with the production of The Masked Ball (Frohman’s first Broadway play), her star (and his) was on the rise. Tall and willowy and of fragile beauty, her winsome charm made her the perfect Barrie heroine. She was equally at home playing boys and her physique and skill in depicting pathos made her ideal in the role of the Duke of Reichstadt, Napoleon’s weakling son in L’Aiglon (1900). Her boyish qualities set her in good stead as America’s first Peter Pan (1904).
Poster for Rosemary
Library of Congress, Washington DC
Maude Adams as Lady Babbie in The Little Minister
Elisabeth Kumm collection
Barrie, Frohman and Adams
Following the success of his 1891 novel The Little Minister, Barrie’s agent, Addison Bright, was keen for Barrie to adapt the story into a play. Barrie was reluctant to do so, but Bright was adamant that if Barrie didn’t do it, someone else would. The final play differed from the book, containing new characters and incidents not in the original novel.
A story told by Daniel Frohman suggests that when he was in New York, Barrie attended a performance of Rosemary, a sentimental comedy by Louis N. Parker, at the Empire Theatre, and watching Maude Adams as Dorothy Cruikshank, “a character of quaint and appealing sweetness”, he at once realised he had found the perfect actress to play Lady Babbie in The Little Minister. This is supported by a letter written by Barrie to Maude Adams (17 December 1897) quoted in Phyllis Robbins’ 1956 biography of the actress:
My dear Miss Adams
This is to convey all good Christmas wishes to the girl across the Atlantic who has done so much for me. I only wish I could come in person to tell you how I delight in your success and to see the delicious things you do with Babbie of which many tell me with enthusiasm. But I can picture a great deal of it, have been able to so ever since I saw you in “Rosemary” when both my wife and I revelled in your playing. We were so sorry not to meet you then, and it is a regret that goes on growing. We are in hopes of your coming over here to see us, and we shall be made unhappy if you don’t come and stay with us. Will you? Then I shall have a chance of seeing the sights of London at last. (p.44)
Likewise, in an article published in The Washington Post, 7 February 1909, Frohman recalls his first meeting with Barrie in the Autumn of 1896:
It was a short visit. He spent a few days in New York, a few in Chicago and Milwaukee, and then hurried back to England. That was the first time I ever met Barrie. I had had correspondence with him about dramatizing his story of ‘The Little Minister’. I had sent him a check as his advance payment, but the prospect of his doing the work grew slimmer and slimmer. Then when he got to New York he came into my office to return me the check. He could see no way of turning the novel into a play. However, I persuaded him to keep the check, and asked him if he would not go to some play that night. Finally he went to see ‘Rosemary’ which was being played by John Drew at the Empire Theatre. I saw no more of Barrie until just before he was sailing. Again he walked into my office, but very hopefully.
‘I shall turn the little story into a play for you,’ he began without any preamble. ‘If you give me the little actress to play the part whom I saw last night.’
That actress was Maude Adams, and you know the rest.
The two men next met when Frohman was in London. In his autobiography, Me and My Missus (1939), Seymour Hicks recalls that he “introduced him [Barrie] to Charles Frohman in the grill-room of the Savoy”. Indeed, this second meeting was probably the one that cemented the friendship between the two men. To quote Janet Dunbar’s 1970 biography of Barrie:
Barrie liked him from their first meeting, and he never changed his opinion of Frohman as “my kind of man”. … Here was a man who was totally absorbed in the theatre, and that was something James Barrie could understand. (p.128)
It seems Seymour Hicks was instrumental in helping advance Frohman’s London interests. The two had first met in New York in 1895 while Hicks was performing with George Edwardes’ London Gaiety Theatre company in a production of the musical comedy The Shop Girl at Palmer’s Theatre on Broadway under the management of Frohman and Al Hayman. At this time, Hicks attended a farce, The Gay Parisians, which had opened at Hoyt’s (under Frohman’s management) and was keen to obtain it for London. Subsequently, when he was in London during 1896, Frohman arranged with the Gatti brothers for a permanent lease on the Vaudeville Theatre, where A Night Out (aka The Gay Parisians) received its first London production under Seymour Hicks’ direction.
Frohman’s 1896 trip to London was an important one and would prove beneficial not just for Frohman but would have a major impact on the careers of many London-based performers and playwrights. As Frohman told reporters on his return home in July 1896: “My trip abroad was chiefly for the purpose of securing a foothold in London for permanent management, by which I would be able to produce plays there just the same as in New York. My efforts in this direction were so successful that hereafter I shall spend from three to four months of each year in London at this work.” (New York Times, 5 July 1896)
Around the same time, according to the Hull Daily Mail (10 January 1898), at Frohman’s invitation, Barrie attended a performance of A Marriage of Convenience at the Haymarket. (Frohman’s interest in the Haymarket was three-fold: he had purchased the American rights to A Marriage of Convenience and planned to stage it in New York as a vehicle for John Drew; The Little Minister was the next scheduled play at the theatre; and the two stars of the current play, Cyril Maude and Winifred Emery, were to play the leads in The Little Minister). According to the Daily Mail article, Frohman introduced Barrie to “one of the leading managers of London”, but for some reason the manager ignored the playwright. Later when Frohman pulled the manager up for his rudeness, the manager explained that he did not realise that the “little man” was Barrie, he thought he was Frohman’s stenographer! And the week before Frohman’s return to New York, Barrie was included in a scratch cast assembled for the copyright performance of The Little Minister, given at the Haymarket Theatre on 13 July. According to a letter from Richard Harding Davis to his mother, published in Phyllis Robbins’ biography of Maude Adams, in addition to Cyril Maude, who played the title character, “Brandon Thomas and Barrie [played] the two low comedy parts—two Scotchmen of Thrums … Mrs Barrie [Mary Ansell] played the gypsy [Lady Babbie] … [and] Lady Lewis’ daughters in beautiful Paquin dresses played Scotch lassies.” (p.41)
Winifred Emery as Lady Babbie
Elisabeth Kumm collection
Cyril Maude as Rev. Gavin Dishart
Elisabeth Kumm collection
This same year, Cyril Maude made his re-acquaintance with Barrie, as he recalled in his book Behind the Scenes with Cyril Maude (1927):
It was in the summer of 1897 that James Barrie first came into my life. I had at the time played in a piece written by him and Marriott Watson, called Richard Savage, at the Criterion, in which I played Sir Richard Steele, and we had become to a certain extent friends through that, but it was that summer when one day he told me that he was ready to write a play founded on his delightful book The Little Minister. He told me this while we were playing billiards at the Garrick Club. I missed several fine cannons, and rushing over to the Haymarket, told [Frederick] Harrison [the manager] and sooner than we could have hoped for, we had the play and put it into rehearsal.
I loved every minute of the work on it. Barrie sat with me in a little platform we had rigged up in front of the stage and we worked and helped in every minute of the stage management, and we lunched and tea’d together and nursed the lovely thing into the perfection everybody seemed to consider it six weeks later. (p.110)
In America, The Little Minister was duly launched in September 1897, playing an out-of-town tryout in Washington, prior to opening in New York two weeks later. Though audiences had been somewhat lukewarm during the tryout season, the New York season proved a spectacular success, running for 300 performances, and earning Frohman $US370,000 in total gross receipts—a record for that time.
Following the success of The Little Minister in America, Frohman was keen for Barrie to write another play for Maude Adams. On receiving a copy of The Little Minister souvenir in January 1899, Barrie wrote to Frohman:
Dear Mr Frohman
My hearty thanks to you for “The Little Minister” book which is finely got up. As soon as I am done with my novel I shall start on the play for Miss Adams, and assuredly she is the person of persons in America for whom I want to write plays. (Robbins, pp.44-45)
In the meantime, Adams was feeling the strain of continuous performances, having been before the public for seven years without a rest. With her latest play, L’Aiglon, achieving 200 performances on Broadway, the young star decided to absent herself from the stage and headed to Europe for a rest cure and holiday. As well as spending several months at a convent in Tours, she paid her first visit to England. While in London, in late 1900, she called on Barrie, spending a delightful afternoon with him at his home opposite Kensington Gardens. She later recalled his curious behaviour as he wrestled with his St Bernard dog, Porthos, in the living room.
The Play
Quality Street is a totally original play. Set in the Regency/Napoleonic era, it is in many ways, a comedy of manners. At the time of its first production, reviewers drew comparisons with the works of Jane Austen, notably Persuasion. As The Times (18 September1902) quipped, “It is Jane a little out of breath and flustered.”
The play is in four acts:
Act 1: The Blue and White Room
Act 2: The School
Act 3: The Ball
Act 4: The Blue and White Room
The Plot
Set in the Napoleonic era, a young girl, Phoebe, is parted for nine years from her lover, Valentine, who goes off to fight for his country, losing his left arm in battle. On his return he fails to recognise his former sweetheart who through economic hardship is forced to turn her home into a school. Thus, the pretty girl with ringlets becomes a spinster in an old maid’s cap. Keen to win his heart again, the frowsy schoolmistress transforms herself into her own niece, a flighty and impetuous creature named Miss Livvy, and accepts his invitation to attend a regimental ball. When Valentine renounces her advances and declares undying love for her “aunt”, Phoebe is unsure how to react. When Valentine learns the truth, he continues with the charade, allowing the niece to fade into the background and the real Phoebe to take her place.
Bibliography
Patrick Braybrook, J.M. Barrie: A Study in Fairies and Mortals, Haskell House Publishers, Ltd, New York, 1971
Lisa Chaney, Hide-and-Seek with Angels: The Life of J.M. Barrie, Hutchinson, London, 2010
Janet Dunbar, J.M. Barrie: The Man Behind the Image, Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston, 1970
Armond Fields, Maude Adams: Idol of American Theatre, 1872-1953, McFarland & Company Inc., North Carolina, 2004
Daniel Frohman, Memories of a Manager: Reminiscences of the Old Lyceum and of Some Players of the Last Quarter Century, William Heinemann, London, 1911
Seymour Hicks, Me and My Missus: Fifty Years on the Stage, Cassell and Company Ltd, London, 1939
Isaac F. Marcosson & Daniel Frohman, Charles Frohman: Manager and Man, Harper & Brothers, New York, 1916
Cyril Maude, Behind the Scenes with Cyril Maude, John Murray, London, 1926
Ada Patterson, Maude Adams: A Biography, Meyer Bros. & Co., New York, 1907
Phyllis Robbins, Maude Adams: An Intimate Portrait, Putnam, New York, 1956
H.M. Walbrook, J.M. Barrie and the Theatre, F.V. White and Co. Ltd., London, 1922
