Chapter XII: Part 12

Out of the Frohman ownership of the White Plains house came one of the many Frohman jests. Its conduct was so expensive that Frohman one day said to Dillingham, "Let's rent a theater and make it pay for the maintenance of the house."

Frohman then leased the Garrick, but instead of making money on it he lost heavily.

The factotum at White Plains was the German Max, whom Dillingham had brought over from the Savoy in London, where he was a waiter. Max became the center of many amusing incidents. One has already been related.

One night Max secured some fine watermelons. As he came through the door with one of them he slipped and dropped it. He repeated this performance with the second melon. Frohman regarded it as a great joke, and roared with laughter. Just then Gillette was announced.

"Now," said Frohman, quietly, to Dillingham, "we will have Max bring in a watermelon, but I want him to drop it." In order to insure the success of the trick they stretched a string at the door so that Max would be sure to fall. Then they ordered the melon, and Max appeared, bearing it aloft. He fell, however, before he got to the string, and the joke was saved.

All this jest and joke was part of the game of life as Frohman played it. Whatever the cost, there is no doubt that the charming white-and-green cottage up in the Westchester valley gave him hours of relaxation and ease that were among the pleasantest of his life.

This house at White Plains was indirectly the means through which Dillingham branched out as an independent manager. At this time he was in Frohman's employ. One day he said to himself:

"This establishment is costing so much that I will have to send out some companies of my own."

He thereupon got "The Red Mill," acquired Montgomery and Stone, and thus began a new and brilliant managerial career. No one rejoiced over Dillingham's success more than Frohman. When Dillingham opened his Globe Theater in New York Frohman addressed a cable to "Charles Dillingham, Globe Theater, U. S. A."

It is a curious fact about Charles Frohman that though he had millions of dollars at stake, he was never a defendant in litigation. Yet through him foreign authors were enabled to protect their plays from the customary piracy by the memorization of parts. It used to be accepted that if a man went to a play and memorized its speeches he could produce it without paying royalty. N. S. Wood did this with a play called "The World," that Frohman produced. He took the matter to court as a test case and won.

* * *

Charles was not good at remembering people's names or their addresses. This is why he was much dependent upon his stenographers. His secretary in England, Miss Frances Slater, was so extraordinary in anticipating his words that he always called her "The Wonder." He used to say:

"Miss Slater, I want to write to the man around the corner," which turned out to be Arthur Bouclier, the manager of the Garrick Theater, which was not really around the corner; but when the subject of the letter came to be dictated, Miss Slater knew whom he meant. He would never express any surprise on these occasions when the letter handed him to sign contained the right name and address. He seemed to take it as a matter of course.

* * *

One day Frohman entered his London office and said to Lestocq:

"You would never guess where I have just come from. I have been to your Westminster Abbey."

_CHARLES FROHMAN'S OFFICE IN THE EMPIRE THEATER_]

Lestocq expressed surprise, whereupon Frohman continued:

"Yes, I just walked in and spoke to a man in a gown and said, 'Where is Mr. Irving buried?' He showed me, and I stood there for a few minutes, said a couple of things, and came on here."

* * *

Frohman's office at the Empire Theater was characteristic of the man himself. It was a room of considerable proportions, with the atmosphere of a study. It was lined with rather low book-shelves, on which stood the bound copies of the plays he had produced. Interspersed was a complete set of Lincoln's speeches and letters.

On one side was a large stone fireplace; in a corner stood a grand piano; the center was dominated by a simple, flat-topped desk, across which much of the traffic of the American theater passed.

Near at hand was a low and luxurious couch. Here Frohman sat cross-legged and listened to plays. This performance was a sort of sacred rite, and was always observed behind locked doors. No Frohman employee would think of intruding upon his chief at such a time.

Here, as in London, Frohman was surrounded by pictures of his stars. Dominating them was J. W. Alexander's fine painting of Miss Adams in "L'Aiglon." On a shelf stood a bust of John Drew. There were portraits of playwrights, too. A photograph of Clyde Fitch had this inscription:

"To C. F. from c. f."

There was only one real art object in the office, a magnificent marble bust of Napoleon, whom Frohman greatly admired. He was always pleased when he was told that he looked like the Man of Destiny.

His sense of personal modesty was a very genuine thing. Shortly before he sailed on the fatal trip he had a request from a magazine writer who wanted to write the story of his life. He sent back a vigorous refusal to co-operate, saying, among other things:

"It is most obnoxious to me in every way. It is forcing oneself on the public so far as I am concerned, and I don't want that, and, besides, they are not interested. It is only for the great men of our country. It is not for me. It looks like cheek and presumption on my part, because _it is_, and I ask you not to go on with it."

* * *

He believed in system. One day he said:

"We must have on file in our office the complete record of every first-class theater in the United States, together with the name of every dramatic editor and bill-poster." Out of this grew the famous "Theatrical Guide" compiled by Julius Cahn.

* * *

Charles always provided special sleepers for his company when they had to leave early in the morning. He felt that it was an imposition to make the people go to bed late after a play and rise at five or six to get a train. It not only expressed his kindness, but also his good business sense in keeping his people satisfied and efficient.

* * *

One of Frohman's eccentricities was that he never carried a watch. On being asked why he never carried a timepiece, he replied, tersely, "Everybody else carries a watch," meaning that if he wanted to find out the time of day he could do it more quickly by inquiring of his personal or business associates than by looking for a watch that he may have forgotten to wind up.

"Frohman," said a friend, "made it a rule in life not to do anything that he could hire somebody else to do, thus leaving himself all the time possible for those things that he alone could do. He probably figured it out that if he carried a watch he would be obliged to spend a certain amount of time each day winding it.

"And on the same principle he refused to worry as to whether he left his umbrella behind or not, by simply not carrying one. If he couldn't get a cab--a rare occurrence, doubtless, considering the beaten track of his travel--he preferred to walk in the rain."

Some time before his death Frohman said to a distinguished dramatist who is one of his closest friends:

"Whenever I make a rule I never violate it."

A visitor to his place at White Plains came away after spending a night there, and declared that the "real Charles Frohman had three dissipations--he smokes all day, he reads plays all night, and--" He stopped.

"What is it?" was the breathless query.

"He plays croquet."

* * *

Frohman had a rare gift for publicity. More than once he turned what seemed to be a complete failure into success. An experience with "Jane" will reveal this side of his versatility.

The bright little comedy hung fire for a while. One reason was that newspaper criticism in New York had been rather unfavorable. Conspicuous among the unfriendly notices was one in the _Herald_ which was headed, "Jane Won't Go."

Frohman immediately capitalized this line. He had thousands of dodgers stuck up all over New York. They contained three sentences, which read:

"_Jane won't go._"
_Of course not._
_She's come to stay._

From that time on the piece grew in popularity and receipts and became a success.

* * *

In summing up the qualities that made Frohman great, one finds, in the last analysis, that he had two in common with J. P. Morgan and the other dynamic leaders of men. One was an incisive, almost uncanny, ability to probe into the hearts of men, strip away the superficial, and find the real substance.

His experience with Clyde Fitch emphasized this to a remarkable degree. Personally no two men could have been more opposite. One was the product of democracy, buoyant and self-made, while the other represented an intellectual, almost effeminate, aristocracy. Yet nearly from the start Frohman perceived the bigness of vision and the profound understanding that lurked behind Fitch's almost superficial exterior.

In common, too, with Morgan, Roosevelt, and others of the same type, Frohman had an extraordinary quality of unconscious hypnotism. Men who came to him in anger went away in satisfied peace. They succumbed to what was an overwhelming and compelling personality.

He proved this in the handling of his women stars. They combined a group of varied and conflicting temperaments. Each wanted a separate and distinct place in his affections, and each got it. It was part of the genius of the man to make each of his close associates feel that he or she had a definite niche apart. His was the perfecting understanding, and no one better expressed it than Ethel Barrymore, who said, "To try to explain something to Charles Frohman was to insult him."

XIX

"WHY FEAR DEATH?"

And now the final phase.

The last years of Charles Frohman's life were racked with physical pain that strained his courageous philosophy to the utmost. Yet he faced this almost incessant travail just as he had faced all other emergencies--with composure.

One day in 1912 he fell on the porch of the house at White Plains and hurt his right knee. It gave him considerable trouble. At first he believed that it was only a bad bruise. In a few days articular rheumatism developed. It affected all of his joints, and it held him in a thrall of agony until the end of his life.

Shortly after his return to the city (he now lived at the Hotel Knickerbocker) he was compelled to take to his bed. For over six months he was a prisoner in his apartment, suffering tortures. Yet from this pain-racked post he tried to direct his large affairs. There was a telephone at his bedside, and he used it until weakness prevented him from holding the receiver.

He could not go to the theater, so the theater was brought to him. More than one preliminary rehearsal was held in his drawing-room. This was particularly true of musical pieces. The music distracted him from his pain.

Though prostrate with pain, his dogged determination to keep on doing things held. Barrie sent him the manuscript of a skit called "A Slice of Life." It was a brilliant satire on the modern play. Frohman picked Ethel Barrymore (who was then playing in "Cousin Kate" at the Empire), John Barrymore, and Hattie Williams to do it, and the rehearsals were held in the manager's rooms at the Knickerbocker.

Frohman was as much interested in this one-act piece as if it had been a five-act drama. His absorption in it helped to divert his mind from the pain that had sadly reduced the once rotund body.

With "A Slice of Life" he introduced another one of the many innovations that he brought to the stage. The play was projected as a surprise. No announcement of title was made. The advertisements simply stated that Charles Frohman would present "A Novelty" at the Empire Theater at eight o'clock on a certain evening.

Frohman was unable to attend the opening performance, so he wrote a little speech which was spoken by William Seymour. The speech was rehearsed as carefully as the play. A dozen times the stage-director delivered it before his chief, who indicated the various phrases to be emphasized.

It was during the era of the New Theater when the so-called "advanced drama" was much exploited. Frohman had little patience with this sort of dramatic thing. The little speech conveys something of his satirical feeling about the millionaire-endowed theatrical project which was then agitating New York.

Here is the speech as Frohman wrote it:

_Ladies and Gentlemen:--My appearance here to-night is by way of
apology. I am here representing Mr. Charles Frohman--you may have
heard of him--the manager of this theater, the Empire._

_His idea in announcing a novelty in connection with Miss
Barrymore's play, "Cousin Kate," was really for the purpose of
getting you here once in time for the ringing up of the curtain.
This will be a special performance of a play to be given by a few
rising members of the School of Acting connected with this theater,
the Empire, of which he is proud--very proud. It is not an old
modern play, but what is called to-day "The Advanced Drama," made
possible here to-night by the momentary holiday of the New Theater,
and it is called "A Slice of Life."_

During those desperate days when, like Heinrich Heine, he seemed to be lying in a "mattress grave," his dauntless humor never forsook him, as this little incident will show: Some years previous, Gillette suffered a breakdown from overwork. When the actor-playwright went to his home at Hartford to recuperate his sister remonstrated with him.

"You must stop work for a long while," she said. "That man Frohman is killing you." Gillette afterward told Frohman about it.

Frohman now lay on a bed of agony, and Gillette came to see him. The sick man remembered the episode of the long ago, and said, weakly, to his visitor:

"Gillette, tell your sister that _you_ are killing me."

With the martyrdom of incessant pain came a ripening of the man's character. Frohman developed a great admiration for Lincoln. Often he would ask Gillette to read him the famous "Gettysburg Address." Simple, haunting melodies like "The Lost Chord" took hold of him. Marie Doro was frequently summoned to play it for him on the piano. Although his courage did not falter, he looked upon men and events with a larger and deeper philosophy.

During that first critical stage of the rheumatism he sank very low. His two devoted friends, Dillingham and Paul Potter, came to him daily. Each had his regular watch. Dillingham came in the morning and read and talked with the invalid for hours. He managed to bring a new story or a fresh joke every day.

Potter reported at nine in the evening and remained until two o'clock in the morning, or at whatever hour sleep came to the relief of the sick man. One of the compensations of those long vigils was the phonograph. Frohman was very fond of a tune called "Alexander's Rag-Time Band." The nurse would put this record in the machine and then leave. When it ran out, Potter, who never could learn how to renew the instrument, simply turned the crank again. There were many nights when Frohman listened to this famous rag-time song not less than twenty times. But he did not mind it.

In his illness Frohman was like a child. He was afraid of the night. He begged Potter to tell him stories, and the author of so many plays spun and unfolded weird and wonderful tales of travel and adventure. Like a child, too, Frohman kept on saying, "More, more," and often Potter went on talking into the dawn.

Potter, like all his comrades in that small and devoted group of Frohman intimates, did his utmost to shield his friend from hurt. When Frohman launched a new play during those bedridden days Potter would wait until the so-called "bull-dog" editions of the morning papers (the very earliest ones) were out. Then he would go down to the street and get them. If the notice was favorable he would read it to Frohman. If it was unfriendly Potter would say that the paper was not yet out, preferring that the manager read the bad news when it was broad daylight and it could not interfere with his sleep.

The humor and comradeship which always marked Frohman's close personal relations were not lacking in those nights when the life of the valiant little man hung by a thread. When all other means of inducing sleep failed, Potter found a sure cure for insomnia.

"Just as soon as I talked to Frohman about my own dramatic projects," he says, "he would fall asleep. So, when the night grew long and the travel stories failed, and even 'Alexander's Rag-Time Band' grew stale, I would start off by saying: 'I have a new play in mind. This is the way the plot goes.' Then Frohman's eyes would close; before long he would be asleep, and I crept noiselessly out."

Occasionally during those long conflicts with pain Frohman saw through the glass darkly. His intense and constant suffering, for the time, put iron into his well-nigh indomitable soul.

"I'm all in," he would say to Potter. "The luck is against me. The star system has killed my judgment. I no longer know a good play from a bad. The sooner they 'scrap' me the better."

His thin fingers tapped on the bedspread, and, like Colonel Newcome, he awaited the Schoolmaster's final call.

"You and I," he would continue, "have seen our period out. What comes next on the American stage? Cheap prices, I suppose. Best seats everywhere for a dollar, or even fifty cents; with musical shows alone excepted. Authors' royalties cut to ribbons; actors' salaries pared to nothing. Popular drama, bloody, murderous, ousting drawing-room comedy. Crook plays, shop-girl plays, slangy American farces, nude women invading the auditorium as in Paris."

"And then?" asked Potter.

"Chaos," said he. "Fortunately you and I won't live to see it. Turn on the phonograph and let 'Alexander's Rag-time Band' cheer us up."

He got well enough to walk around with a stick, and with movement came a return of the old enthusiasm. A man of less indomitable will would have succumbed and become a permanent invalid. Not so with Frohman. He even got humor out of his misfortune, because he called his cane his "wife." He became a familiar sight on that part of Broadway between the Knickerbocker Hotel and the Empire Theater as he walked to and fro. It was about all the walking he could do.

He kept on producing plays, and despite the physical hardships under which he labored he attended and conducted rehearsals. With the pain settling in him more and more, he believed himself incurable. Yet less than four people knew that he felt that the old titanic power was gone, never to return.

The great war, on whose stupendous altar he was to be an innocent victim, affected him strangely. The horror, the tragedy, the wantonness of it all touched him mightily. Indeed, it seemed to be an obsession with him, and he talked about it constantly, unmindful of the fact that the cruel destiny that was shaping its bloody course had also marked him for death.

Early during the war he saw some verses that made a deep impression on him. They were called "In the Ambulance," and related to the experience of a wounded soldier. He learned them by heart, and he never tired of repeating them. They ran like this:

"_Two rows of cabbages;
Two of curly greens;
Two rows of early peas;
Two of kidney-beans._"

_That's what he's muttering,
Making such a song,
Keeping all the chaps awake
The whole night long._

_Both his legs are shot away,
And his head is light,
So he keeps on muttering
All the blessed night:_

"_Two rows of cabbages;
Two of curly greens;
Two rows of early peas,
And two of kidney-beans._"

It was Frohman's intense feeling about the war, that led him to produce "The Hyphen." Its rejection by the public hurt him unspeakably. Yet he regarded the fate of the play as just one more phase of the big game of life. He smiled and went his way.

The rheumatism still oppressed him, but he turned his face resolutely toward the future. War or peace, pain or relief, he was not to be deprived of his annual trip to England. He was involved in some litigation that required his presence in London. Besides, the city by the Thames called to him, and behind this call was the appeal of old and loved associations. With all his wonted enthusiasm he wrote to his friends at Marlow telling them that he was coming over and that he would soon be in their midst.

Frohman now made ready for this trip. When he announced that he was going on the _Lusitania_ his friends and associates made vigorous protest, which he derided with a smile. Thus, in the approach to death, just as in the path to great success, opposition only made him all the more decided. With regard to his sailing on the _Lusitania_, this tenacity of purpose was his doom.

Whether he had a premonition or not, the fact remains that he said and did things during the days before he sailed which uncannily suggested that the end was not unexpected. For one thing, he dictated his whole program for the next season before he started. It was something that he had never done before.

When Marie Doro came to his office to say good-by he pulled out a little red pocket note-book in which he jotted down many things and suddenly said:

"Queer, but the little book is full. There is no room for anything else."

Just as he was warned not to produce "The Hyphen," so was he now cautioned by anonymous correspondents (and even by mysterious telephone messages) not to take the _Lusitania_. But all this merely tightened his purpose.

He met the danger with his usual jest. On the day before he sailed he went up to bid his old friend and colleague, Al Hayman, good-by. Hayman, like all his associates, warned him not to go on the _Lusitania_.

"Do you think there is any danger?" asked Frohman.

"Yes, I do," replied Hayman.

"Well, I am going, anyhow," was the answer.

After he had shaken hands he stopped at the door and said, smilingly:

"Well, Al, if you want to write to me just address the letter care of the German Submarine U 4."

Those last days ashore were filled with a strange mellowness. Ethel Barrymore came down from Boston to see him. They had an intimate talk about the old days. When she left him she saw tears in his eyes. That night, just as she was about to go on in "The Shadow" in Boston, she received this telegram from him:

_Nice talk, Ethel. Good-by. C. F._

The _Lusitania_ sailed at ten o'clock on Saturday morning, May 1, 1915. Even at the dock Frohman could not resist his little joke. When Paul Potter, who saw him off, said to him:

"Aren't you afraid of the U boats, C. F.?"

"No, I am only afraid of the I O U's," was the reply.

_CHARLES FROHMAN ON BOARD SHIP_]

In his farewell steamer letter to Dillingham, written as the huge ship was plowing her way down the bay, he drew a picture of a submarine attacking a transatlantic liner. The last lines he wrote on the boat were prophetic of his fate. Ann Murdock had sent him a large steamer basket in the shape of a ship. The lines to her, brought back by the ship's pilot, were:

_The little ship you sent is more wonderful
than the big one that takes me away from you._

Like most of his distinguished fellow-voyagers, and they included Charles Klein, Elbert Hubbard, Justus Miles Forman, and Alfred G. Vanderbilt, Frohman had frequently traveled on the _Lusitania_. By a curious coincidence he had once planned to use her sister ship, the _Mauretania_, for one of his daring innovations. He had a transatlantic theater in mind. In other words, he proposed to produce whole plays on shipboard. He took over a small company headed by Marie Doro to try out the experiment. Early on the voyage Miss Doro succumbed to seasickness and the project was abandoned.

The last journey of the _Lusitania_ was uneventful until that final fateful day. Frohman had kept to his cabin during the greater part of the trip. He was still suffering great pain in his right knee, and walked the deck with difficulty. Occasionally he appeared in the smoking-room, and was present at the ship's concert on the night before the end.

At 2.33 o'clock on the afternoon of May 7th the great vessel rode to her death. Eight miles off the Head of Kinsale, and within sight of the Irish coast, she was torpedoed by a German submarine. She sank in half an hour, with frightful loss of life, including more than a hundred Americans.

Frohman's hour was at hand, and he met it with the smiling equanimity and unflinching courage with which he had faced every other crisis in his life. When the crash came he was on the upper promenade deck. He had just come from his luncheon and was talking with George Vernon, the brother-in-law of Rita Jolivet, the actress, who was also on board. They were now joined by Captain Scott, an Englishman on his way from India to enlist. When Miss Jolivet reached them Frohman was smoking a cigar and was calm and apparently undisturbed.

Scott went below to get some life-belts. He returned with only two. He had started up with three, but gave one to a woman on the way. Miss Jolivet had provided herself with a belt.

Scott started to put one of the life-preservers on Frohman, who protested. Finally, with great reluctance, he acquiesced. There was no belt left for Scott. Frohman insisted that he get one, whereupon the soldier said:

"If you must die, it is only for once."

There was a responsive look and a whimsical smile on Frohman's face at this remark. He kept on smoking. Then he started to talk about the Germans. "I didn't think they would do it," he said. He was apparently the most unruffled person on the ship.

The great liner began to lurch. Frohman now said to Miss Jolivet:

"You had better hold on the rail and save your strength."

The ship's list became greater; huge waves rolled up, carrying wreckage and bodies on their crest. Then, with all the terror of destruction about him, Frohman said to his associates, with the serene smile still on his face:

"Why fear death? It is the most beautiful adventure of life."

Instinctively the four people moved closer together, they joined hands by a common impulse, and stood awaiting the end.

The ship gave a sudden lurch; once more a mighty green cliff of water came rushing up, bearing its tide of dead and debris; again Frohman started to say the speech that was to be his valedictory. He had hardly repeated the first three words--"Why fear death?"--when the group was engulfed and all sank beneath the surface of the sea.

No situation of the thousands that he had created in the theater was so vividly or so unaffectedly dramatic as the great manager's own exit from the stage of life. Smilingly he had made his way through innumerable difficulties; smilingly and with the highest heroism he met his fate.

The only survivor of the quartet that stood hand in hand on those death-cluttered decks was Miss Jolivet, and it was she who told the story of those last thrilling minutes.

Charles Frohman's body was recovered the next day and brought to Queenstown. A fortnight later it reached New York. On the casket was the American flag that the dead man had loved so well. Though princes of capital, famous playwrights, and international authorities on law and art went down with him, the loss of Frohman overshadowed all others. In the eyes of the world, the loss of the _Lusitania_ was the loss of Charles Frohman.

His noble and eloquent final words, so rich with courageous philosophy, not only joined the category of the great farewells of all time, but wherever read or uttered will give humanity a fresher faith with which to meet the inevitable. In a supreme moment of the most colossal drama that human passion ever staged, fate literally hurled him into the universal lime-light to enact a part that gave him an undying glory. The shyest of men became the world's observed.

The last tribute to Charles Frohman was the most remarkable demonstration of sorrow in the history of the theater. The one-time barefoot boy of Sandusky, Ohio, who had projected so many people into eminence and who had himself hidden behind the rampart of his own activities, was widely mourned.

The principal funeral services were held at the Temple Emanu-El in New York. Here gathered a notable assemblage that took reverent toll of all callings and creeds. It was proud to do honor to the man who had achieved so much and who had died so heroically.

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:_

Last night we produced "Driven" against your judgment. The press
not favorable. But still I'm hoping.

_To a colleague:_

I announced "Driven" as a comedy. Next day I called it a play. But
soon I may call it off.

_To W. Lestocq:_

The American actors over here are worried about so many English
actors in our midst. I employ both kinds--that is, I want good
actors only.

_To an English author:_

As to conditions here being bad for good plays; that is a joke. The
distressful business is for the bad plays that I and other managers
sometimes produce.

_To one of his managers:_

Do not use the line "The World-Famous Tri-Star Combination." Just
say "The Great Three-Star Combination." It is easier to understand.
And all will be well.

_To one of his managers who spoke of the superiority of an actress who had replaced another about to retire to private life:_

But now that her stage life is over we should remember her years of
good work. She had a simple, childish, fairy-like appeal. I write
this to you to express my feeling for one who has left our work for
good, and I can think now only of pleasant memories. I want you to
feel the same.

_To an English author, January, 1915:_

Over here they say the real heroes of the year are the managers
that dare produce new plays.

_To a business colleague about a singing comedian who was laid up with a serious illness:_

I am sorry he is sick. But that was a rotten thing for him to
do--to steal our song. I suppose he is better. Only the good die
young.

_To Marie Doro:_

I saw you in the picture play. It and you were fine. What a lot of
money you make! When I return from London I'm going to see if I can
earn $10 a day to play in some of the screens. We are all going up
to the Atlantic Ocean Island to see them taking you in the "White
Pearl" pictures.

_Refusing to go to a public banquet:_

That's the first free thing that has been offered me this year. But
there are three things my physician forbids me from doing--to eat,
drink, or talk.

_To a manager:_

There are no bad towns--only bad plays!

_On hearing that an actress in his employ had reflected on his management:_

In this message I am charged with neglecting your interests. This
is a shock to me, because when one neglects his trust, he is
dishonest. This is the first time I have ever been so accused, and
I am wondering if you inspired the message. I think it important
that you should know.

_Being adjured by one of the family to take more exercise:_

I drove out to Richmond. Then I walked a mile. Now I hope you'll be
satisfied.

_To his sisters (he lived then at the Waldorf, but joined the family at a weekly dinner up-town):_

I am sending you a cook-book by Oscar of this hotel. You may find
some use for it.

When he came to the next weekly dinner he was offered several choice dishes prepared from Oscar's recipes. "I see my mistake," he said. "I wanted my usual home dinner. You give me what I receive all the time at the hotel."

_To Alfred Sutro, in London:_

Give us something full of situations, and we will give you a bully
time again in America.

_To William Seymour, his stage-manager, about a performance of one of his plays:_

When you rehearse to-day will you try and get the old woman out of
too much crying; get some smiles, and stop her screwing up her face
every time she speaks. Of course, it's nervousness, but it looks as
if she were ill.

_To one of his associates:_

Miss Adams's receipts last week in Boston were the largest in the
history of Boston theaters or anywhere--$23,000. But I had some
others which I won't tell you about.

_To an English author in 1913:_

At present the taste is "down with light plays, down with literary
plays." They want plays with dramatic situations, intrigue, sex
conflict. There is no use in giving the public what it does not
want and what they ought to have. I am just finding that out, with
much cost.

_To a French agent:_

It seems a little reckless to be asked to pay $2,500 for the
privilege of reading a new French play. The author seems to want to
get rich quickly. I would be willing to add to his wealth if he has
something that can be produced without such a preliminary penalty.

_To W. Lestocq:_

When one talks to an English author about "Diplomacy," he says,
"Oh, that's a theatrical play!" I wish I could get another like it.

_To an English manager:_

A hundred theaters here are a few too many. Houses have closed on a
Saturday night without any warning. Boston, Chicago, and
Philadelphia have been better. You see we have this wonderful
country to fall back on, which makes it different from London.

_To an author in London:_

What you say is quite true; a good play is a good play; but the
difficulty I find is to ascertain through the public and the
box-office what _they_ think is a good play. Our opinion is only
good for ourselves. But give me a dramatic play and I'll put it at
once to the test.

_To Hubert Henry Davies, the dramatist, during an interim of that author's activities:_

It grieves me when I can't get your material going, especially as I
want to come over as soon as I can and get one of those nice
lunches in your nice apartment.

_To the manager of an up-state New York theater regarding an impending first-night performance:_

I hope we shall draw a representative audience the first night. I
know audiences with you are sometimes a little reluctant about
first nights. I can't understand this myself. In my opinion there
is an extra thrill for them in the experience of a first
performance, as it is a special event.

_To Granville Barker, January, 1913:_

I am very jealous of the Barrie plays, and I do want them for my
own theater for revivals.... I hear such good reports about your
Shakespearian work that I am awfully pleased. I have had a Marconi
from Shakespeare himself, in which he speaks highly of what you
have done for his work. I am sure this will be as gratifying to you
as it is to me.

_Alluding to his painful rheumatism in a letter to George Edwardes, the producer, in England, January, 1913:_

I can't run twelve yards, but I can drink a lot of that bottled
lemonade of yours when I get over. In fact, at the moment I think
that is the best thing running in London.

_In February, 1913, Frohman made frequent trips to Baltimore to rehearse and superintend the production of his plays in that city. He has this to say of Baltimore in a letter to Tunis F. Dean, manager of a theater there:_

I was glad to have an opportunity of seeing your fine theater, for
I have decided on a very important production with one of our
leading stars there next season. So that I shall spend a week in
Baltimore. I like that. There is no one living in Baltimore that
has a greater regard for that fine, dignified city. I have had it
for years, and with the beautiful theater and my feeling for
Baltimore and you at the head of that theater, I am looking forward
with pleasure to coming to you next season.

_Frohman was simple, direct, and forcible in his criticism of plays. In rejecting a French play, he wrote to Michael Morton in defense of his judgment, New York, February, 1913:_

I was awfully glad you made arrangements for the play, the one I
don't like, and I hope the other fellow is right. These
three-cornered French plays are going to have a hard time over here
in the future unless they contain something that is pretty big,
novel, or human. The guilty wife is a joke here now, and they have
lots of fun when they play these scenes in these plays. The
American and English play is different. They get there quicker in a
different manner instead of the old-fashioned scheme. Of course,
French plays, as you say, may be laid in England and in America. I
understand that. But even then it seems to be about the same as if
they were in France.

_His brief, epigrammatic style of criticism is evident in a letter to Charles B. Dillingham, wherein he speaks of a certain play under consideration:_

I think the end of the play is not good. It is that old-time
stand-around-with-a-glass-of-wine-in-your-hand and wish success to
the happy people.

_Extracts from an interview with Frohman which he wrote for the London papers, March, 1913:_

There will be no change in my work of producing for the London
stage. I shall continue to do so at my own theaters or with other
London managers just as long as I am producing on any stage, and I
fear that will be for a long time yet, as I am younger now than I
was twenty years ago.

_Prior to his departure for England he wrote the following to John Drew in March, 1913:_

Thanks for your fine letter. It is like this, John: I hope to get
off next week, but I don't seem to be able to get the
accommodations I want on either one of the steamers that I should
like to travel on, and that sail next week. I need a little special
accommodation on account of my leg, which still refuses to answer
my call and requires the big stick.

_To Alfred Sutro, in January, 1913, on the current taste in plays:_

These American plays with thieves, burglars, detectives, and
pistols seem to be the real things over here just now. None of them
has failed.

_Memorandum for his office-boy, Peter, for a week's supply of his favorite drinks:_

Get me plenty of orange-juice, lemon soda, ginger ale,
sarsaparilla, buttermilk.

_To Alfred Sutro, 1913:_

Haddon Chambers sails to-day. You may see him before you see this.
He leaves behind him what I think will give him many happy returns
(box-office) of the season, as Miss Barrymore is doing so well with
his "Tante."

_To W. Lestocq, concerning one of his leading London actresses:_

Miss Titheridge is all right, as I wrote Morton, if her emotions
can be kept down, and if she can try to make the audience act more,
and act less herself.

_To Michael Morton regarding an actress:_

She needs to be told that real acting is not to act, but to make
the audience feel, and not feel so much herself.

_To the editor of a popular monthly magazine upon its first birthday:_

I understand that your September issue will be made to mark ----'s
first birthday. Judging from your paper your birthday plans miss
the issue; because---- becomes a year younger every September. I do
_not_ congratulate you even upon this fact; because you cannot help
it. I do _not_ congratulate your readers because they get your
paper so very cheap. I _do_ congratulate myself, however, for
calling attention to these wonderful facts.

_To W. Lestocq, referring to a statement made by R. C. Carton, the dramatist:_

I don't quite understand what he means by "holding up" the play.
Over here it is a desperate expression--one that means pistols and
murder, and all that. I presume it means something different in
London, where Carton lives.

_To Mrs. C. C. Cushing, the playwright, declining an invitation:_

It is impossible to come and see you because I haven't got Cottage
No. 4, but I've got Cell No. 3 on the stage of the Empire Theater,
where I am passing the summer months.

_Even Frohman's cablegrams reflected his humor. In 1913 Billie Burke was ill at Carlsbad, so he cabled her some cheering message nearly every day. Here is a sample:_

Drove past your house to-day and ran over a dog. Your brother
glared at me.

_When Blanche Bates's first baby was born (she was at her country house near Ossining at the time), Frohman sent her this message:_

Ossining has now taken its real place among the communities of the
country. Congratulations.

_To Alfred Sutro, January, 1913:_

I was glad to hear from you. First let me strongly advise you to
take the comedy side for the Alexander play. I honestly believe,
unless it is something enormous, and for big stars and all that,
the other side is no good any more. For the present, anyway, I
speak of my own country. The usual serious difficulties between a
husband and wife of that class--really they laugh at here now,
instead of touching their emotions. They have gone along so
rapidly. Take my advice in this matter, do! I am glad you have
dropped that scene from the third act of your Du Maurier play.

Now that I am back to town I intended writing you about it. I
assure you I had a jolly good time for the first two acts of that
farce, and I can see Gerald Du Maurier all through it. The third
act worries me for this country, as I wrote you. But the
performance may change all this. It is so difficult to judge
farcical work where it is so thoroughly English in its scene that I
speak of to get any idea from the reading of it for this country.
Everything is going along splendidly.

_To Haddon Chambers, March, 1913:_

I propose, and the troupes dispose! We had a lot of floods and
things here which keep us on the move, or keep our troupes moving
so much that I am compelled to postpone my sailing until April 12th
on the _Olympic_, which makes it just a little later when I have
the joy of seeing you. My best regards.

_To Richard Harding Davis, July, 1913:_

All right, we'll fix the title. I am glad they are asking about it.
About people, they all seem to want Collier salaries. As you have
chiefly character parts, and they are so good, I think it would be
a good idea for us to create a few new stars through you, and

Yours truly,

CHARLES FROHMAN.

_To George Edwardes, July, 1913:_

First, I am glad to hear that you are away giving your heart a
chance. I am back here trying to give my pocket-book a chance.

_To William Collier, September, 1913:_

All right, all arranged, Thursday night in New York; Monday and
Tuesday in Springfield, Massachusetts. I shall leave here Monday
ready to meet the performance and anything else! I hope all is
well.

_To Viola Allen, September, 1913:_

I was awfully glad to get your letter. First let me say you had
better come to see "Much Ado About Nothing" this Saturday, because
it is the last week. We withdraw it to-morrow night and produce a
new program at once. "Much Ado" wouldn't do for more than two
weeks. After that it fell. Of course I find on Broadway it is quite
impossible to run Shakespeare to satisfying "star" receipts. So
come along to-morrow if you can. It would be fine to have you, and
fine to have some of the original members of the Empire company to
play in this house, and I should like it beyond words. I don't,
however, believe in that sex-against-sex play. In these great days
of the superiority of woman over mere man I don't think it would
do.

_Referring to a young actress he wished to secure, he writes to Col. Henry W. Savage in January, 1913:_