Page 54 - Life of Gertrude Bell

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42 GERTRUDE DELL
never forget the impression it made upon me,’ wrote the theatre’s
director. ‘The first act, with its glorious sunshine, its idyllic
picture of a woman’s love and a woman’s admiration for the
physical beauty of her husband, charmed me ... I could barely
grant her time to pause ... and the deeper grew the gloom of
the action the more did it thrill me ... when it was over ... I was
speechless and overcome ... We shall do that play; we will
produce it as soon as we can. It is a beautiful tragedy.’
Florence laid down the condition before handing over the
play that her name should not be associated with it and that her
authorship should never be divulged. It was William Archer who
had induced Elizabeth Robins to find an author for the story,
which was called Befriad in Swedish. At first Archer doubted
whether the subject could be presented on the stage at that time:
the brutal death of the husband in a factory accident, the effect of
the sight of his mangled body on his pregnant wife, her belief that
her unborn child would manifest his physical beauty and the
inevitable denouement —a deformed child, a distracted mother’s
murder of the infant, the penalty, the agony of the death cell.
‘The thing would be utterly, unspeakably brutal and hideous —
That made the temptation quite irresistible,’ wrote Archer.
Whenever he spoke of the author it was of ‘him’.
The play, AMs Wife, had its first performance on Tuesday
May 2nd, 1893, following a season of Hedda Gablet'. Its effect on
public and critics alike was sensational. As the curtain came down
on the final act the audience rose in mixed joy and fury, applauding
wildly or shaking their fists as they saw fit. There were loud cries
of ‘Author I Author!’ and Grein was eventually forced to go on to
the stage to admit that he did not know the identity of the writer,
but that if he did he would ‘shake him by the hand’, a remark
that was greeted with a chorus of hear-hearsl and a loud cry
from the auditorium ‘Shake him by the throat!’ Bernard Shaw
was impressed by the work and whenever Archer pestered him
for a new play during the next few years, he would reply, ‘Put on
Mrs Hugh Bell’s play’; it seems that he at any rate knew the
identity of the author. One side of a divided critical reaction was
typified by A. B. Walkley’s article in The Speaker of May 6th,
1893:

It is a philosophical commonplace that nature is, in some
aspects, unjust, immoral, malignant, ferocious, ‘red in tooth

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