MR. GILBERT AND MR. CLEMENT SCOTT

A terrible storm is raging in the theatrical firmament. Mr. Gilbert's thunder is rolling in our ears, and Mr. Clement Scott's forked lightening rends the heavens with its lurid flames. "And what is it all about?" asks the innocent one. Well, Mr. Gilbert, the prosperous playwright, Mr. Gilbert, the whimsical wit, Mr. Gilbert, the humourist, Mr. Gilbert, Emperor of Topsyrurvydom, Mr. Gilbert, the laugh compeller, whose fame has penetrated to the ends of the earth, has written a play which some critics have condemned, and one critic, who is the most influential of his tribe, has damned. On Wednesday we published the rumour that Mr. Clement Scott, the drama critic of the Daily Telegraph, had complained that Mr. Gilbert had written to Mr. Edward Lawson, one of the proprietors of The Daily Telegraph, asking for the dismissal of Mr. Scott from his post on account of the notice which he had written of "Brantinghame Hall." On Wednesday Mr. Gilbert wrote to us and said that he had instructed his solicitor to proceed against Mr. Scott for libel. On receipt of this letter we sent a representative to call upon Mr. Scott in order to ascertain the truth about the controversy.

AN INTERVIEW WITH MR. CLEMENT SCOTT.

Mr. Scott informed him that he was at aloss to see how an action for libel could possibly lie as he had never said that Mr. Gilbert had requested Mr. Lawson, the proprietor of the Telegraph, to remove him from his post. "What happened was this," said Mr. Scott, "Mr. Gilbert wrote to Mr. Lawson saying that I had pitched into his play because it was 'pure and unobjectionable,' that my notice was 'cruel and unjust.' I am not at liberty to say more at present, though I may tell you that before the controversy began I had a letter from Mr. Lawson thanking me for the tact and good taste which characterized my article. I would show you the correspondence, but I cannot without the sanction of Mr. Lawson."

"What about Mr. Gilbert's letter in Thursday's Pall Mall Gazette?" asked our representative.

"The terms of Mr. W. S. Gilbert's letter to my employers and his object in writing it can be discussed when he brings his comic action for a libel which I have not uttered. I also have received a letter from Mr. Gilbert, in which he distinctly states that he will write no more for the stage; that he has written his last play; and that he will submit his work no longer to my 'insolent gibes.' How, then, he can be prejudiced in the eyes of 'dramatic critics and theatrical managers with whom he has virtually severed all connection, and the dust of whose dealings he has wiped from his feet, passes my comprehension."

This was Mr. Scott's answer to Mr. Gilbert, but he went on to say:— "No one, I assure you, has a more profound admiration for Mr. Gilbert's sense of humour than I have; but this last flight into the realms of topsy-turvydom surpasses belief. He first deliberately attempts to do me a personal injury for performing a public duty to the best of my poor ability; and then, having declared the death of his brilliantly successful career, would mulct me in damages for destroying his reputation in a dramatic future state which he knows cannot exist! He commits literary suicide, and charges me with damage to his future fame."

AN INTERVIEW WITH MR. GILBERT

No more plays from Mr. Gilbert! No sooner did we hear this than we sent our representative post-haste to see the playwright, as the matter would of course have a world-wide interest.

Mr. Gilbert, says our representative, at once replied to my question whether it was true that he would write no more plays.

“In saying that I shall write no more plays,” said he, “I use the word in its academic sense—as a dramatic composition of a more or less ambitious order. Mr. Scott has settled this for me. He has the distinction of having driven me from dramatic work of that class.”

“I understand that you intend to continue to write Savoy libretti?”

“Certainly, I am under contract to write another libretto for the Savoy, and I hope it may not be my last. They are usually dealt with by the musical critics, who are not, as a rule, disappointed dramatists.”

“Would you tell me your version of the quarrel?”

“With pleasure. Mr. Scott, who represents what I consider to be the most powerful journal in the world, and who is, therefore, powerful himself, wrote what I, and many others, consider to be a cruel and unjust notice of my play, and of Miss Neilson, who played the principal part. Miss Neilson, on the occasion of the first performance, suffered from obvious and unmistakable nervousness—it was practically her first professional appearance before an audience—and she was consequently unable to do anything like justice to her very remarkable ability. Mr. Barrington announced a professional matinée for last Tuesday, and invited Mr. Scott, among others, to reconsider his judgment. Mr. Scott declined to come, because an extract from his notice had been published in juxtaposition with an extract from the Standard. I then wrote to Mr. Lawson, asking him to come and see the play (as Mr. Scott had declined to do so), and judge its merits for himself, adding that I considered Mr. Scott’s criticism savage and unjust. Mr. Lawson replied that had he not been in mourning he would have come with pleasure. I sent Mr. Scott a copy of my letter to Mr. Lawson, and in reply, he said that he should let all our friends know that I had written to Mr. Lawson asking for his dismissal. I replied as follows: ‘You will convey to your friends whatever version of my letter to Mr. Lawson that your fancy may suggest. You know as well as I know that my letter was simply an appeal from your judgment to his.’”

“You saw the Occasional Note in the Pall Mall Gazette?”

“Yes, and concluding that Mr. Scott had put his intention of saying that I had called for his dismissal into force, I at once instructed my lawyer to commence proceedings against him. It seems that there is technically a link wanting to connect Mr. Scott’s threat with its execution, but I am taking steps to discover this link, and when that is done the writ will be issued.”

“What do you object to in the critiques?”

“I complain that in some of the papers my play has been hastily, but not unkindly, judged. I complain that in the Times and in the Daily Telegraph it has been most cruelly misrepresented.”

“One of the objections, if I remember aright, was the Biblical language which you put into the mouth of Ruth Redmayne, your Bush heroine.”

“I do not put Biblical language into the mouth of a heroine. I make her speak with simple directness, and I allow her to use no modern colloquialisms—that is all. She says ‘I did not gainsay him,’ instead of ‘I didn’t shut him up.’ It is assumed that because she was the daughter of a convict, that convict was Bill Sikes. The assumption is gratuitous. Her father was a fraudulent trustee—a defaulting stockbroker, a forging attorney; a man of education, and capable of bringing up his daughter with every care. Another objection was that I had made my heroine cast a disgraceful slur on her dead husband by proclaiming that she had been simply his mistress. I made my heroine do nothing of the kind. Her husband being, as she believes, dead, she comes to England to be a daughter to her dead husband’s father, who knows nothing of her marriage with his son. She finds that by announcing herself to be the son’s widow she involves the father in irretrievable ruin. To save him from this ruin she (nobly, as I think) declares herself to be a mere impostor who, in order to establish a claim on an English nobleman, had assumed a character to which she had no claim, and had supported that assumption by means of forged documents. All this was quite clear to the critic of the Standard; how came the critic of the Telegraph to overlook it? Again, I am held up to ridicule because I make the bad man of the play refuse payment of a debt by one who is interested in the creditor. It was no debt, as was ably explained by a legal authority in the Daily News a few days ago. A final order of foreclosure had been made a fortnight ago, and (as is explained at the commencement of Act 3) “that order is the title-deed shutting out Lord Saxmundham’s equity to redeem.” I do not write plays currente calamo. I took the trouble to have all legal questions in the play settled by counsel. But these precautions count for nothing in the eyes of the offhand critics of the daily press, who, in criticizing [sic] my work, are (quite unconsciously) criticizing their own.”

“It is said that you should not have cast an inexperienced girl for a part that was worthy of Miss Ellen Terry or Mrs. Kendal.”

“That inexperienced girl has dramatic gifts that will someday place her at the head of her profession. This is well known to the actors and actresses who have seen her, and who know something about the difficulties a beginner has to encounter. If I had not cast Miss Neilson for this part, whom should I have selected in her place? Most assuredly I know of no available actress who would have realized my conception more completely than this inexperienced girl has done.”

“How did the professionals like her?”

“I have received dozens of letters and personal congratulations from the best-known actors and actresses of the day—Miss Ellen Terry, Mrs. John Wood, Mr. Hare, Mr. Beerbohm Tree, Mr. Walter Lacy, and very many others.”