"Food for fishes only fitted..."

A review of "Lytton - Gilbert and Sullivan's Jester" by Brian Jones

Lytton: Gilbert and Sullivan's Jester
by Brian Jones

235 pages;
trade paperback (softcover);
£25.00

ISBN 1-4120-5482-6

Some twenty years ago Brian Jones announced his intention to research a definitive biography of Sir Henry Lytton, one of the most legendary members of the D’Oyly Carte Opera Company. For a biography which has taken a couple of decades to produce, we might expect a book of exceptional quality but the end result is less than might be hoped for.

From the moment one skims through the book it quickly becomes apparent that it contains some serious defects, one of the most obvious of which is the so-called “index”. Jones comments in his acknowledgement section that the indexing was carried out “quickly and efficiently” by his son. Well, quick it may have been, but efficient it certainly isn’t. The “index” is grossly inaccurate and bears almost no resemblance at all to the text that appears in the book. Many of the people who make an appearance in the biography do not appear at all and for those who do the indexing is embarrassingly incompetent.

To take a few examples at random: Fred Billington is credited with three references in the index on pages 8, 120 and 137. A perusal of the biography reveals that references to Billington also appear in the book on pages 34, 37, 63, 82, 121, 126, 135, 138, 140, 142 and 150, but these are totally omitted in the index. Rutland Barrington has three index references on pages 54, 106, 111, yet references which appear on pages 65, 81, 84, 87, 90, 93, 96, 107, 108, 109, 112 and 113 are overlooked. Walter Passmore is index referenced on pages 69 and 81, but there are actually references on pages 83, 86, 87, 90, 91, 93, 94, 97, 98, 106, 109, 144 and 186 which are unnoticed by the indexer. This in itself is a serious liability for the biography as it renders it virtually useless for serious students unless they are willing to plough through the book and create their own index.

On the back cover the author claims that the biography “is based on a fresh approach” which depends on birth certificates, censuses, surviving letters, interviews with surviving descendants and research from contemporary press reports and interviews - in other words the standard material used in any biography. Quite how Jones considers this to be a “fresh approach” remains a mystery.

The only institutions which are referred to in the acknowledgement section are the British Library and Westminster Library, yet use has clearly been made of material in the Theatre Museum and the D’Oyly Carte Archive. Why are some sources acknowledged and others are not?

Similar concerns can be made about the remarkably brief bibliography which appears towards the end of the book. Rollins and Witts’ The D'Oyly Carte Opera Company in Gilbert and Sullivan Operas is referred to in the text of the book, yet it doesn’t appear in the bibliography at all. It is difficult to imagine that the author made no reference to the published research of David N Stone, Maurice Farrar and Tony Joseph yet, again, no mention of their works appear in the bibliography.

Referencing and sourcing appear to be sporadic and inconsistent. Whilst the majority of reviews from contemporary newspapers are referenced, the Era review of The Lily of Léoville has no reference at all. The sourcing of many excerpts are either wrong or missing. (A lengthy excerpt of a source written by Bertha Lewis appears on page 124 yet the reader has no idea where this comes from! )

There are also inconsistencies with the photographic credits; most, but not all, of them remain unaccredited to their original source.

Information about the reports of the HMV Sales Committee is simply referenced to “Research by Roger Wild.” The reader is left to wonder what sort of research this might be? A published article or paper? A lecture? Personal correspondence? How on earth is anyone who is interested in following this information supposed to be able to make use of this as a reference?

Jones also has the irritating habit of incorporating extraneous trivia into the body of the biography. The author may well have “double-checked all eleven magnificent volumes of Indentures from 1890 to 1900 in the Public Records Office” but surely the place to inform the reader of this is in a footnote, not shoehorn the fact into the main text of the biography. Time again such unnecessary and irrelevant information intrudes upon the reader as they plough through page after page of the book.

The general proof-reading of the publication leaves a lot to be desired and the reader will find a number of careless mistakes and typographical errors. There are instances of full stops which do not appear at the end of sentences and irritating misspellings – “Parksle” instead of Parkslee. Blanche Gaston-Murray appears both with and without the hyphen in her surname, although readers will look for her name in vain in the “index”. The book also suffers in a number of places where text stops before the end of the page. There are several pages in the book where the text does not run down to the end of the page, simply stopping mid-page for no apparent reason.

Yet the book is not merely lacking in production and proof-reading qualities. The text of the biography also shows signs of carelessness.

Jones refers to “the unshakeable belief of later experts that [the Mikado’s laugh] originated from Darrell Fancourt”. This is a myth that was dispelled decades ago in the pages of The Savoyard magazine way back in the 1960s. It considerably shakes ones faith in Jones’s research when he is apparently unaware of comment and research which appeared in the pages of a periodical which he himself was an editor of!

Walter Passmore did not play a character called “Satan” in The Beauty Stone; both the vocal score and the Chappell libretto list the character simply as The Devil. In stating that “Gilbert died his Gilbertian death” it is unclear how Jones thinks that an elderly man loosing his life in attempting to save a young woman who thought she was drowning could be regarded in any way as Gilbertian.

In remarking at one point that Lytton “played the Barrington roles from 1898-1901” Jones apparently forgets the fact - despite having just reminded the reader of it on the previous page - that Walter Passmore had played the Barrington role of the Sergeant of Police in the 1900 revival of The Pirates of Penzance and Lytton had played Major General Stanley.

These mistakes are bad enough but there are other problems of greater significance which do much to discredit the biography as a serious study. The entire book is filled with comments which are presented as statements of fact but which on closer examination appear to be nothing more than suppositions, astonishing conclusions often drawn from the flimsiest of evidence. The volume suffers from the inclusion of many debatable points which, quite frankly, seem impossible to substantiate. These can be no more than opinion yet Jones presents these statements to the reader as though they were incontrovertible fact.

In commenting on Lytton’s collaboration with Alexander Mackenzie, Jones states that “Although Mackenzie gives no credit to Lytton [for The Cricket on the Hearth] I believe that Lytton created the original idea”, yet fails to give any explanation as to why he would think so. Evidence? Guesswork? Wishful thinking? A biographer should surely be expected to explain and justify statements like these, or could such pronouncements be what Jones means when he claims to adopt “a fresh approach” on the back cover of the book?

These wild opinions and statements continue throughout the book and rapidly erode any faith in the author’s critical judgement. “Bertha Lewis … encouraged and compelled him to improve his own performance and understand the opera more deeply.” How? In what way? What evidence is there to suggest this? Of the nine operas they were playing in at the time their characters only had close contact with each other in Patience, The Mikado and The Gondoliers! Jones rather rashly states that “Lytton loved…Bertha Lewis from around 1925 to 8th May 1931”. He states that “I believe [Henry and Louis Lytton’s] marriage had broken down long before then” going on to state that “By the end of the year, there were rumours of an affair between Lytton and Bertha Lewis”. As readers we have no idea whether there is any evidence to support these statements or if they are yet more fanciful daydreaming on the part of the author.

Reading the biography one has to wonder whether, during the two decades it has taken Jones to finish writing the book, the author has moved from a genuine admiration of Henry Lytton to an uncritical hero-worship. It is difficult to imagine any other explanation for such astonishing pronouncements as “My own belief is that only Lytton has ever performed the Jack Point of W S Gilbert’s dreams”. Unless Jones has seen the performances of Messrs Grossmith, Thorne, Passmore et al, how can he possibly be in a position to make such a judgement?
It cannot be said that Lytton emerges from the pages of the biography as a particularly pleasant character. The picture develops of a man with a colossal ego (Jones quotes one letter in which Lytton signs himself as “Henry the Great”!) prone to exaggeration about his own achievements; Lytton clearly lied about the number of times he played Ko-Ko, claiming over 2,000 performances when even the author has to admit there were less than 900.

In many ways the impression one gets of Lytton, especially in his old age, is of a rather sleazy old man, offering the young Clara Dow 15 shillings if she would give him a kiss. Indeed Jones appears eager to promote the image of Lytton as a philanderer. There is one photograph of Lytton towards the end of his life in the pantomime Aladdin in which the author is eager to point out that he is standing between two pretty chorus girls. The caption reads: “Lytton continued to exercise his pulling power”!

Certain matters do, of course, require a certain tact and diplomacy when they are being discussed in the pages of a biography, yet if a biographer feels that private areas of an individual’s life should be laid open to public scrutiny then these areas should at least be discussed adequately and documented thoroughly leaving the reader in doubt as to the source of the information. At one point Jones goes into great detail about Lytton’s “relationship” with a young girl called Kate, who was 17 at the time she encountered Lytton, then aged 65. According to the author “Kate was Lytton’s mistress for over three years in the early 1930s” but Jones apparently bases his statement on an inscription (which could quite easily be interpreted as nothing more than an affectionate greeting) inside a copy of The Secrets of a Savoyard and a series of random numbers pencilled on the inside of the dust jacket. Jones interprets this as proof of a sexual liaison, but it could just as easily refer to the number of times she had seen Lytton on stage or something else entirely. If there are any other sources which back up Jones’ claims then these should be made clear to the reader. If there aren’t and Jones is making his statement simply on the sources he refers to then his claim seems unconvincing to say the least.

One of the most controversial aspects of Lytton’s reputation is given very superficial treatment. The controversy over which artiste first created the tragic interpretation of the portrayal of Jack Point in The Yeomen of the Guard has been thoroughly documented in the past. It casts Lytton in a very poor light so it is perhaps not surprising that Jones deals with this in a very brief and perfunctory manner, avoiding mention of the fact that, even after George Thorne had proved his claim to being the first performer to have given a tragic interpretation to the part, Lytton still tried to fudge the issue and claim credit for himself.

Does Jones ever manage to convince the reader that Lytton was as legendary a performer as the author believes? The evidence hardly backs up his claims. Jones claims that Lytton “was the Number 1 touring comedian in the Carte companies touring Britain”, yet even as late as 1909 the Manchester Guardian was commenting that Lytton’s performance was “vocally not quite satisfactory”. Even Lytton’s own wife commented on his acting ability “…I thought he was rotten…and he agrees with me”!

Lytton proudly boasted in an 1893 interview that “Mr Carte has promised me a part at the Savoy when one suitable presents itself.” He must therefore have been somewhat disappointed not to be offered a part in Utopia Limited. If Lytton were really as great a performer as Jones suggests then one must wonder why he wasn’t offered one of the six cameo Flowers of Progress roles?

Jones goes on to make much of the fact that Lytton replaced Grossmith again in March 1897 in His Majesty. One should bear in mind, however, that whereas Fred Billington had been specifically brought in from touring in the provinces and cast with a role in His Majesty right from the beginning in a piece of casting that was a deliberate choice, Lytton was only in the cast because George Grossmith left after the first few performances! One might also note the fact that it had already been a decade since Lytton had performed in place of Grossmith in Ruddigore and that many opportunities had existed since then for a performer to have been “promoted” to the main Savoy company. Did Lytton make enough of an impression at the Savoy to build a continuing career at the Savoy as a comedian? Seemingly not, as he went back to the provinces…

When Lytton was cast again at the Savoy, as Shadbolt in the revival of The Yeomen of the Guard, this was during a period when Richard D’Oyly Carte was ill and even then Walter Passmore still remained as the comic lead playing Jack Point. So much for the great success that Lytton had been making in this part in the provinces! Not until 1900 did Lytton play a Grossmith role at the Savoy in his own right, as Major General Stanley in The Pirates of Penzance with Passmore playing the Sergeant of Police. Even then we should note there was a rapid return to the status quo in Patience with Passmore as Bunthorne and Lytton returning to the subordinate role of Grosvenor and it is surely of significance that Passmore continued to maintain his lead comic position in The Emerald Isle and Merrie England.

When Lytton returns to the Savoy after his spell in musical comedy he returns as Strephon in 1907, not playing any G&S role since he finished playing Major General Stanley in 1900 and when The Yeomen of the Guard was revived again, Shadbolt is given to Barrington again, not Lytton.

One must also consider to what extent Lytton’s career at the Savoy benefited from C H Workman having been effectively blocked from further casting in the Savoy Operas owing to his disagreements with W S Gilbert over the production of Fallen Fairies in 1909. Had the Fallen Fairies fiasco not occurred there seems to be no reason to doubt that Workman would have taken over the comic roles from 1910 instead of Lytton. All of these points would seem to indicate that not only was Lytton not the great Savoyard which Brian Jones so desperately tries to convince us that he is, but that actually he rarely seems to have been able to make the grade when his opportunities arose.

Henry Irving once remarked that “It is the fate of actors to be judged by echoes which are altogether delusive… some fifty years hence some old fool will be saying - there never was an actor like Irving.” Brian Jones may try to convince us that there never was a Savoyard like Henry Lytton but he fails lamentably. At £25 the book seems grossly over-priced for what is it and is hardly an essential read for enthusiasts of either the Savoy Operas or the musical theatre of the time in general. Not recommended at all...