Ethel Barrymore's Memories

[AnnaPink]

I wanted to share two passages from a rather boring and tedious book I have been reading entitled “Memories” by Ethel Barrymore (published 1955). This book became a lot more interesting to me when I realized there was a connection to JMB. Ethel apparently starred in several JMB plays (Alice-Sit-by-the-Fire, The Twelve Pound Look) and was at one point engaged to Gerald du Maurier.  I don’t think she knew anyone in Our Story that well (eg she thinks Peter was the eldest Davies boy) but I thought these two passages might be of some interest to everyone—they might be quoted somewhere else, if so, I apologize.

“When James Barrie had a cricket week – artists versus writers—Harry [Graham] was there as an author, along with many others. Some of us stayed at Barrie’s house and the overflow stayed at an inn. We all ate at the house—in the garden, in the sitting room and in the dining room. There were a great many of us: Edwin Abbey in white flannels, rather fat, dashing around catching cricket balls, or rather not catching them; and Maurice Hewlett, playing cricket rather romantically. And, of course, Barrie himself. It was a wonderful party. After cricket when we came back to the house Barrie used to play croquet on the lawn. Little Michael Davies, the grandson of George du Maurier, never left Barrie’s side. He was about four or five years old. Barrie, with his pipe in his mouth, holding a croquet mallet in one hand and the other clasping the little boy’s hand, would walk quietly all over the lawn. The little fellow never left him, and he never left the little boy if he could help it.”
…
“I remember how Barrie and Mr. Frohman used to sit together hour after hour in Mr. Frohman’s rooms in the Savoy Hotel in London , sometimes talking and sometimes not uttering a sound for, oh, spaces of time. Often I would be with then and would wonder what they were thinking about, if anything – Barrie eating his little pipe and Mr. Frohman smoking many cigars, and not saying a word.
One day after Barrie had gone Mr. Frohman said, ‘Wasn’t he wonderful? What do you suppose he was thinking about?’
I was still pretty young and I said, ‘I don’t suppose he was thinking about anything.’
Mr. Frohman didn’t like that.”

[Robert Greenham]

Thanks, Anna, for sharing those extracts with us.  I'd not come across Ethel Barrymore's book before.  It is interesting (for me, at any rate) to compare those with what I wrote in my little book this year - and noticeable that Barrymore mentioned Harry Graham but not her temporary romance with him:

Mrs Barrie always supplied me with a list of names of those invited to the cricket weeks. A number of ladies were invited in their own right, rather than as partners of the cricketers; these were mainly actresses who had acted in the master's plays. I vividly remember meeting the American Ethel Barrymore in 1905. She was just a few months younger than me and incredibly beautiful. It was no wonder that she became an idol of young girls who copied her voice, her walk and several other of her mannerisms. I noticed that she and Captain Harry Graham, one of the cricketer guests, seemed to spend a lot of time together while at the cottage. They also had rooms at the same inn in Farnham. While Miss Barrymore's stay at Farnham was not reported in the local newspaper, it was not long before there were rumours spreading about the possibility of marriage. But personalities like Barrymore always attracted such attention. She was also supposed to be marrying several other British men during the early nineteen hundreds, including Prince Ranjitsinjhi, the British-Indian cricketer, and Gerald du Maurier, the actor, but she was not long in Britain and she returned to America later in 1905 to take the leading role in Barrie's Alice Sit-by-the-Fire, both on Broadway and on tour, and four years later she married an American.
I remember most of the gentlemen players: The novelist Maurice Hewlett, for example, came every year while I was there, bringing with him his wife Hilda who, in 1911, was to become the first woman in the country to obtain a pilot's licence; Owen Seaman, editor of Punch magazine, who later became known also as a World War 1 poet, and whose Goddaughter married A. A. Milne, the creator of Pooh Bear having met her through becoming assistant editor at Punch; E. V. Lucas, writer who, on his second visit, in 1905, brought his wife, (Florence) Elizabeth, and daughter Audrey – in fact they arrived a fortnight earlier and, together with the Hewletts, made quite a holiday of it; Walter Frith, novelist; Charles Turley Smith, writer and critic; A. E. W. Mason, novelist and writer of short stories, most famous for The Four Feathers; H. B. Marriott Watson, a New Zealander who had emigrated to Britain and who wrote novels and short stories, especially ones of a swashbuckling nature such as The Privateers and Hurricane Island - Marriott Watson was married to the poet and literary and art critic, Rosamund Ball, a divorced woman who wrote under the pseudonym of Graham R. Tomson and was regarded as a daring, graceful woman whose beauty, and other qualities, captivated Thomas Hardy; Harry Graham, a young playwright and poet best known for his Ruthless Rhymes; Anthony Hope, a barrister turned novelist and dramatist, famed for The Prisoner of Zenda which he wrote in just one month, and which was considered by many to be one of the finest romances ever published in the English language. Hope brought his young American wife, Elizabeth, with him and she was good company for fellow American, Ethel Barrymore – company, that is, while Harry Graham's presence was required on the field.