R.C. Sherriff

Full Work

From No Leading Lady by R.C. Sherriff, his autobiography. Sherriff (1896-1975) was a playwright, novelist and scriptwriter, best known for his play Journey's End, the novel A Fortnight in September and award-winning screenplays, notably The Invisible Man, Goodbye Mr Chips, The Dam Busters.

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Chapter 15

When I had begun reading plays to help me write my own, the playwright who soon mattered most was J M Barrie. Shaw was above my head: useless to try and write as he did. But Barrie’s plays had a beautiful simplicity. The characters lived in his own mystic world, but were so attractive that they enticed you on and made you feel that you could get within reach of them yourself. All my first plays were modelled on his work. The stories were my own, but I peopled them with characters that I fondly believed had the Barrie touch to them. Whether they really had was neither here nor there. The essential thing was that Barrie had inspired me, and I owed to him everything that made those early plays exciting and worthwhile to write.

Journey’s End had given me an Open Sesame to every playwright. In one way or another I met them all: all but the one I admired the most. For Barrie was a recluse. His shyness was a legend. He never gave interviews to the press and never went to parties. I never came across anybody who knew him, or had even seen him, until one day I met Kathleen Hilton Young, widow of Scott of the Antarctic. She was a fine sculptress, a charming, friendly woman who used to ask me to her studio. Barrie had admired Scott. The two men had become friends, and Kathleen was one of the few people who really knew him. One day I told her what his plays had meant to me. She made little comment at the time, but a few days later she rang up and said, “What are you doing next Thursday afternoon?” Nothing special, I told her. “Then Barrie,” she said, “would like you to go and have tea with him.”

It was an invitation that ought to have carried me into a seventh heaven, but instead it filled me with foreboding. […] The stories of Barrie’s eccentricities, his brusqueness and shyness were so many that there must have been some truth in them. If he were obliged to meet a stranger he was tongue-tied and overcome by shyness: he would offer a limp hand, mutter something incoherent and turn his back. In a small way I shared these inhibitions myself, and the prospect of going to tea with him, of being alone with him for maybe an hour or more, was frightening. […]

I tried not to think what it was going to be like, but nothing on earth would have stopped me, and when the Thursday came I put on my best blue suit and went to London.

Adelphi Terrace lay in a backwater behind the Strand, with a view across the river. The lower floors of the houses were offices, and Barrie lived in rooms at the top of one of them. You went in by a door between two offices, into a desolate passage and up some shadowy uncarpeted stairs. The further you went up the more desolate and barren it became. At the top there was a landing with several doors that looked as if they led into attics or boxrooms, and I wondered whether I’d come to the right place. But I noticed a bell beside one of the doors. I rang it, and waited to see if anything happened. […] But everything was still and silent. I felt almost relieved that I shouldn’t have to face the ordeal after all, and was on the point of going away when the door opened and there was Barrie looking out at me. I had seen his portrait so many times that there was no mistaking him, but I hadn’t known how short he was – almost a dwarf. His coat seemed too big for him. The sleeves came down over his hands, and when he put them into jacket pockets he had to straighten his short arms to get them there.

I smiled and said, “Good evening, sir.” He looked down at my feet and replied, “Come in.”

He walked in front of me into the big sitting-room. He had a curious little rolling sort of walk, slow, as if he wasn’t very interested in where he was going.

There didn’t seem to be anybody else about. I heard later that he lived there quite alone. His secretary was there in the mornings and a daily woman came in to cook and clear things up, but at night he was by himself in his lonely rooms with the silent, empty offices beneath him. That was how he liked to live.

It was a big, gaunt living-room, furnished in an off-hand sort of way as if from time to time he had picked up things that took his fancy without caring whether they would go together. There were a few framed photographs, one of a boy in cricket flannels jumping with his arm outstretched to catch the ball.

I went to a window and looked out at the view across the Thames. He came and stood beside me. I didn’t feel embarrassed or ill at ease as I had expected. He was a simple, friendly man. He made no effort to be entertaining, and expected nothing from me. I felt he had been a friend for such a long time that there wasn’t any need to say anything unless it came naturally.

It was a clear, fine afternoon. You could see a long way beyond the river and I admired the view. He said he liked it better at night, with the lights of the passing tugs and barges. I told him I’d lived beside the river all my life. I began telling him about our rowing club and how sometimes we used to go out practising at night with a storm lantern in our bows. I didn’t get far: I felt I was beginning to talk too much and that long stretches of talk didn’t fit in. He seemed to like it best in small casual bits. […]

There was a long, uncomfortable looking wooden bench before the fire, and behind it a table laid out for tea, with a chair beside it. There was a large home-made cake and a plate of bread and butter, cut rather thick. As there was no sign or sound of anybody else in the flat, the tea could only have been made by Barrie himself.

He poured out two cups, cut a big slice of cake for me, then took a small cushion and lay down on the wooden bench in front of the fire.

I had been told that Barrie had a fine instinct for setting the stage of his plays, but he hadn’t set it very well for our tea-party. It was an awkward arrangement from the social point of view because my chair beside the tea-table was behind the wooden bench, and all I could see of Barrie was the top of his head. It wasn’t easy to talk to him to his face. Far less to the top of his head. He pushed the little cushion behind his neck, settled and lapsed into silence.

I turned my attention to the slice of cake he had cut for me, but it was terribly unappetising. What had happened to it I couldn’t think, but something had gone wrong in the baking. All the currants and sultanas and candied peel had sunk to the bottom, leaving a gluey yellow mass of plain cake at the top. It must have got some honey or treacle in it, because when I tried to eat a piece, it gummed up round the teeth. I managed to swallow what I had put into my mouth, but he cut me an enormous slice that I couldn’t possibly consume. It would have been discourteous to leave it on my plate, and as he couldn’t see what I was doing I began to pull bits off, roll them up like little lumps of putty and drop them in my pocket.

I felt happier when I had got the whole slice safely put away, but I began to feel worried about Barrie himself. The bench he was lying on was so narrow that if he went to sleep he might easily roll off. But he was so completely still that I began to wonder whether he had died. If that had happened I wondered what I ought to do. I had seen no telephone in the flat. I supposed I ought to go out and find the nearest police station. It would be headline news, and I should figure prominently in the dramatic story: “R.C. Sherriff, the author of Journey’s End, was having tea with Sir James Barrie at the time…” His feet were propped up on the wooden armrest at the other end of the bench. The only other part of him that I could see was the top of his head. He had a big pear-shaped head, very broad at the top, with a few wisps of brown brushed across it. I wondered whether I ought to touch it to find out whether it had gone cold.

The silence went on. I felt sure that he had stopped breathing. I was on the point of getting up to begin whatever action I ought to take when suddenly he spoke: so unexpectedly and without a movement of his body that I jumped as if I’d heard a ghost.

“Have some more cake,” he said.

I was so relieved and thankful that he was still alive that I would have filled my mouth with cake if he had been looking, and tried to swallow it, come what may. But as he couldn’t see through the top of his head I said, “Thanks, I will,” in a hearty, eager voice, as if I had been waiting hopefully for the invitation. I cut a slice that I judged would go into my other pocket without causing a bulge, and pushed it hurriedly away because he had begun to stir.

He sat up, stared into the fire and pulled an old charred pipe out of his pocket. He filled and lit it, puffed out clouds of smoke, and began to cough as if it were choking him. For a little while I could scarcely see him for smoke. When it had cleared away he looked at me as if he’d forgotten I was there, and said, “I expect you’ll want to be going.”

He stood me into the outside hall, helped me on with my burberry coat and gave me his hat.

“I think this is yours.” I said.

He looked at it in puzzled surprise, then eagerly took it back and hung it carefully on a peg. “No,” he said, “you mustn’t have that.”

Out on the landing he pointed to a door that on my arrival I had taken to be a cupboard for brooms and brushes.

“There’s a lift in there,” he said, “but it isn’t much good. It sticks. I’ve told them about it, but they don’t do anything.”

I said goodbye and went down the stairs. The offices below were closed. Everybody had gone home. I wondered what Barrie would do for the rest of the long lonely night.

From No Leading Lady by R.C. Sherriff, his autobiography. Sherriff (1896-1975) was a playwright, novelist and scriptwriter, best known for his play Journey's End, the novel A Fortnight in September and award-winning screenplays, notably The Invisible Man, Goodbye Mr Chips, The Dam Busters.

*

Chapter 15

When I had begun reading plays to help me write my own, the playwright who soon mattered most was J M Barrie. Shaw was above my head: useless to try and write as he did. But Barrie’s plays had a beautiful simplicity. The characters lived in his own mystic world, but were so attractive that they enticed you on and made you feel that you could get within reach of them yourself. All my first plays were modelled on his work. The stories were my own, but I peopled them with characters that I fondly believed had the Barrie touch to them. Whether they really had was neither here nor there. The essential thing was that Barrie had inspired me, and I owed to him everything that made those early plays exciting and worthwhile to write.

Journey’s End had given me an Open Sesame to every playwright. In one way or another I met them all: all but the one I admired the most. For Barrie was a recluse. His shyness was a legend. He never gave interviews to the press and never went to parties. I never came across anybody who knew him, or had even seen him, until one day I met Kathleen Hilton Young, widow of Scott of the Antarctic. She was a fine sculptress, a charming, friendly woman who used to ask me to her studio. Barrie had admired Scott. The two men had become friends, and Kathleen was one of the few people who really knew him. One day I told her what his plays had meant to me. She made little comment at the time, but a few days later she rang up and said, “What are you doing next Thursday afternoon?” Nothing special, I told her. “Then Barrie,” she said, “would like you to go and have tea with him.”

It was an invitation that ought to have carried me into a seventh heaven, but instead it filled me with foreboding. […] The stories of Barrie’s eccentricities, his brusqueness and shyness were so many that there must have been some truth in them. If he were obliged to meet a stranger he was tongue-tied and overcome by shyness: he would offer a limp hand, mutter something incoherent and turn his back. In a small way I shared these inhibitions myself, and the prospect of going to tea with him, of being alone with him for maybe an hour or more, was frightening. […]

I tried not to think what it was going to be like, but nothing on earth would have stopped me, and when the Thursday came I put on my best blue suit and went to London.

Adelphi Terrace lay in a backwater behind the Strand, with a view across the river. The lower floors of the houses were offices, and Barrie lived in rooms at the top of one of them. You went in by a door between two offices, into a desolate passage and up some shadowy uncarpeted stairs. The further you went up the more desolate and barren it became. At the top there was a landing with several doors that looked as if they led into attics or boxrooms, and I wondered whether I’d come to the right place. But I noticed a bell beside one of the doors. I rang it, and waited to see if anything happened. […] But everything was still and silent. I felt almost relieved that I shouldn’t have to face the ordeal after all, and was on the point of going away when the door opened and there was Barrie looking out at me. I had seen his portrait so many times that there was no mistaking him, but I hadn’t known how short he was – almost a dwarf. His coat seemed too big for him. The sleeves came down over his hands, and when he put them into jacket pockets he had to straighten his short arms to get them there.

I smiled and said, “Good evening, sir.” He looked down at my feet and replied, “Come in.”

He walked in front of me into the big sitting-room. He had a curious little rolling sort of walk, slow, as if he wasn’t very interested in where he was going.

There didn’t seem to be anybody else about. I heard later that he lived there quite alone. His secretary was there in the mornings and a daily woman came in to cook and clear things up, but at night he was by himself in his lonely rooms with the silent, empty offices beneath him. That was how he liked to live.

It was a big, gaunt living-room, furnished in an off-hand sort of way as if from time to time he had picked up things that took his fancy without caring whether they would go together. There were a few framed photographs, one of a boy in cricket flannels jumping with his arm outstretched to catch the ball.

I went to a window and looked out at the view across the Thames. He came and stood beside me. I didn’t feel embarrassed or ill at ease as I had expected. He was a simple, friendly man. He made no effort to be entertaining, and expected nothing from me. I felt he had been a friend for such a long time that there wasn’t any need to say anything unless it came naturally.

It was a clear, fine afternoon. You could see a long way beyond the river and I admired the view. He said he liked it better at night, with the lights of the passing tugs and barges. I told him I’d lived beside the river all my life. I began telling him about our rowing club and how sometimes we used to go out practising at night with a storm lantern in our bows. I didn’t get far: I felt I was beginning to talk too much and that long stretches of talk didn’t fit in. He seemed to like it best in small casual bits. […]

There was a long, uncomfortable looking wooden bench before the fire, and behind it a table laid out for tea, with a chair beside it. There was a large home-made cake and a plate of bread and butter, cut rather thick. As there was no sign or sound of anybody else in the flat, the tea could only have been made by Barrie himself.

He poured out two cups, cut a big slice of cake for me, then took a small cushion and lay down on the wooden bench in front of the fire.

I had been told that Barrie had a fine instinct for setting the stage of his plays, but he hadn’t set it very well for our tea-party. It was an awkward arrangement from the social point of view because my chair beside the tea-table was behind the wooden bench, and all I could see of Barrie was the top of his head. It wasn’t easy to talk to him to his face. Far less to the top of his head. He pushed the little cushion behind his neck, settled and lapsed into silence.

I turned my attention to the slice of cake he had cut for me, but it was terribly unappetising. What had happened to it I couldn’t think, but something had gone wrong in the baking. All the currants and sultanas and candied peel had sunk to the bottom, leaving a gluey yellow mass of plain cake at the top. It must have got some honey or treacle in it, because when I tried to eat a piece, it gummed up round the teeth. I managed to swallow what I had put into my mouth, but he cut me an enormous slice that I couldn’t possibly consume. It would have been discourteous to leave it on my plate, and as he couldn’t see what I was doing I began to pull bits off, roll them up like little lumps of putty and drop them in my pocket.

I felt happier when I had got the whole slice safely put away, but I began to feel worried about Barrie himself. The bench he was lying on was so narrow that if he went to sleep he might easily roll off. But he was so completely still that I began to wonder whether he had died. If that had happened I wondered what I ought to do. I had seen no telephone in the flat. I supposed I ought to go out and find the nearest police station. It would be headline news, and I should figure prominently in the dramatic story: “R.C. Sherriff, the author of Journey’s End, was having tea with Sir James Barrie at the time…” His feet were propped up on the wooden armrest at the other end of the bench. The only other part of him that I could see was the top of his head. He had a big pear-shaped head, very broad at the top, with a few wisps of brown brushed across it. I wondered whether I ought to touch it to find out whether it had gone cold.

The silence went on. I felt sure that he had stopped breathing. I was on the point of getting up to begin whatever action I ought to take when suddenly he spoke: so unexpectedly and without a movement of his body that I jumped as if I’d heard a ghost.

“Have some more cake,” he said.

I was so relieved and thankful that he was still alive that I would have filled my mouth with cake if he had been looking, and tried to swallow it, come what may. But as he couldn’t see through the top of his head I said, “Thanks, I will,” in a hearty, eager voice, as if I had been waiting hopefully for the invitation. I cut a slice that I judged would go into my other pocket without causing a bulge, and pushed it hurriedly away because he had begun to stir.

He sat up, stared into the fire and pulled an old charred pipe out of his pocket. He filled and lit it, puffed out clouds of smoke, and began to cough as if it were choking him. For a little while I could scarcely see him for smoke. When it had cleared away he looked at me as if he’d forgotten I was there, and said, “I expect you’ll want to be going.”

He stood me into the outside hall, helped me on with my burberry coat and gave me his hat.

“I think this is yours.” I said.

He looked at it in puzzled surprise, then eagerly took it back and hung it carefully on a peg. “No,” he said, “you mustn’t have that.”

Out on the landing he pointed to a door that on my arrival I had taken to be a cupboard for brooms and brushes.

“There’s a lift in there,” he said, “but it isn’t much good. It sticks. I’ve told them about it, but they don’t do anything.”

I said goodbye and went down the stairs. The offices below were closed. Everybody had gone home. I wondered what Barrie would do for the rest of the long lonely night.