I think one of the things I'm going to write about in this daily blog is the process of writing my book Gilbert, of Gilbert and Sullivan (to be published in May 2011 by The History Press). By the way, I realise that I've said "write" and "writing" in that first sentence, and I've just spent a few seconds worrying about it; but I've now decided that stylistic nonos are probably just to be expected in a daily blog, so just let me apologise briefly--I apologise for my prose--and then we can move on.
GOGAS is a biography of W.S. Gilbert (1836-1911). There have been biographies before, of course. Edith Browne's (1907) was really a kind of extended newpaper profile, based on interviews with WSG, chatty, a bit woolly round the edges, but with some invaluable snippets of information nestling in the wool. Dark & Grey (1923) is full of affection (too much so for some tastes, as if his friends were not allowed to speak well of him), and quotes many of his letters. This is surely the best way of allowing us, the readers, to become acquainted with him: let him speak to us directly.
In 1957 Hesketh Pearson's Gilbert: His Life and Strife was published. It made use of his private papers, which had just been made accessible to research. Pearson was a real writer, and the book is brilliant, entertaining, and informative. It is also, in many key respects, misleading and inaccurate.
Jane Stedman's biography of Gilbert, published in 1996, was in fact the first to include a reasonably full account of Gilbert's life. I found, and still find, this astonishing. The book is flawed, but its achievement in mapping out the territory is immense. For the first time Gilbert's life before Sullivan was recounted as if it were of interest.
My book is the first biography of Gilbert since Stedman's, though Michael Ainger's "dual biography" of Gilbert and Sullivan (2002) contained a good deal of new research about Gilbert's life. I have attempted two things. The first thing is to carry on Hesketh Pearson's good work in writing an account of Gilbert's life which is readable as a narrative. I'm not sure how well I've succeeded in that one; the proof will be in the eating.
The second thing I've attempted in the book is more difficult to describe. You will, I hope, understand that what I'm writing here is a first draft of what I'm trying to express. Maybe I'll say it better later. But, well, here goes. Most accounts of Gilbert's life treat his work with Sullivan as the only interesting or important thing he ever did. It is practically assumed that his life only began with his first successful collaboration with Sullivan, Trial by Jury in 1875, when he was 38 years old. (I have even seen him described as having been a young man at this time, which is crazy, especially in a Victorian context.)
The fact is that Trial by Jury heralded the start of Gilbert's third career as a writer. The first began in 1861 when he started writing for the comic journal Fun. Under Fun's slightly boozy wing Gilbert flourished as a cartoonist, satirist, dispenser of vitriol, and, increasingly, as a writer of wild and brilliant verse. His second career started in 1866 when he began writing for the stage. By 1875 he was known as a cynical, clever, and unpleasant playwright, who could never be relied upon to provide the right happy ending or to make his heroes and heroines as lovable as was considered necessary. Even then, he was known as a purveyor of "topsyturvydom." He turned all established values upside down, and the result was too realistic to be borne. His imminent demise as a writer for the stage was being predicted; the public would not stand for it. The fact is that Victorian audiences wanted to be comforted; they wanted their values upheld. Gilbert scorned many of these values, and he kicked them into the mud. No wonder he was disliked.
Gilbert and Sullivan opera was his third career. With the help of Arthur Sullivan's music and Richard D'Oyly Carte's management he became a rich and respected figure. He became a pillar of the establishment. My book contains an account of these years of triumph--of course. But I must tell you that it is the earlier years, the years of struggle when his plays and poems seemed to express his mind more freely, that really interest me.
There has been a turn of the tide in recent years, and writers have started to describe Gilbert in monstrous terms. He was undoubtedly ambitious, sometimes arrogant, and in many ways inflexible. It puzzles me that these should be considered unusual characteristics. But these were the characteristics which helped him to rise to the top of his profession. And I believe one of the keys to his unusual character can be found by examining the first thirty years of his life. Here I will make a bold statement because it is true. I am the first person to give a decent account of the first thirty years of Gilbert's life. And I think this is a shocking statement. Previous writers have tended to ignore these first thirty years as an irrelevance. No wonder that certain other writers have decided he was a monster: his marked characteristics appear to have arrived in the world with no background or cause, like Richard III who, according to Tudor propaganda, was born with hair and teeth. That is one of the perceptions which I want to alter.
Gilbert was a flawed man. I think that will come through in the book. But he was a great man. He was loved as well as feared. He changed English and British culture. He focused the satirical and ironic parts of British culture, creating a new kind of deadpan humour. He felt, deep in his bones, that the world was absurd, and this very modern perception infuses everything he wrote. It can be said without exaggeration that he was an Absurdist before Absurdism was invented.
And that, I think, is enough for one day.
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