Education, education, education

Yes, I think it's safe. I can afford to reveal some of the new material in the biography now that it's safely launched into the world. It's fair to say that the majority of the revelations relate to his early, pre-Gilbert-and-Sullivan, life. And, as I'm sure I've said more than once on this blog, and perhaps in every single entry since the beginning, that is what makes it important. I have been able to reveal some of the factors which made Gilbert Gilbert.

When Gilbert left King's College, London, in 1856, he had messed up his education to a remarkable extent. He did not, as intended, go on to Oxford. He did not even take his B.A. exam at the proper time, but waited until the following year. All this seems to have happened because he was distracted by the idea of getting an army commission and fighting in the Crimean War. Luckily, he didn't manage to do that either.

But all these failed ambitions meant that he was left in the big wide world without a career plan. It appears that his father, who had an "independent income", nevertheless refused to suppor his son until he found a career; at any rate, the evidence suggests he left the parental home about this time. And on 24 February 1857 he was appointed as an Assistant Clerk, (Third Class) at the Committee of Council on Education, otherwise called the Education Office. He remained there for almost six years, until he resigned on 14 November 1862, which he called "the happiest day of my life."

He hated working there, and he took every opportunity to revenge himself on his employers. At the end of 1861 he started contributing to a satirical weekly paper called Fun. One of his earliest cartoons, signed "Bab", was an attack on the Education Office, and it was published in the issue for 9 November 1861, while Gilbert was still being employed by them:

On the opposite page, a linked article described the department's new Education Code as "anything but a Code of Honour, for it systematically breaks faith with every certificated schoolmaster in the government employ." This article is, in my opinion, most probably by Gilbert.

He continued to attack the Office in the paper both before and after his resignation. On 23 April 1864, a topical poem called "Mr. Morell and the Privy Council Office" made fun of several Education Office officials, including a certain Ralph Robert Wheeler Lingen, who had been Gilbert's boss at the department all the time he was there, and whom he portrayed in the poem's "initial" with ass's ears (see above). The drawing is signed "W.S.G." and the poem itself is probably by him as well.

The political head of the department was Robert Lowe. Coincidentally (or not) Lowe was one of the politicians cruelly caricatured in the Gilbert/a Beckett satire The Happy Land of 1873.

One more revelation from the book. In April 1858 he was reprimanded at the Office for "disrespectful and insubordinate conduct." We may not be surprised.

In limbo

I don't know where I am heading at the moment. The book is out there; I understand there has been some interest in it from some papers; and three separate BBC Radio stations will be interviewing me next week!!!! But I don't know what people will think of it when they read it. I am sure that some experts will think it is wrongly focused, or that it misrepresents the facts, or that it ignores aspects that should be highlighted. I have had a reaction from a reader which suggests that it is--as I intended--readable. Hurray for that! It's supposed to be a portrait of Gilbert the man. It's supposed to give an impression of what he was like, as some recent biographies have not. But without the detailed and brutally honest feedback of reviews, how can I know what the book is really like? It is terrible to think this, but in a way the reaction to the book will show me what I should think about it. If it is a success, it will mean that my past twenty-five years' obsession has not been misdirected. If it is a failure... I won't think of that. Every day that passes without a review is another day of waiting, a day that feels wasted. I feel I am in a kind of limbo. The book is an attempt to demonstrate that I can write. Perhaps readers will disagree on that one. How can I know, without a review?

I hope I don't cock up the interviews.

Plays: written and performed

My play Working Lives was performed on Wednesday, a one-off performance as part of a playwriting festival. It was a great experience, and it reminded me of all the stresses and rewards of writing for the stage.

When you create a script--sitting around brooding about characters and themes, and then pushing yourself to write down as much of what you have in your head as possible, and trying to mould it all into shape and keep quality control and all the other things you have to do to make something usable--when you're doing all this you're making something quite abstract, with parts that you think might work in front of an audience, it's all quite abstract and bloodless. In fact it's like a short story, but without descriptions and "fine writing."

This is fine. You feel you've done all the work, and having it performed is sort of an added extra. Then it gets passed over to the director and cast.

The rehearsal process, certainly this time, involved a rather complex combination of reactions as far as I'm concerned. The cast was very well chosen, and the director clearly knew exactly what he was doing, and seemed very sympathetic with my actual intentions. I saw three early rehearsals, then two late ones, including the tech run-through on the Monday two days before performance.

It was this rehearsal that made me very very anxious. At least two of the actors didn't know their lines, and while the performance was billed as "script in hand", the director wanted them to be off-book for the performance. So the actual run-through was very ropy, with some long embarrassing stalls. It was all very rushed--we had to be in the space and out again within an hour. The director afterwards assured the cast that he was very happy with their performances. I wasn't so sanguine.

On the Wednesday, the day of performance, the cast weren't able to get together again till about 6.30 (the play started about 8pm). A quick line-reading was all that was possible, and a cast member was having big trouble with two substantial scenes. He was forgetting lines, and persisted in skipping ahead in a scene bypassing about a page of dialogue. The director said (thank God) that it was okay for him to take the script on stage. One of the other actors also did this. But it was obvious to me that the performance would be very basic and I was prepared for a very embarrassing 45 minutes during the actual event.

And then.

It was to be the second play in a double-bill. I saw the first, an entertaining though afterwards rather unsatisfactory piece. We settled in for the second half. I was sitting next to the director. We smiled at each other, said each other was great, shook hands, and saw the lights go down. The play started. The first scene went all right. People laughed. The scenes progressed. One scene in particular, a job interview that goes disastrously wrong, took fire on stage--the audience laughed, really immediate, genuine laughter, and the director was almost creased double, in fits. And I knew the thing was working. The last scenes of the play turn very serious, but I think we held the audience right to the end. I was very relieved and very euphoric. There was much congratulation (genuine) and hugging and talk of taking the thing on tour. Don't know if it will happen, but it seems a real possibility.

What has all this to do with Gilbert? Well, rather famously, he wasn't able to watch his own first nights. He would leave the theatre, stroll on the embankment, go to his club or see another play, returning only for the curtain calls. This is a very idiosyncratic thing of his, an almost physical condition which made him sweaty and hysterical if he had to see his own plays performed in front of an audience. But I can understand it very well. It is simply a very stressful, though often very rewarding, experience. I believe at the start of his career he did witness his own plays. But there was a point at which he stopped. He decided it involved too much unnecessary suffering.

The W S Gilbert Society

It's strange how events crowd together. Through no one's fault the release of the book (two weeks ago) was followed last week by the printing of the latest W S Gilbert Society Journal, which I, as the Society's Secretary, had then to send out to the Society's members. That was last week. And in two days' time, a play that I wrote two years ago, called Working Lives, will be performed at the Bradford Playhouse as part of a new writing festival (and I'm supposed to be finding some last-minute props....)

This is in addition to the imminent prospect of a full-time job, coming at precisely the point when I am starting desperately to need the money.

The W S Gilbert Society has been going since 1985 but is still quite a small concern, with a membership of about 130. It should be much more, but at the same time I'm sort of glad it isn't, because the job of sending out the Journals would be so much less manageable.... It publishes a Journal twice a year, full of new information and ideas about the man and his work. What can I say? I'd be delighted if you wanted to join. Click on the link above, and you can do it.

I am also trying to write a novel. I've just written a little passage which puts into words how I feel for much of the time: as if there were too much for me to do in life and at the same time too little; it's as if nothingness were a physically real thing, which gets in the way of the somethings which I ought to be doing.

Speaking of which....

The book is unleashed

In a way I rather like the fact that practically no one is reading this blog. It takes the pressure off so much, and allows me to try out ideas. The book is now effectively published, even though the official launching date is at the beginning of May. Amazon is showing it as available. It is all rather frightening in that respect. I've been in contact practically all afternoon with someone in Marketing at The History Press; BBC Radio Scotland is showing an interest and I may be interviewed for two different programmes--one of them live!! The Sunday Express is taking a review copy, and The Stage, and probably others. I have a double attitude to this. I am very very keen for reviews in the proper papers, because it's the reviews, as far as I'm concerned, that publicise the book and lead to sales. But at the same time who knows what the fiends will say? I am aware that I myself have not proved very effective in organising publicity for the book. No interest in articles that I myself have suggested to others. But publicity is happening, not just organised by the publishers but also by friends and well-wishers. Ian Bradley apparently has written an article for History Today next month which refers to my book extensively. I also have another stupid idea, which however I am tinkering at because it might possibly work--a compilation of killer quotations from Gilbert. Things like this, from the opera Ruddigore: "Ah, you've no idea what a poor opinion I have of myself, and how little I deserve it." Or this, from a letter to The Times:

"In the face of Saturday the officials of the [London and North-Western Railway] company stand helpless and appalled. This day, which recurs at stated and well-ascertained intervals, is treated as a phenomenon entirely outside the ordinary operations of nature, and, as a consequence, no attempt whatever is made to grapple with its inherent difficulties. To the question, 'What has caused the train to be so late?' the officials reply, 'It is Saturday' — as who should say, 'It is an earthquake.' "

And there's more, much more, where that came from.....