Publicity

It's been a few days since I wrote an entry here, so I'd better bring you up to date. I've been busy being interviewed on BBC Radio--Radio Scotland, Lincolnshire, York, and Leeds. I don't feel like a natural broadcaster at all--I hesitate too much and in at least one interview replied to every question with the word "Absolutely." Still, that's done now. On 23 May I'm appearing at the Redbridge Media and Literature Festival talking about Gilbert, and on 12 June I'll do another talk at Waterstones in Bradford. These should be less stressful (I think!) because at least I'll be able to see my audience.

I've had a five star review for the book on Amazon.co.uk, which is brilliant, and Stage should be publishing an interview/review in a week or two. 23-27 May sees the BBC Radio 4 series Gilbert's Glory, including soundbites from me and a plug for the book, so fingers crossed, we may get some new readers from that as well.

There's a quite painful split in my life at the moment. It's all very successful in terms of public face--I have a book out, it's very well received so far (in so far as there has been any reception at all), and I'm actually being heard by more people than have ever heard me before, even if they didn't especially want to. But at the same time, I am jobless and effectively penniless. I actually have little idea what the future holds. It may end in disaster, and quite soon. I can only keep faith in my star, which has actually treated me pretty well in life so far. I don't know, maybe most writers are like this. But it's quite scary.

Bourgeois Attitudes

In the early part of his career, Gilbert wrote regularly for the comic paper Fun. One of his regular pseudonyms was The Comic Physiognomist (the C.P.). In the issue for 9 March 1867 he wrote in one of these columns:

"Man was sent into the world to contend with man, and to get the advantage of him in every possible way. Whenever the C.P. happens to see a human being in the act of assisting, directly or indirectly, another human being, he pictures to himself a foot-race in which the candidates are constantly giving place to each other from motives of sheer politeness. The great object of life is to be first at the winning-post, and so that a man attains that end, and yet goes conscientiously over the whole course, it matters nothing how many of his fellow candidates he hustles on the way."

Of course Gilbert was being funny. But he was also, I am almost sure, being quite serious. This is how Gilbert saw life. He did not, I believe, want to see it this way; he was by nature a dreamy and withdrawn character, much the happiest in the illusory world of the theatre. But he learned as a teenager that not to keep your eye firmly on the main chance was to lose that chance and was to become a failure. And Gilbert learned his lesson.

His 1877 play Engaged is a bitter exposition of this view of life, in which everyone is motivated entirely by selfish and monetary motives. It is so keenly meant and so real that it is the funniest thing he ever wrote. It is a vision of Victorian society both as it saw itself--as unfailingly genteel--and as it was--unfailingly brutal.

Now here's a quotation from the 1848 Communist Manifesto:

"The bourgeoisie, wherever it has got the upper hand, has put an end to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations. It has pitilessly torn asunder the motley feudal ties that bound man to his 'natural superiors', and has left remaining no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest, than callous 'cash payment'. It has drowned the most heavenly ecstasies of religious fervour, of chivalrous enthusiasm, of philistine sentimentalism, in the icy water of egotistical calculation. It has resolved personal worth into exchange value.... In one word, for exploitation, veiled by religious and political illusions, it has substituted naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation.... The bourgeoisie has torn away from the family its sentimental veil, and has reduced the family relation to a mere money relation."

My attention was drawn to this passage recently and it made me gasp. It is a complete explanation of Gilbert's attitudes to society and to the aristocracy (whom he despised). He was a Bourgeois in the sense meant by the Communists. It may be worth while to add that the Communist Manifesto praised the Bourgeoisie for these attitudes.

Counting my Blessings

The continuing absence of reviews of my book, among other things (such as the fact that the company I was interviewed by on Tuesday still haven't got back to me and my money situation is not brilliant), has led to my going through some pretty black moods of late. Have I wasted two years of my life?

So maybe I need to focus on the good things that have been happening to me. I have done four radio interviews--the last one, for BBC Radio Lincolnshire last Sunday, was actually rather fun--and, who knows, maybe they have led to a few more sales. I have a talk coming up at the Redbridge Media Festival in London (23 May). I have an offer on signed copies of the book, and people do keep requesting these. If I'm struggling to keep afloat, that's my fault; I should have asked extortionate prices for signed copies.

Some people I respect have said very nice things about the book. That it's the best biography of Gilbert yet written, that it's readable (a very rare quality in a biography these days).

Maybe, just maybe, I will get money from the book as well. Maybe, just maybe, people will start asking me to write articles for money on the back of it. It hasn't happened so far, but who knows? I want to be a professional writer; I believe the book shows I have the skills to do it. It will only take a few appropriate people to agree with this for the whole situation to change.

If the prospective employers phone me back, that will be good, too. Quite soon for preference.

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....