Shortly after her flight from Kensington, her twenty-first birthday had placed her in a position to defy the interference of her family; and she had thereupon written to her father acquainting him with her whereabouts, and with her resolve to remain upon the stage at all hazards. He had replied through his solicitor, formally disowning her. She took no notice of this; and the solicitor then sent her a cheque for one hundred pounds, and informed her that this was all she had to expect from her father, with whom she was not to attempt to establish any further communication. Madge was about to return the money, but was vehemently dissuaded from doing so by Mrs Cohen, who had not at that time quitted Nottingham. It proved very useful to her afterwards for her stage wardrobe. In defiance of the solicitor’s injunction, she wrote to Mr Brailsford, thanking him for the money, and reproaching him for his opposition to her plans. He replied at great length; and eventually they corresponded regularly once a month, the family resigning themselves privately to Madge’s being an actress, but telling falsehoods publicly to account for her absence. The donation of one hundred pounds was repeated next year; and many an actress whose family heavily burdened instead of aiding her, envied Madge her independence.
She wrote once to Jack, telling him that all her success, and notably her early promotion from the part of the player queen to that of Ophelia was due to the method of delivering verse which he had taught her. He answered, after a long delay, with expressions of encouragement curiously mixed with inconsequent aphorisms; but his letter needed no reply and she did not venture to write again, though she felt a desire to do so.
This was the reality which took the place of Madge’s visions of the life of an actress.
CHAPTER IX
The year after that in which Madge had her autumnal glimpse of the London stage began with a General Election, followed by a change in the Ministry, a revival of trade, a general fancy that things were going to mend, and a sudden access of spirit in political agitation, commercial enterprise, public amusements, and private expenditure. The wave even reached a venerable artistic institution called the Antient Orpheus Society, established nearly a century ago for the performance of orchestral music, and since regarded as the pioneer of musical art in England. It had begun by producing Beethoven’s symphonies: it had ended by producing a typical collection of old fogeys, who pioneered backwards so fast and so far that they had not finished shaking their heads over the innovations in the overture to William Tell when the rest of the world were growing tired of the overture to Tannhauser. The younger critics had introduced a fashion of treating the Antient Orpheus as obsolescent; and even their elders began to forebode the extinction of the Society unless it were speedily rejuvenated by the supercession of the majority of the committee. But the warnings of the press, as usual, did not come until long after the public had begun to abstain from the Antient Orpheus concerts; and as the Society in its turn resisted the suggestions of the press until death or dotage reduced the conservative majority of the committee to a minority, the credit of the Antient Orpheus was almost past recovery when reform was at last decided on. When the new members of the rejuvenated committee — three of whom were under fifty — realized this, they became as eager to fill the concert programmes with new works as their predecessors had been determined to exclude them. But when the business of selecting the new works came to be considered, all was discord. Some urged the advisability of performing the works of English composers, a wilful neglect of which had been one of the of the practices of the old committee of which the press had most persistently complained. To this it was objected that in spite of the patriotic complaints of critics, the public had shewed their opinion of English composers by specially avoiding the few concerts to which they had been allowed to contribute. At last it was arranged that an English work should be given at the first concert of the season, and that care should be taken to neutralize its repellent effect on the public by engaging a young Polish lady, who had recently made an extraordinary success abroad as a pianist, to make her first appearance in England on the occasion. Matters being settled so far, question now arose as to what the new English work should be. Most of the Committee had manuscript scores of their own, composed posed thirty years before in the interval between leaving the academy and getting enough teaching to use up all their energy; but as works of this class had already been heard once or twice by the public with undisguised tedium, and as each composer hesitated to propose his own opus, the question was not immediately answered. Then a recently-elected member of the Committee, not a professional musician, mentioned a fantasia for pianoforte and orchestra of which he had some private knowledge. It was composed, he said, by a young man, a Mr Owen Jack. The chairman coughed, and remarked coldly that he did not recollect the name. A member asked bluntly who Mr Jack was, and whether anybody had ever heard of him. Another member protested against the suggestion of a fantasia, and declared that if this illustrious obscure did not know enough about musical form to write a concerto, the Antient Orpheus Society, which had subsisted for nearly a century without his assistance, could probably do so a little longer. When the laughter and applause which this speech evoked had subsided, a good natured member remarked that he had met a man of the name of Jack at somebody’s place in Windsor, and had heard him improvise variations on a song of the hostess’s in a rather striking manner. He therefore seconded the proposal that Jack’s fantasia should be immediately examined with a view to its performance by the Polish lady at the next concert. Another member, not good natured, but professionally jealous of the last speaker but one, supported the proposal on the ground that the notion that the Society could get on high-and-mightily without ever doing anything new was just what had brought it to death’s door. This naturally elicited a defiant statement that the Society had never been more highly esteemed than at that hour; and a debate ensued, in the course of which Jack’s ability was hotly attacked and defended in turn by persons who had never heard of him before that day. Eventually the member who had introduced the subject obtained permission to invite Mr Jack to submit his fantasia to the Committee.
At the next meeting an indignant member begged leave to call the attention of his colleagues to a document which had accompanied the score forwarded in response to the invitation by which the Antient Orpheus Society had honored Mr Owen Jack. It was a letter to the Secretary, in the following terms:
“Sir — Herewith you will find the instrumental partition of a fantasia composed by me for pianoforte and orchestra. I am willing to give the use of it to the Antient Orpheus Society gratuitously for one concert, on condition that the rehearsal be superintended by me, and that, if I require it, a second rehearsal be held.”
The member said he would not dwell on the propriety of this communication to the foremost musical society in Europe from a minor teacher, as he had ascertained Mr. Jack to be. It had been sufficiently rebuked by the Secretary’s reply, dispatched alter the partition had been duly examined, to the effect that the work, though not destitute of merit, was too eccentric in form, and crude in harmonic structure, to be suitable for public performance at the concerts of the Society. This had elicited a second letter from Mr. Jack, of which the member would say nothing, as he preferred to leave it to speak for itself and for the character of the writer.
Church Street,
Kensington, W.
Sir — Your criticism was uninvited, and is valueless except as an illustration of the invincible ignorance of the pedants whose mouthpiece you are. I am, sir,
Yours truly,
Owen Jack.”
The most astute diplomatist could not have written a more effective letter in Jack’s favor than this proved. The party of reform took it as an exquisite slap at their opponents, and at once determined to make the Secretary smart for rejecting the work without the authority of the whole Committee. Jack’s advocate produced a note from the Polish lady acknowledging the receipt of a pianoforte fantasia, and declaring that she should be enchanted to play for the first time to an English audience a work so poetic by one of their own nation. He explained that having borrowed a copy of the pianoforte part from a young lady relative