Conrad received the cheques for their parts in the production well before its opening. Basil felt that the novelist’s ‘mental attitude…did not allow him to appreciate what was theatrically significant’. As he urged Conrad that the plot must be modified to take account of the requirements of the stage, Conrad replied that he did not wish to see the stuff of his novel become too diluted: ‘Not too much water! My dear Hastings, not too much water!’
Basil’s first draft was finished in the spring of 1917, but Irving then changed his mind about which character he himself wished to play. This meant substantial script changes. By autumn, Irving had lost confidence in the whole project, and decided to abandon it. But Conrad had become enthusiastic about Basil’s work, so much so that he contributed an article to Roosters and Fledglings under the title ‘Never Any More’, about his own sole experience of taking to the air. The two men obviously liked each other. Conrad suggested that once Victory had reached the stage, Basil might dramatise his novel Under Western Eyes. In place of Irving, the actress Marie Lohr, who was co-lessee of the Globe Theatre, agreed to stage the play and herself play a leading part. The script was heavily rewritten – yet again – after a brief and unsuccessful American production of an early draft. After Conrad attended the first rehearsal, he declared that he ‘carried away an intense impression of hopefulness and belief in the play’. It opened on 26 March 1919, received some warm notices, and ran for eighty-three performances. Basil made useful money. But literary and dramatic critics never thought much of his dramatisation, and it has rarely been revived. This reflected two realities. The first was that Victory was illsuited to the stage. Basil, who himself became conscious of this difficulty early in the drafting process, wrote after the event: ‘It was really a crime to turn that wonderful novel into a play.’ Second, though Basil was a successful entertainer, he was out of his depth realising themes of the intellectual profundity addressed by Conrad.
There is an exchange in The New Sin where one character says to another, who is a playwright: ‘Bah! Your plays are just prostitution.’ The playwright answers: ‘I’m not proud of them, but I’m proud of the fact that I can sell them.’ Basil was a professional, wholly unembarrassed that he wrote for money. At his first meeting with Conrad to discuss collaboration, he said frankly: ‘There are not two forms for a work of art. This thing is only worth doing for the money there may be in it. If you are rich, it would be absurd for you to agree.’ In truth, Conrad was anything but rich – at that time, his income was smaller than Basil’s. But the playwright minded about the money much more than did the novelist. Having experienced middle-class poverty after his father Edward’s death, Basil was determined to cling to the place he had won for himself, significantly higher up the economic and social scale than that of his nineteenth-century forebears.
Hanky-Panky John, a farce of his creation, achieved a modest success in 1921, but by that date he was earning much of his income as a dramatic critic and journalist, mostly for the Daily and Sunday Express. The tenor of his essays is well captured in a sample from the index to one of his published collections, Ladies Half-Way: ‘Actresses, insulted; Americans, affectionate; Bennett, A., prostrate; Carnations, eating; Conrad, letter from; Crocodiles, kinder to; Eggs, awkward with’. Basil was a humorous columnist whose pieces about – for instance – the merits of cocktails and changing women’s hairstyles would fit as readily into the feature pages of a modern newspaper as they did into those of the 1920s. At that time also, he published a bad novel entitled The Faithful Philanderer, but we should not hold that against him.
I am a shade doubtful about the quality of Basil’s judgement. He opposed the mooted creation of a National Theatre, on the grounds that such an institution would encourage endless productions of Shakespeare, an author whom he thought better read than performed: ‘All the world’s worst actors, the offspring of what is known as Shakespearean experience, would flock to the stage door.’ When he was theatre reviewer of the Daily Express, he incurred the wrath of Arnold Bennett, a director of the Lyric Theatre, Hammersmith. Basil dismissed a Chekhov production at the Lyric as ‘fatuous drivel’, and described its author as ‘a great writer of stories, but a paltry dramatist’. In similar vein, Basil listened to some 1926 radio broadcasts by Winston Churchill, then commented: ‘I hope political hopefuls do not listen in when Mr Churchill broadcasts. He speaks clearly and powerfully, and every word, I am sure, could be heard in Tattersall’s in the five minutes before the start of a big race, but his pauses between sentences – and even between words – suggest an Olympian contempt for the value of time. How often must listeners have shouted out the word he was groping for!’
Yet Basil’s verdicts were perhaps no worse advised than those of many newspaper pundits of the past century, including others named Hastings. He understood that a good columnist must be a professional controversialist, seeking to tease and provoke. At home as well as in print, though essentially benign, he liked to play the part of the irascible grumbler. At Christmas, he hung a sign in the hall of the family house in Holland Road, West London, proclaiming ‘Peace and goodwill to all men, with the following exceptions:’. He appended a pencil, with which visitors were invited to make their own additions to his list.
In that clubbable age, he loved the Savage, whose members were almost all writers, painters, actors, musical hall stars. He was a regular performer, sometimes producer, at the club’s smoking concerts. Poems were recited, songs sung, turns rehearsed by some of the great comics of the day, including George Robey and Wee Georgie Wood – who lived long enough for me to be introduced to him at the Savage. Though Basil was a Londoner by upbringing and instincts, he professed a devotion for rural life, which caused him to rent a country cottage, tend his vegetable garden, and enthuse about the superiority of Sussex pubs to London ones. He organised a regular Savage ‘Country Members’ Night’, at which his friends dressed in yokels’ smocks and sang jolly rustic songs. Keenly gregarious, Basil was never happier than when chattering in the club bar with a cluster of theatrical friends
He never made a fortune, but achieved a comfortable living by the standards of the day. His account books, meticulously kept by his wife Billie, who also typed his manuscripts, show him earning £1,333 in 1912; £870 in 1914; £815 in 1915; £1,100 in 1916. In 1922, his most successful year, largely because of back royalties, he received £2,550. It is interesting to notice the scale of payments for journalism at the period. In 1905, Basil received a guinea apiece for occasional contributions to newspapers; by 1915 this had risen to seven guineas a time from the Evening Standard and four guineas from Punch. His books earned tiny sums, and theatrical royalties were never large, but he was well paid for Victory.
His 1923 adaptation of A.S.M. Hutchinson’s novel If Winter Comes failed in London, but Basil cherished high hopes for its New York production. For its opening, he crossed the Atlantic on the Aquitania, which he adored, as he did the play’s star, Cyril Maude. From the ship, he wrote to his wife full of hopes:
26 March 1923
Adorable Bill,
No, I’m not a bit worried about the London failure. They are cowardly and incompetent and one can only pity them. The play is a great success in Australia. Sir George Tallis cables: ‘Winter opened splendidly. Excellent performances. Prospects good. Think undoubted success.’
We shall succeed here, don’t you worry. How I will fondle you when I come home. I almost reel when I think of pressing your hair to my face. Billie, I love you, I love you. If you don’t spend at least £10 on yourself, I shall be angry. Everything you have on when I come home must be new to me…There is a certain amount of dancing every night, but the ship rolls too much for it to be enjoyable. Maude is splendid company. I have had the entire story of his past life, as I fancied I would, not to mention complete details about all his family…Cyril is very perturbed as to whether to be a bad man for the rest of his life or very religious. I have persuaded him to be very religious. We lunch today with Lord Chichester in the Ritz Carlton restaurant. His name is ‘Eggy Eric’.
There
