The Still Point of aTurning World

Having spent a frustrating day trying to get the British Library newspaper archive to do what it was told - there are clearly some compatibility issues with the browser(s) I'm currently using - I decided to take a break and google some things instead. And I uncovered something rather interesting...

On most of his ERA newspaper adverts after 1904, Benson's official office address is given as 15 Henrietta Street Covent Garden so I decided that might be worth following up.  Henrietta Street is one of the streets which leads off Covent Garden parallel to the Strand, running towards St Martin's Lane. At the turn of the century, it was something of a centre for theatrical and musical hall agents, at the heart of Victorian London's theatre land -only a couple of streets away from the Opera House, the Theatre Royal Drury Lane, the Lyceum, the Savoy and the Adelphi. Today it is a highly desirable residential address, with former offices converted into apartments which command six figure sums: the upper floors of 15 Henrietta Street are advertised to rent at the eye-watering sum of £6,950 per calendar week.  The ground floor currently houses a Japanese menswear company called 'The Real McCoy'.

The building was rebuilt in 1887, designed by H.E. Pollard The office was run by Benson's manager - initially Alfred Smith-Piggott - and formed a vital still point in the revolving world of the Benson companies - with three or four tours on the road, someone needed an overview of who was where doing what! I'm assuming that the huge ledgers which are now in the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust archive must have been kept here along with the details of actors' contracts and payments like those in William Savery's papers.  Henrietta Street would not have been a cheap option, but it kept Benson's name and personality in the city even when he was out on the road. Covent Garden wasn't the up-market and sophisticated shopping experience it is now, of course, but a very busy Fruit and Vegetable market.

On the opposite side of Henrietta Street is one of the side entrances to St Paul's Covent Garden, the famous 'actor's church' and one of my very regular haunts when in the city. Number 10 was the home of Jane Austen's brother Henry and she stayed here in 1813 and 1814 when visiting her publishers.  It is one of the few streets in London still lit by gaslight and if you are very lucky and in the right place at the right time, you might see the Lamplighter coming to light the street lights in a scene reminiscent of that famous Robert Louis Stevenson poem!

http://www.british-history.ac.uk/survey-london/vol36/pp230-239

And like Robert Louis Stevenson's Jekyll and Hyde, where Henry Jekyll lives in a house with two very different sides, 15 Henrietta Street has second entrance - and indeed a second address!  The back of the building is actually in Maiden Lane - number 29 - now a bar and bistro - almost directly opposite the Stage Door of the Adelphi Theatre.  In fact, the Benson Company played the Adelphi for a two week season in Summer 1905 which, predictably, was a financial flop due partly to the scorching weather.

The Adelphi Stage Door is probably most famous - or infamous - as the site of the fatal stabbing of William Terriss. Terriss was one of Irving's actors who branched out into management of the Adelphi and staged melodramas and Shakespeare there.  On the evening of December 16th 1897, he became part of an appalling off-stage drama when a deranged unemployed actor, Richard Archer Prince, attacked and stabbed him to death. Terriss was entering the stage door to prepare for the evening's performance:  Prince had allegedly waited in a doorway across the road (number 29 perhaps??) for Terriss to appear and had then attacked him.

Prince believed that Terriss had deliberately thwarted his career after being dismissed from the Adelphi company for 'unprofessional conduct' and heavy drinking. Ironically, Terriss had actually gone out of his way to recommend Prince be given help from the Actors' Benevolent Fund.  George Rowell's very readable book William Terriss and Richard Prince: Two characters in an Adelphi Melodrama is published by the Society for Theatre Research and contains the full story.

I've often used Maiden Lane as a quieter short cut between Bedford Street and Covent Garden and for years I've given a nod to 'Breezy Bill'as I passed the Stage Door.  Terriss's ghost, inevitably, is said to haunt the backstage area of the theatre and - rather more surprisingly - the Underground platforms of Covent Garden station. See Mysterious Britain.co.uk for more information.  Having read quite a bit about Terriss, however,  I think he'd be quite an affable ghost...

There was no sign of him on the last night of Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical 'Love Never Dies' when I was part of a huge crowd blocking Maiden Lane at the stage door: we turned back taxi cabs that night!  However, it is odd to think that I was actually standing outside the site of Benson's office as well.  A small world as well a turning one...