I've mined a rich seam of information about Garnet Holme, memorialised in the Benson windows as 'Stage Master' but who took stage mastery to a whole different level as he masterminded pageants across California and the National Parks of America. Piecing together a life story from newspapers leaves a lot to be desired, of course, and there are so many things I would love to know which will remain shrouded in history. I can surmise, I can guess, but I can never know more than those facts and opinions which people bothered to write down. However, gaps aside, I do feel I am almost ready to put pen to paper and write what I've learned so far, once I've done a final bit of digging around.
I particularly like this photograph with Margaret Halstan in 'As You Like It' at the Queens Theatre in Manchester, in 1908. Halstan is also a Merry Shrew: she joined Benson in 1900 and then acted with Alexander and Tree. She and Williams worked together in several plays at the Queens and this is one of several photos of them. The production featured a running brook, two fountains and three live deer who are memorialised in Harcourt Williams' book:
In the rabbit warren that is the Benson company research, there are many side scrapes and another one opened up this week as a result of what I'd found out about Holme. An early part of his career saw him working closely with Harcourt Williams on a series of summer 'pastoral' performances, and this fact has led me to look at Williams in more detail. A clearly identifiable Merry Shrew on the Benjamin Stone 1900 photograph, he also appears next to Holme in the photograph of the Shakespeare Memorial Statue.
Although he did not leave an autobiography (for which I am now quite angry with him!), he did write two books about his experiences as producer at the Old Vic - today he probably would be considered as its 'Artistic Director'. 'Four Years at the Old Vic' and 'Old Vic Saga' the first of which has been sitting on my bookshelf for around twenty years, just waiting for the right moment to be read. In both books he refers several times to his experiences as a young man beginning his career with Benson. He writes candidly. tells a good anecdote (even if some of his language is not always politically correct enough for a modern audience!) and I've really enjoyed 'hearing' his 'voice'. Ironically, the post at the Old Vic was offered just a month after Holmes' untimely death and I'm sure this must have been something that he was thinking about when he accepted it.
As someone who had one foot in the theatrical past - he writes about seeing Irving at the age of seventeen about a job and his admiration for Benson is clear - he was also clear sighted about the future - a champion of Gielgud. Richardson and Ashcroft, closely following the lead of Harley Granville Barker and interested in the staging ideas of Edward Gordon Craig.
He went on to have a successful career in films which took him through to his seventies. As such I've always thought of him as a rather elderly character actor - the fussy diplomat in 'Roman Holiday' for example - and to have him restored to youth through his books has been really refreshing.
"The deer used to make their appearance at the beginning of the act when Orlando enters to hang his verse upon a tree. The herd was in charge of a sinister looking [stage-hand] who would lure them on stage with a paper bag of bread and then, as soon as he had left, the curtain would rise to rapturous applause from the audience who felt they were getting a circus thrown in gratis. [Richard] Flanagan [the director] one afternoon conceived the notion that Orlando would look well along the deer and asked me to be discovered with them. The [stage hand]left me in their midst and stood discreetly in the wings, The curtain rose, but unfortunately the beasts took my crackly paper of verses for another paper bag of bread and began to chase Orlando, looking as heroic as he could in the circumstances, around the stage. His heroism was further strained when a stentorian voice reached him from the wings: 'Mind the big beggar don't bit ye'. And the word was not 'beggar'..." ('Four Years at the Old Vic' pg 191/2 edited )
At least the deer in the Benson production was a stuffed one!
This time last year, I was heading to Stratford with a heavy cold and chest infection to cough my way through a couple of days of the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust Winter School. Having seen the newly announced 25-26 RSC season, it seems unlikely that I will be heading back there at all this year. Timings and performances do not lend themselves to my usual week in early September and so I'm having to accept that I won't be getting back into the SBT archives any time soon. I can't complain really, but I will miss my summer-holiday extension and, of course, my lovely cottage! I've been on this journey for so long now - I first 'discovered' Benson's existence in 1986! - and I'm so grateful for the chance to still be digging in the dust to find such golden moments.
There'll be more from Harcourt Williams, I hope!
EDITED: After writing this, I MAY have just booked a couple of nights in Stratford to see 'Hamlet'... carpe diem!
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