Take the current when it serves...

My post last week about the shady goings-on of Mr Walter Bentley ended at the point when a young and relatively inexperienced FRB turned up to the Town Hall, Stirling, to join the Company. It was only twelve weeks after this that Benson stepped in after Bentley's disappearance stranded the company in Cupar.  Bentley's 1915 autobiographical piece gives a characteristically plausible and laudable version of what happened:

"The first thing I did on returning to the footlights was to form what has now for years been known as the F.R. Benson's English Shakespearean Co. (...) Mr Benson came to me as a raw recruit with a letter of introduction from somebody in London.  He didn't know anything.  For twelve years we toured the English provinces and the principle cities of Scotland and Ireland.  Everything we did was of a classical nature: Shakespeare and such plays as Richelieu, The Lady of Lyons and Money.  Wilson Barrett was then in London playing The Silver King.  He asked me to take the name part in a company that was being formed to play it in America.  I closed with the offer.  Mr Benson, who had an income of his own, bought my interest in the Company, in which he had been appearing with me, and since then what was originally my Company has been known as his."

However, we've already learned that Mr Bentley could be economical with the truth. This account manages to give the impression that Bentley taught Benson all he knew, implies that they had toured together for twelve years (rather than just twelve weeks!) and  suggests that the transfer of company ownership was a well-considered business transaction which was conducted in an above-board manner.  Bentley also manages to take all the credit as the Company's founder.

In fact, Bentley's Company were playing relatively little Shakespeare at that point - Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet and Merchant of Venice appearing only sporadically in the weeks leading up to the change of management.  It would be on stage in Hamlet that Bentley and Benson would initially meet - Bentley as the Danish Prince, Benson as a less-than-word-perfect Rosencrantz in a "hideous, straggly yellow wig" which the young actor had optimistically purchased in London before travelling north.

Benson, in writing his memoirs, never shrinks from telling a humorous story against himself and his description of this performance of Hamlet is amongst his best anecdotes:

' Perhaps Hamlet expected some of the words, Rosencrantz certainly expected some of the cues - but neither were forthcoming on this occasion; at least, not the words of Shakespeare as he is wrote.  The actor-manager, who I had not hitherto seen, looked Rosencrantz up and down, turned his back on the audience and said in a loud aside ,"What the hell have you got on your blasted head?" This, as a first greeting, struck me as a little unfriendly, not to say discourteous.

"What the hell have you got on your -------- head?  You look like a --------! Get off the stage and change it, for God's sake!"

I was dignified, and replied by firing off what lines I remembered of my part, with a mental reservation to have it out with the management at the first opportunity.'

Benson got his chance when Bentley sent for him a day or two later and stated the problem clearly:

' "You must be a little more attentive to your make-up.  It's no use my trying to play Hamlet if Rosencrantz comes on in a wig that makes the audience laugh." '

Benson attempted to defend the wig:

" 'It's a very good wig, Mr Bentley.  I paid three guineas for it, and it was recommended by a thoroughly experienced actor, who sold it to me.'

' "Ah, he would (...) Take my advice and give somebody three bob to burn it. Nothing more certain than it will get you into trouble if you wear it again on my stage." '

Benson's pride wasn't just wounded on account of the wig.  He felt that Bentley's actions on stage had fallen short of his own gentlemanly standards, and he wasn't about to let the insult pass without challenge.

 ' "I object to being addressed on the stage in such language as you used to me on Monday night (...) I never allow anyone to be impertinent, even if he happens to be my manager.  I'm considered rather strong and capable of dealing with your insolence as it deserves. ' 

This impressive warning was received with peels of laughter.  'Well, my boy, I do not see that will do you any good, or me either.  (...) If you wear that yellow wig again, there isn't a management on God's earth that wouldn't insult you.   They'd be neglecting their duty as artists if they didn't." '

Reading between the lines, I sense some grudging admiration here at Bentley's good humoured response to his bumptious tyro and perhaps a foreshadowing of some of the conversations Benson himself would later have as manager. 

However, Benson's apprenticeship was cut short: 

'One Monday evening Bentley failed to put in an appearance and Kilpack, the stage manager deputised as Shylock.  Matters were hastening to a climax. (...) I wrote home a lengthy letter saying that I had the opportunity of starting on my own with a company of exceptional ability; that if my father would advance me a hundred pounds, I had no doubt that I would speedily make the fortunes of myself and the family.'

Benson's father sent the cheque - the first of many - and Benson waited for the right moment.  It wasn't long in coming.

The next venue on the tour was in Cupar.  

Bentley did not make an appearance and the local newspaper reported that the Company "were like the play of Hamlet, with Hamlet left out.  Mr Bentley (...) is suffering from acute catarrh of the stomach (...)

His medical adviser has ordered him to take rest at once in the South of France."

The Company were anxious: rumours abounded.  Benson recalls:

"We played the Merchant of Venice twice, Hamlet twice and The Bells twice; but the attention of the company was more concerned with the future prospects of the coming campaign than with the meagre houses that assembled in the barn-like building (...)  By Wednesday, it was ascertained that Bentley had disappeared entirely from his customary haunts and was reported to have escaped his creditors by taking ship to Australia."

Having not been paid, the owners of the hall impounded the sets and costumes and the actors, left without prospect of that week's wages, were stranded.

Benson seized his chance.  The hundred pounds paid the company's wages and settled the debt with the hall.  The eccentric young man in the yellow wig - who'd arrived in Stirling looking like someone who'd been disowned by his family - became their knight in shining armour.

William Mollison, who would eventually be enshrined in the Memorial Theatre windows as Cassius, sent a letter home to his brother 

" Walter Bentley has put the crowning touch to his villainy and left us stranded here (...) However, a young aristo named F.R. Benson who has done a season with Irving and has plenty of the ready, is going to take over the Company..."

If things were not quite as easily settled as all that, Benson at least had the foundations of a theatre company on which to build.  

Bentley, with Willma, his daughter, and wife Melba.

Bentley, contrary to the belief of Benson and others, does not appear to have gone to Australia at all in 1893, but instead went to America where he toured in several plays, including The Silver King.  He returned to England in 1886, setting up another Company in his own name, before going to Australia again in 1891.  In 1901 he returned to Britain and then finally settled permanently in Australia in 1908. He would make a successful career for himself there, going on to found a school of Acting and Elocution and involving himself in the political and social life of Sydney as a highly respected and respectable citizen.

However, there still remained something of the old Bentley about him.  In 1918, at the age of sixty seven, he became a father, marrying the mother of his child a month after the birth.  On the marriage certificate he claimed to be a widower.  His second wife, Florence Grant, was still living in Britain and Dr Wallace comments in a footnote that she found no record of a divorce during her research...

Tragically, Bentley shot himself in 1927, after a long illness had led to severe depression.  It seems a very sad ending for someone so full of life.  Had he been a more honourable gentleman, the Bensonian story might have been a very different one and, despite all his roguery, I have to admit I've grown rather fond of him!