_Memories of Gilbert--His instinct for stagecraft--Stories of rehearsals--Jack Point's unanswered conundrum--The craze for the Up-to-Date--Gilbert's experiments on a miniature stage--Nanki-Poo's address--The Japanese colony at Knightsbridge--The geniality of Sullivan--A magician of the orchestra--The cause of an unhappy separation--Only a carpet--Impressions of D'Oyly Carte--Merited rebukes and generous praise--D'Oyly Carte and I rehearse a love scene--A wonderful business woman--Mrs. Carte's part in the Savoy successes--Our leader to-day._
Sir William Gilbert I shall always regard as a pattern of the fine old English gentleman. Of that breed we have only too few survivors to-day. Some who know him superficially have pictured him as a martinet, but while this may have been true of him under the stress of his theatrical work, it fails to do justice to the innate gentleness and courtesy which were his great and distinguishing qualities. Upright and honourable himself, one could never imagine that he could ever do a mean, ungenerous action to anyone, nor had any man a truer genius for friendship.
Gilbert, it is true, had sometimes a satirical tongue, but these little shafts of ridicule of his seldom left any sting. The _bons mots_ credited to him are innumerable, but while many may be authentic there are others that are legendary. He was a devoted lover of the classics, and to this may be attributed his command of such beautiful English. Nimble-witted as he was, he would spend days in shaping and re-shaping some witty fancy into phrases that satisfied his meticulous taste, and days and weeks would be given to polishing and re-polishing some lyrical gem. But when a new opera was due for rehearsal, the libretto was all finished and copied, and everything was in readiness.
Few men have had so rare an instinct for stagecraft. Few men could approach him in such perfect technique of the footlights. Up at Grim's Dyke, his beautiful home near Harrow, he had a wonderful miniature stage at which he would work arranging just where every character should enter, where he or she should stand or move after this number and that, and when and where eventually he or she should disappear. For each character he had a coloured block, and there were similar devices, of course, for the chorus. Thus, when he came down for rehearsals, he had everything in his mind's eye already, and he insisted that every detail should be carried out just as he had planned. "Your first entrance will be here," he would say, "and your second entrance there. 'Spurn not the nobly born' will be sung by _Tolloller_ just there, and while he sings it _Mountararat_ will stand there, _Phyllis_ there," and so on.