Review of W.S. Gilbert--Appearance and
Reality (Essays in Clarification) by D.J. Eden (Sir Arthur Sullivan
Society, Saffron Walden, 2003)
Hardback: 0-9507348-6-1, £35;
paperback: 0-9507348-7-X, £25
This review originally appeared in
Gilbert and Sullivan News.
"A striking feature of the biography of W.S. Gilbert is the paucity of real information concerning him," David Eden writes in his new book (p81). This is certainly true of Gilbert's family background, his romantic attachments, and his marriage--three of the subjects Eden tackles. It is less true of the other subjects of this new book--Gilbert's quarrels and his "other" plays. However, Eden's attempt to fill in the blanks is impressive enough almost to compensate for the book's often outrageous flaws.
The first three chapters are undoubtedly the best. They deal with the family background of the Gilberts and the Morrises (WSG's mother was a Morris), and the life of William Gilbert Senior. There is some overlap with the account in Michael Aingers' recent Gilbert & Sullivan biography. However, Eden has gone into greater detail about the complicated relationships of the Gilberts and the Morrises; he quotes more extensively from the original documents; and his account is in general more vividly realised. Perhaps all that needs to be said is that these chapters contain a wealth of information not available elsewhere.
He uses as major source material the semi-autobiographical novels of William Gilbert, WSG's father. This often pays substantial dividends, and most of the time Eden seems to discriminate judiciously between fact and fiction. The picture emerges of WSG's father as a hard, selfish man, probably alcoholic and mentally unstable (after the death of his first wife Mary Ann Skelton, two years into their marriage). It seems possible that Gilbert Senior booked himself into an asylum as a voluntary patient, though Eden's attempts to pin down where and when are tortuous.
The significant point, which Eden does not emphasise, is that all this--alcoholism, violence, mental instability--took place during the childhood of WSG. The effect of such a background upon the child can be imagined. And yet Eden does not extend the slightest sympathy or understanding towards the unloved, abused boy. He quotes WSG as admitting he was "not a popular boy" at Great Ealing School, and adds sneeringly that this is "a statement whose absolute historical accuracy we will not presume to question." (p83) He treats the vulnerable boy Gilbert as being the same as the adult monster of arrogance and egotism that Eden has described in his previous book Gilbert and Sullivan: The Creative Conflict (1986). This is surely unfair.
The fourth chapter, "W.S. Gilbert--Life and Marriage" seems to have been written by a different person from the author of the first three. Where they had been factual, well-researched and largely reasonable, Chapter Four is speculative and seemingly designed to needle anyone who has the slightest sympathy for Gilbert. It is difficult to criticise this section of the book without becoming heated; but I shall try.
Eden here turns his attention to Gilbert's love life--his relationships in particular with Annie Hall Thomas (a fiancée whom he was unable to marry) and Lucy Agnes Turner (who became his wife). He argues that Gilbert was materialistic and brutal in his love affairs, as well as being prurient, dirty-minded, and scared of the act of sex. Much of the "proof" of this is no proof at all; but he does at least uncover the astonishing fact that Gilbert was living in a house owned by the Thomases at the time he married Lucy. Eden deduces that Gilbert's marriage "can have been no romantic love match" (p102)--simply because Gilbert was capable of having affection for Annie at the same time as marrying Lucy, and remaining friendly with her. It is difficult to see how Eden's conclusion follows.
Hesketh Pearson wrote in Gilbert and Sullivan (1935): "Whenever [Gilbert] was exceptionally irritable the actors would assume that he had been eating almond rock, of which he was very fond; and as it was supposed to be bad for his gout an 'Almond Rock Day' was usually tempestuous." (Pearson, Hamish Hamilton 1935, p145)
Eden refers to this and notes that from about the year 1880 "almond rock" was slang for "something altogether more phallic" (p106)--presumably a phallus. He goes on: "The pleasure to be derived from the rock is obvious enough; he could talk about it, eat it, or distribute pieces of it in the presence of women while privately savouring the slang meaning." (p106)
Eden presents this not as theory but as fact. To extrapolate such a conclusion from such original evidence is grotesque. Would Gilbert (aged 46 in 1880) have so eagerly picked up on the latest slang and used it so childishly? Or did he simply like almond rock?
It is a small example, but it is a fair representation of Eden's wild theorising. It simply does not square with what we know of Gilbert, the Gilbert of the "Savoy Boarding School" who disapproved so much of the leering young bucks in the audience.
On the same page, Eden quotes an author who writes: "When Gilbert satirised women's education, he felt an agreeable frisson at the thought of young things in contact with the naughty authors of the ancient world." (quoted p106) It takes a little hunting to realise that the author, Richard Jenkyns, was writing in the year 1980 and could not possibly know if Gilbert felt a frisson or not.
In G&S: The Creative Conflict, Eden had taken Gilbert's The Wicked World as a prime example of Gilbert's pathological desire to return to pre-sexual innocence. In WS Gilbert: Appearance and Reality, he suddenly finds the work to be full of leering sexual innuendo. If nothing else, this does at least show the play's richness, in being capable of such contrasting interpretations.
Eden states that "irony and vanity are mutually incompatible" (p123)--an untrue truism which explains why he misunderstands so much of Gilbert's humour. A passage from the short story of "The Wicked World" is quoted on pp104-5, and he completely fails to notice its layers of irony and self-mockery. He does not properly come to terms with Gilbert's irony, and so fails to understand the building blocks of Gilbert's style.
He writes that there is not "the smallest suggestion that a lifetime in the theatre and a constant association with women outside it ever led Gilbert to form a sexual connection in the full sense." (p105) For Eden, this is an insoluble brain-teaser. He mentions morality only to dismiss it: "It would be frivolous to suggest that Gilbert was a moral man while Tree and Boucicault [who liked to have affairs] were not." (pp105-6) In that case, I am a frivolous man. Eden says there is nothing to show that Gilbert ever exhibited the "responsible intentionality" of truly moral behaviour. Let me simply point to Gilbert's generosity to E.A. Sothern and his sister, as documented on pp74-5 of Hesketh Pearson's Gilbert biography, and pass on.
The terrible thing is that there may very well be legitimate ideas being voiced in this chapter--but they are so entangled with incoherent fantasies such as the above, that it is impossible to tell them apart.
Eden is best when he is relating the verifiable facts. His accounts of Gilbert's bullying behaviour towards the Comtesse de Bremonte and Henrietta Hodson are uncomfortable reading for the Gilbert enthusiast--simply because they are true. If the whole book had been as powerfully written as the first three chapters and the last, it would be a book of revelation and chastisement for all Gilbert enthusiasts. As it is, one is left only with a sense that it is an incoherent broadside, as bad as it is good.
PS: For a traditional recipe for almond rock, see: http://www.freerecipe.org/Dessert/Candy/AlmondRock_bcbja.htm