The end is the veteran's peaceful death… with Tipperary sounding in the distance as a requiem. Wholesome, pretty and effective — Examiner of Plays
Now, nearly three years on from that first hopeful application to volunteer, I am still involved in the project, albeit behind the others on the second phase—researching my assigned playwright, George Bealby.
I have developed a tender affection for "my George" as he is now known to my family. He was a successful actor and writer with interesting family connections so there is a mass of material available, and every search uncovers new avenues to explore making the process dauntingly open-ended.
I didn’t know what to expect when I started investigating but the humanity of it captivated me: I found pathos in the census records that counted numbers of lunatics and imbeciles and moved by the registers that chart the milestones in people's lives.
With an arbitrariness that continues to surprise me, facts about George emerge with information from unofficial sources needing verification, piling on the work.
Born in 1877 in Nottinghamshire, George—with the family name of Wright—was the son of a well-to-do land agent, William, and the brother of County and England cricketer Charles.
An old Etonian, George trained as an engineer but by 1899 had started acting and by 1901 he was living in London, in 1903 marrying the actress Mabel Beardsley, six years his senior and the sister of the illustrator Aubrey Beardsley.
Mabel developed cancer from which she died aged 44, her courage and grace in illness memorialised by her friend W B Yeats in a collection of seven poems, Upon a Dying Lady.
George was to marry again a decade later, this time to Isabel Bacon, an actress some 19 years his junior, who worked under the name Jane Bacon. They were to have one son.
Through the first two decades of the last century, George's career flourished: books and theatre reviews which (largely) praise his work in comedy, farce, Grand Guignol and thrillers bear witness to a varied catalogue of acting work.
Later in his career, he worked on two films, both early talkies and both with a screenplay by Charles Bennett based his plays of the same name, The Last Hour and Midnight.
Principally an actor, George was of course also a writer—this being the reason I started the research. His credits on the Great War Theatre database include In the Blood, in which George also acted, and The Star Engagement, but others have also surfaced.
The purpose of researching the writers is primarily to find a date of death and/or living descendants to ascertain if their work was still in copyright. It seemed a matter-of-fact enough task and I was unprepared to discover that George had committed suicide aged 54 and that I was so affected by this finding.
He had shot himself less than a year after the birth of his son, diary entries indicating depression and feelings of uselessness. The front page of The Daily Herald notes "…the stoicism with which Bealby masked his intense sufferings of disappointed ambition, even from his wife."
At the inquest, the letter written by George to his wife was read out:
In 1920 and 1922 my performances were the talk of London. For the last ten years I have done nothing. The theatre has no use for me any more. This I have to realise and it is difficult to swallow...
When I have gone the[se] humbugging managers will say 'what a fine actor he was.' Throw a rotten egg at them. Why did they not give me work while I was here?
Newspaper records and obituaries reveal a deep sadness and inability to deal with a career in the doldrums but plainly his wife's success and adoring reviews must have stung him deeply—"Miss Jane Bacon, one of the most charming and graceful actresses of the younger generation… her great talent… her beautiful performances". "Her interpretation of Helena in A Midsummer Night's Dream was a masterpiece of tragic acting…".
"His quixotic character may also have had something to do with this death," his wife said. "He was a genius and could not conform to the methods of everybody else. His imagination was extraordinary and he wrote the most exquisite verse."
One wonders what this sensitive artist made of the War. When he wrote on the subject, it was patriotically and perhaps this was George's war effort.
With the advantage of hindsight, it is possible that his career benefitted from being at home as it did that of others. By the time the Military Service Act was passed, George was on the age limit for conscription and at this point I can only conjecture that Mabel's great illness kept him back from volunteering earlier.
For sure he could not have anticipated the fame nor the tragedy that awaited him in the period to follow.
Dedicated to George Bealby.
My thanks to Dr Helen Brooks for taking me on as a volunteer and for meeting with me for this article.
There remains a lot of work still to do. Anyone interested in getting involved with the Great War Theatre project as a volunteer should get in touch via e-mail. Some general IT proficiency is required together with basic knowledge of spreadsheets. Those with experience or interest in genealogy, theatre history and working with archives would be especially welcome.
If any readers have family diaries or accounts of being involved with theatre or going to the theatre during the War, the Great Theatre project would be grateful to hear from you. Similarly, if any readers have theatre reviews, production photographs or programmes from the period that they are willing to share. Helen's subsequent project is based on theatre in the 1920s so this period is also of interest.