Sadler's Wells

“ I have dwelt at some length on my impressions of the artistic directorate of Sadler’s Wells. Beyond and apart from the artistic direction of the Sadler’s Wells Ballet, but very much responsible for its financial well-being, is David Lumsden Webster, the General Administrator of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden.
David Webster is not a head-line hunter. He is certainly not the press-agent’s delight. He does not court publicity. He permits his work to speak for itself. ”

“ Anna Pavlova, Fanny Ellsler, and Marie Taglioni. The photographs range from good Queen Alexandra, through bull-fighters, to dancers.
The Sadler’s Wells hierarchy seems to travel in groups. One such group that seemed inseparable included Ashton, “Bobby” Helpmann, Margot Fonteyn, and Pamela May. Occasionally Constant Lambert would join in, to eat, to drink, to have fun. For “Freddy” is by no means averse to the good things of life. ”

“ To be sure ye were guilty of pony races: they took place outside the theatre, but within the walls, in the very cella of the aquatic temple, till now, never! We wonder ye do not rise up and “pluck bright Honner from the vasty deep” of his own tank.
Sawdust at Sadler’s Wells! What next, Mr. Merriman?
A JUDGE GOING THE CIRCUIT.
If Macready had been engaged for Clown, and set down to sing “hot codlins;” were Palmerston “secured” for Pierrot, or Lord Monteagle for Jim Crow, who would have wondered? But to saddle “The Wells” with horses—profanity unparalleled! ”

“ Gad! the first we know, we'll be up for fighting among ourselves, and we all know how the new court doth look on that."
"Come away," laughed Castleton, gaily. "I'm for a pint of ale and an apple; and then beware! 'Tis always my fortune, when I come to this country drink, to win like a very countryman. I need revenge upon Lady Betty and her lap-dog. I've lost since ever I saw them last."
CHAPTER II AT SADLER'S WELLS
Sadler's Wells, on this mild and cheery spring morning, was a scene of fashion and of folly. ”

“ It took forty-one more years for the uncut, full-length work to be done in London, with the Sadler’s Wells Ballet production, staged by Frederick Ashton, at Covent Garden, in the Royal Opera House, on 3rd of September, 1952. The original British Sylvia, Lydia Kyasht, was, by this date, a member of the teaching staff at the famous Sadler’s Wells School.
Lydia Kyasht remained at the Empire for five years. At the conclusion of her long engagement, she sailed for New York to appear as the Blue Bird in a Shubert Winter Garden show, The Whirl of the World, with Serge Litavkin as her partner ”

“ The bulk of the boys come out of working-class families in the North of England and the Midlands. They are tough and manly. It is from boys such as these that the prejudice against male dancing will gradually die out, and the effeminate dancer will become, as he should, a thing of the past.
MOIRA SHEARER
Although, to my regret, due to personal, family, and artistic reasons, Moira Shearer is not present with the Sadler’s Wells Ballet on its 1953-1954 North American tour, I know her devotion to the Sadler’s Wells institution remains unchanged. ”

“ The fifth department of Arnold Haskell’s activities, educator, is the one on which he is today most successfully and conspicuously engaged. As the active head of the Sadler’s Wells School, established in its own building in Colet Gardens, Kensington, Arnold Haskell is in his element, continuing his sound advice directly; he is acting as wise and discerning mentor to a rising generation of dancers, who live together in the same atmosphere for at least eight years. ”

“ Man of the theatre, he is resourceful. On the first night of The Sleeping Beauty, at the Metropolitan Opera House, there were a few ticklish moments at the beginning of the Transformation Scene, due to technical difficulties. The orchestra under Lambert went straight on. But the stage wait was covered by Helpmann’s entrance, his sure hand, his manner, his style, his “line,” his graciousness.
I have mentioned some of Helpmann’s warm personal qualities. He is one of those associated with Sadler’s Wells who has helped to number my Sadler’s Wells’ associations among my happiest experiences. ”

“ And the ladder creaked, and Sadler came over the side. He stepped soft and long like a ghost.
“How do?” he says, and sat down, and twankled his banjo.
Then I asked, “Why? What for?” I says, “I don't see it,” I says. “It ain't reasonable.” It was well enough for a flamingo, but a man has responsibilities. It's not right for him to be a floating object that's no such thing. He's got no business to be impossible, unless he explains himself. I stated that opinion pretty sharp, but Sadler was calm.
“Irish hooked the Harvest Moon” he says, “and lay outside for the steamer. ”

“ Undoubtedly there was a substratum of truth and good sense in the views so stoutly and passionately maintained by Sadler; only Sadler imagined it was possible to compromise, to step down from the ideal and yet find great happiness. He himself would give up the dream of happiness in the ideal sense: his would be frankly a case of convenience, though were it not for the many virtues of Miss Robinson, his mind would never have become reconciled to it. No! not even were she as rich as Croesus. He must do that amount of justice to himself. ”

“ One of my hands is greatly swollen this morning, and yet I have no remembrance of injuring it yesterday. Otherwise, I am feeling all the better for last night's festivity. But I cannot understand how it is that I did not meet Charles Sadler when I so fully intended to do so. Is it possible---- My God, it is only too probable! Has she been leading me some devil's dance again? I will go down to Sadler and ask him.
Mid-day. The thing has come to a crisis. My life is not worth living. But, if I am to die, then she shall come also. ”

“ Believe me, I am the last man in the world to betray a brother in the pursuit of his calling. I have some few gifts myself, and my name for some years past hath been considered an ornament to the profession; but whatever my vanity, I am ever foremost in recognizing true merit in others. I have never had the pleasure of meeting you before, sir, but the very real talent you have already evinced will make William Sadler proud to be numbered among your friends. ”

“ It was a piece of mad folly, of cynical bravado; and she took her seat at the table with an air of reckless mischief that was wholly adorable. She played the game. To-morrow we must leave our native land for ever, but that night we contrived to forget everything—our perilous situation, our destitution and our desperate case, in quips and jests, good wine and boisterous laughter.
Mr. Sadler afterwards, very deservedly I do not doubt, came to be hanged. But it was sound judgment in me to invite him to our last dinner. What a fine merry rogue he was, to be sure! ”

“ How they cheered and laughed, these gallant Englishmen, and how they clapped me on the back!
"Even money on the Frenchman," cried Lord Sadler.
"He fights foul," cried my enemy, rubbing his crimson ears. "He savaged me on the ground."
"You must take your chance of that," said Lord Rufton, coldly.
"Time!" cried Lord Sadler, and once again we advanced to the assault.
He was flushed, and his small eyes were as vicious as those of a bull-dog. There was hatred on his face. For my part I carried myself lightly and gaily. A French gentleman fights but he does not hate. ”

“ A light flashed in the eyes of Robert Sadler which Lady De Aldithely affected not to see. The opportunity he had been seeking was before him. He would go out alone, but he would not return alone. When the drawbridge should be lowered to admit him on his return the king's messengers with a troop of horse would be at hand. They would make a rush while he held parley with the old warder. They would gain entrance to the castle; Josceline would be taken, and the reward for his own treachery would be gained. He had plenty of time to think of all this, for the men were slow to offer. ”

“ Cromwell motioned with his hand that Sadler should note down this Father Michael's name.
'Are there many men in my antechambers?' he asked Viridus, and hearing that there were more than one hundred and fifty: 'Why, let this wench stay there a half-hour. It humbles a woman to be alone among so many men, and she shall come here without a sound clout to her back for the crush of them.'
He began talking with Sadler about two globes of the world that he had ordered his agent to buy in Antwerp, one for himself and the other for a present to the King. Sadler answered that the price was very high ”

“ Wyndham contended that these things were all a matter of temperament. "Even at the best you'd have to keep your mind very elastic as to the type of person, whereas, for my own part," he declared, with the Lady Betty type in his mind, "I not only hold on to my poetic standpoint, but there are certain personal ideals I couldn't possibly surrender."
"If you stick out too much for ideals, you'll never get anywhere at all," said Sadler. ”

“ Sadler’s principle, should the people of Guildford be more prolific than the people who live within the bills of mortality? And, if the people of Guildford ought, as on Mr. Sadler’s principle they unquestionably ought, to stand as low in the scale of fecundity as the people of Southwark itself, it follows, most clearly, that they ought to stand far lower than the average obtained by taking all the people of Surrey together. ”

“ The imputation of being in a passion Mr Sadler will not disclaim. His is a theme, he tells us, on which "it were impious to be calm;" and he boasts that, "instead of conforming to the candour of the present age, he has imitated the honesty of preceding ones, in expressing himself with the utmost plainness and freedom throughout." If Mr Sadler really wishes that the controversy about his new principle of population should be carried on with all the license of the seventeenth century, we can have no personal objections. ”

“ He had done that which makes every man a hero for the moment, and dim figures with whom he had been out of touch for endless years started up again on the horizon, palpitatingly actual, athrob with goodwill. In the Bohemian world, too, confirmation of the former rumour was not slow to be noised abroad, and Sadler hastened to Hampstead and burst in upon him, the massive head enthusiastically aglow; declaring that he had never for a moment taken Wyndham's denial seriously, and roaring out his congratulations and envy with an exuberance of virile expletive. ”

“ At the restaurant Sadler scrutinised the carte with the confident eye of a man about town, grumbled a little, held a fussy colloquy with the waiter, and finally ordered oysters and chablis to begin upon, the while a chateaubriand was being prepared for them.
Over the meal Sadler talked a great deal of old times. He seemed to have kept himself [Pg 80] well in touch with scores of men they had known in common, despite scatterings and vicissitudes. His mind kept leaping across the world, beating them all out of their lairs for Wyndham's enlightenment. ”

“ Gee! He's great!"
"I once saw some wretched things of his, though," said Wyndham. "I remember—at a modern exhibition at Venice."
"I grant there are one or two rotten ones," conceded Sadler; "but they're interesting, if you take them in the right way—experiments that failed, though they were fine as he had them in him. Well—then I did a bit of a tour all over the shop—came along through Holland—made cart-loads of sketches; and then I came right along here. Been getting lots of fun in London; been round with the boys, and had a rattling good time. ”

“ Archibald and me, but I suppose we can take some one with us to guide and cook.”
“My dear Harriet,” said Mrs. Dearborn, “if you are at Sadler’s, you can go into any sort of camp you please. I will tell you all about Sadler’s. Sadler is a man of progress. His hotel or inn is on the very edge of the forest country, and away from all the centres of resort. He calls his place the terminal link of public travel in that direction. When you leave him you travel privately in any 11 way you like. ”

“ Fu Shan said, “Go lun joss house by Langoon.” Sadler didn't seem to care about the business part of it either, though it looked interesting. He only wanted the medicine.
Days and nights we talked it over, and got no further than that, and drew nearer the East. The East is a muddy sea with no bottom, and it swallows a man like a fog bank swallows a ship.
Sadler made some verses that he called his “Prayer;”—“Sadler's prayer,” and he told me them one wet day, when a half gale was blowing, and he sat smoking with his feet hitched over the rail. ”

“ He gulped down a glass of wine and wiped his lips.
"I see your point of view," said Wyndham; "but I detest it. Better to fight to the end, and stand alone."
"You make me tired," snapped Sadler again. "There are plenty of women of the right sort who'd prefer an artist with a name to some damned bore of a booby who hasn't an idea in his head. They're not fools, those women, I tell you. They know there's no money in the profession; they know you can't get everything in life. ”

“ You dig the work out of yourself with sweat, with blood!" The veins began to swell in Sadler's mighty forehead. "And when you're not one of the lucky ones, what does the world do to help you to work for it?" He had wrought himself up to a tense excitement, and put the question with a hoarse shout. "Nothing! It prints your name in the papers, it talks about you at dinner parties! Painting is starvation—painting [Pg 83] is death! By the time you've worried along till you're forty, you begin to see a bit straight, my boy. Look around you—what do you see on all sides? ”

“ Jemmy then whispered in Lord Wharncliffe's ear, and the latter immediately rose from the table, and said, "Now, gentlemen, Mr. Hirst is quite willing to give Mr. Sadler that satisfaction he desires. He has requested my services as second. I have granted his wish. As soon as Mr. Sadler can arrange with any gentleman to act as his second, I shall be happy to arrange preliminaries with him." ”