Viola Tree (1884-1938)

"Captain Swift"
A Drama, in five acts, by C. Haddon Chambers.
Revived at the Haymarket, December 2nd, 1893.
(with Viola Tree as Stella Darbisher)

On the last night of Mr. Jones's mediaeval romance Mr. Tree, in a happy little speech, pronounced a cheery epitaph upon 'The Tempter.' "It is satisfactory to me to find that a serious poetical play can attract large audiences for seventy-three nights; for it is, of course, much easier," said he, "and more profitable, in art, to stand on one's head than on one's heels." Having thus with grave deliberation spelt "w-i-n-d-e-r" on the Friday night, Mr. Tree, emulating Mr. Squeers's pupils at Dotheboys Hall, on the Saturday went and cleaned it by reproducing 'Captain Swift.' This wonderful story of a nameless child who is shipped to Australia to clear his mother's name, who becomes the Dick Turpin of the Colony, grows enamoured of respectability, returns to England, and is dropped by "the long arm of coincidence" plump into the bosom of his unknown mother's family, where are the only squatter whom he has "stuck up" in the bush, and the only playmate who could identify his boyhood's companion by the strawberry mark upon his left arm; this story is, perhaps, the best illustration Mr. Tree could find of the preference shown for standing on one's head in art. So palpable, so glaring, is the topsy-turvydom, that Mr. Haddon Chambers, in self-defence, entrenched himself behind that "long arm" of his, and from this vantage ground apologised, so to speak, in every act for the manifold audacities and improbabilities of his plot. His action was quite superfluous. Mr. Tree in that brief sentence takes our measure to an inch. We enjoy standing on our heads. That is, we enjoy seeing the Haymarket Company doing it for us. And if the author never breathed that "blessed word coincidence," we should be perfectly content to take his Gentleman Bushranger as we find him.

The truth is that the Knight of the Road exercises a fascination over all of us. A spirit of adventure fires the "ladies and gentlemen of England who sit at home at ease," to active sympathy with the soldier of fortune. Let his name be Alan Breck or Claude Duval, Captain Starlight or The Spider, if he's plucky he is sure of some sneaking admiration from all sorts and conditions of men. "The legion of the lost ones, the cohort of the damned," as Mr. Kipling sings, are so much more interesting than their betters. Compared with the one sheep that has gone astray, what is the rest of the flock? Merely ninety-nine of no importance. And this feeling is stronger still if the lost one hail from Eton - in Mr. Kipling's words, "Cleanly-bred, machinelycrammed" - and mask his wolfishness in (lost) sheep's clothing.

This particular Knight of the Road, moreover, has so many points in his favour. He had no mother - a strong plea for an angel who has fallen; his hankering after Society has its roots in blood and breeding; he fights hard for his own hand; and finally, making a swan-like end, pulls out the Renunciation stop with a fine feeling for the harmonies of humanity. Of course, he's a very shocking character, lifting cattle and stealing gold, giving a worthy family grounds for great uneasiness, and, by means of the confidence trick, creeping into an innocent girl's heart. As bad, in some ways, as Lord Lytton's Paul Clifford or Harrison Ainsworth's Jack Sheppard. Then he is shamefully unscrupulous, appealing to us first by pathetically prowling round Covent Garden at dead of night, to eat, as Chatterton did, the garbage in the gutter; by bidding for sympathy in this beggarly way, and, having got it, dying in the odour of sanctity, and cheating us of tears, without giving us time to think. In fact, his combination of the prodigal son and the burglar is quite indefensible. But no one thinks of calling it in question that is, so long as Captain Sivift is played by Mr. Tree. For the actor deserves more credit than the author. It requires talent of a high order to stand on your head and make people believe that you are all the time on your heels. But this Mr. Tree does. In other words, he applies so many touches of nature, that you are led to think the whole composition simply a transcript from nature; and so the contraband unrealities are smuggled through.

Mr. Tree has done many brilliantly clever things, but never, I think, a cleverer thing than this. For Captain Swift really carries the play. True, there are excellent scenes for others, for his remorseful mother, now played with infinite sensibility by Miss Carlotta Addison; for Stella the gentle and forgiving, happily in Mrs. Tree's dainty and delicate hands again - Swift and Stella! why did not Mr. Chambers advance a claim for a literary drama by throwing a Vanessa in? - for the cur of a butler, played with hangdog malevolence by Mr. Clark, though hardly with such sinister purpose and vicious grip as Mr. Brookfield's; and for the burly, good-hearted squatter of Mr. Macklin. But in every case the effect depends on Swift. If he did not ring absolutely true, the staginess of the whole thing would flash out like lightning. And it says much for the power of Mr. Tree's personality, and for the finesse and resource of which he is master, that he can arrest, rivet, and sustain attention through four acts of dexterous but very simple dramatic mechanism, and keep one's eyes practically closed to everything but the pathetic figure of this hunted robber, desperately striving to break from his old evil life and attain the desired haven of love and peace.

'The Theatre', Vol XXI, January 1894.