Clyde Fitch was an American dramatist, the most popular writer for the Broadway stage of his time.
Background
Clyde Fitch was the son of Captan William Goodwin Fitch of Hartford, Conn, (at the time of his marriage in 1863 a lieutenant in the Union Army), and of Alice Maud (Clark) Fitch of Hagerstown, Maryland.
Born at Elmira, New York, his first four years were spent traveling with his parents from army-post to army-post, at the end of which time Captan Fitch resigned from the service, and the family moved to Schenectady, New York, where they settled down for the next ten years. A small and delicate child, Clyde was nevertheless endowed with irrepressible spirits and originality.
Education
At nine he was editing “The Rising Sun, ” a weekly magazine all written out in his own large round hand. Its editorials consisted principally of humorous and precocious observations upon the neighbors; his other contributions were verse and such stories as “The Missing Hand; or Marie Gertrude Antoinette de la Rue—a thrilling tragedy a la Miss Goodrich. ” He originated The Hookey Club, consisting of himself and “Mollie” Jackson, his favorite playmate ; its secret meetings seem to have been held for the sole purpose of deciding which one of them could invent the best excuse for not going to church. At nine or ten, he made his first venture into theatricals. He collected a small group of little girls into a very lively company, and drilled them in melodramas, mostly of his own concoction, made the costumes and the scenery, and acted all the “hero” parts himself. When the performances were over, he would lead the whole company down-town and have tintypes taken of it in the most thrilling scenes. His favorite play was Blue Beard.
At thirteen he began to grow restless under his mother’s constant watchful care, and begged his father to send him away to some school “where he could be more like other boys. ” During the next winter—spent with an aunt at Hartford, Conn. —he attended the high school there, and the following year he was sent to the school for boys at Holderness, New Hampshire, to prepare for college. In a letter to his mother at this time he wrote: “I think I ought to have something to say about what college I am to go to, when four years of my life are to be spent there, . .. I am not so delicate, my dear, as you think, and please don’t write to any college about my being delicate, or about the climate, boys don’t like to be talked about that way, and I don’t, anyway. ”
Amherst was finally decided upon, and Fitch entered the class of 1886. Prof. John F. Genung later said of him, “Fitch was not by any means my best student, but he wras one of my most interesting pupils and I always felt he was a genius. ”
His college activities were principally literary and dramatic. “Billy Fitch, ” as he was known on the campus, contributed to almost every issue of the Student and for a time was its editor. After his freshman year he lived at the Chi Psi Lodge where he decorated the walls of his room with a frieze of apple blossoms, and painted over the fireplace "O, ye fire and heatj Bless ye the Lord. ’’
In his sophomore year, it was Fitch who “staged” the annual ceremony of burning up the class text-books on Analytical Geometry, which he called “The Funeral of Anna Lit. ” The Student in its next issue described the obsequies, as “having surpassed anything of a like nature ever witnessed at Amherst. ” "And as a result, ” writes Prof. Chilton Powell, “the Faculty eliminated future ceremonies of the kind. ” Fitch was an inveterate theatre-goer.
On one vacation he and his chum, Tod Galloway, went to eleven plays in six days. His first essay as a playwright happened in his junior year.
The Chi Psi Fraternity was to give an entertainment, and had done what had never been done before—invited the faculty. They had chosen to give a one- act operetta, II Jacobi, only to find on rehearsal that it would not suffice to fill the evening.
Walking home from chapel Fitch gloomily discussed with Galloway what was to be done about it. Two hours later he summoned Galloway to his room and read him a second act to II Jacobi, cleverer than the original, which at the performance made the hit of the evening. Fitch belonged to the Junior and Senior Dramatics, and besides designing costumes and scenery, he painted a curtain. He produced Wycherley’s The Country Girl and acted the role of Peggie Thrift.
He appeared as Constance in She Stoops to Conquer, and as Lydia Languish in The Rivals.
At his graduation he was chosen Grove Poet. Capt. Fitch then tried every means of persuasion to induce his son to take up the profession of architecture; the idea of literature as a livelihood seemed to him absurd, and he frowned still more upon the thought of his son’s writing for the stage. Fitch, however, had made up his mind. He felt the necessity of independence and was determined to go to New York and make his own way.
Career
Arriving at his goal in the autumn, he brought with him several letters of introduction; but before presenting any of them, decided to make a tour of the newspaper offices.
He first tried the World, where he was told there was nothing for him. It was a hot morning, but unbaffled he went on to the New York Times. There they suggested “he might go over and hang around the Hoboken docks and see if anything turned up. ” But before he reached the street again, he had already made his decision—“If anything does turn up at the Hoboken docks, it won’t be me!”
His next efforts toward making a living were the writing of jokes and verses for Life and Puck, stories for children, and a novel, “A Wave of Life, ” published in Lippincott’s Magazine, 1891.
Meanwhile he was tutoring two small children. This trying experience having come to an end, Fitch made his first trip abroad, meeting his mother in Paris. Paris instantly took possession of him—as Italy did afterward; it answered the color and spontaneity in his nature and ignited the creative in him.
There he met Massenet, Sybil Sanderson, Bernhard Berenson, and others, and sometimes read his writings to them. One night on a balcony, he read aloud Frederick Lemaître, a one-act play he had just finished, and became so impassioned, that a little Marquise, who lived below, sent up a note: "Would the American ladies and gentlemen please make a little less noise. ”
From Paris he went to London, where the Aesthetic Movement, though on the wane, was still prevailing, and he, at twenty-three, felt its sway. He carried about with him a volume of Vernon Lee, and at Walter Pater’s little house in Earl’s Terrace, he met many of the rising younger writers. Returning to New York, he took rooms in the old Sherwood Studios on West Fifty-seventh St.
He was still writing children’s stories for the Churchman, the Independent, and other magazines (collected in book form in 1891 under the title of The Knighting of the Twins) and was giving readings from Browning, Praed, and Keats. In spite of short funds, he was never an “attic poet”; on the contrary, with tapestry, books, old furniture (rickety perhaps but beautiful), stuffs and pictures— gleanings from the old Paris shops—he created a charming place where he received his friends at tea, in a blue velvet coat with a pink carnation in his buttonhole—and always there was a manservant at the door to take one’s hat. Among the letters of introduction Fitch had brought with him to New York was one to E. A. Dithmar, dramatic editor of the New York Times, who soon began taking him to the opening nights at the theatres.
At this time, Richard Mansfield had been hunting in vain for a man who would write a play around the character of Beau Brummell and, in despair, appealed to Dithmar. Without hesitation, Dithmar recommended Clyde Fitch. The actor and the playwright met in Philadelphia and Fitch set to work. It was not all plain sailing, however. The experienced actor made many valuable suggestions; but impatient and temperamental, he nearly drove Fitch into a sanatorium before the play was completed. Mansfield lacked confidence in the piece up to the last dress rehearsal.
That morning, striding up and down the stage, he muttered to W. J. Ferguson “We can’t do this play tomorrow—it will be a failure. We shall have to put on A Parisian Ro mance. ” But Fitch stuck it out; and when the curtain rose on that brilliant opening night, it proved to be the first of his many triumphs.
Fitch’s next productions were: Betty’s Finish, a one-act play of college life (Boston Museum, 1890), Frederick Lemaitre (Tremont Theatre, Boston, 1890), and Pamela’s Prodigy a comedy of the period of 1830 (Royal Court Theatre, London, 1891).
His first drama of contemporary life, A Modern Match, was well constructed, strong and human, and an obvious broadening out of his work. After a successful season, the foreign rights were bought by Mr. and Mrs. Kendal, who appeared in it in London, Dublin, and elsewhere, under the title of Marriage 1892. The following six years were filled with hard work and many variations of fortune. During this time Fitch wrote seven original plays and eleven adaptations from foreign sources; two of these, Gossip and A Superfluous Husband in collaboration with Leo Ditrichstein.
The Masked Ball, from the French of Bisson and Carre, for John Drew (his first appearance as a star) and Maude Adams, had a long run of popularity. Mrs. Langtry in Fitch’s Gossip, Otis Skinner in a charming production of Fitch’s His Grace de Grammont, and Madame Helena Modjeska in the title role of Fitch’s Mistress Betty (revised in 1905 as The Toast of the Town), were the high spots of those years. There were failures too, but Fitch met these with his remarkable faculty of working even harder in the face of defeat.
Meanwhile he made his annual trips abroad, watching the trend of the Continental theatres. Fortune smiled upon him in the simultaneous opening in 1898 of The Moth and the Flame in Philadelphia, with Effie Shannon and Herbert Kelcey, and Nathan Hale in Chicago, with Nat Goodwin and Maxine Elliott. The Moth drew capacity audiences at one theatre, while Nathan Hale was turning people away at the other. Fitch was dazed. Kelcey, meeting him at the theatre the morning after the opening, found him staring at an open telegram. It was from Nat Goodwin: “Breaking all records line from boxoffice around the corner. Nat. ” “Tell me, Kelcey, ” Fitch gasped, “do you think this is true, or is Goodwin joshing me ?” Also during the same year Charles Frohman successfully produced Fitch’s Barbara Frietchie, a drama of the Civil War, with Julia Marlowe in the title role.
Experience, by now, convinced the managers it was to their own profit to give Fitch free rein in the entire production of his plays—the choice of casts, the rehearsing, and the staging. Actors liked being directed by him; they soon recognized the actor in him, and behind his patience and tact, the driving force of “a man who knows his job. ” He was often criticized for his insistence upon small details; once a man sitting in front at a scenic rehearsal, exclaimed, as Fitch climbed down from the stage into the orchestra stalls, disgusted because some “property” had not arrived : “Why do you bother so much about such little things?” “Because, ” answered Fitch, “I think they are very important; I believe in watching every bit of scenery, every action, every incidental blessed thing connected with the production. It is the ‘little things’ that quickest show the lack of study and preparation. ”
To such infinite pains Fitch owed much of his success. No other American dramatist of his day could present the so-called “Society plays” as Fitch did; he knew the chatter of the drawing room as well as its setting, and from the first speech, no aside was needed to reveal to the audience what sort of people it was about to have the pleasure of meeting. Fitch was now (1901) thirty-six years old, and, in appearance, the unmistakable man of the world.
The year 1901 marked for him the beginning of a future of uninterrupted prosperity. Four of his plays—The Climbers, Captain Jinks (with Ethel Barrymore), Barbara Frietchie (a return engagement), and Lover’s Lane, were all running in New York at the same time, to packed theatres.
Praise from the critics, however, was still given grudgingly, and Fitch was never able to overcome his depression over their continued adverse attitude. Though at the crest of success he never slackened in his work; writing, personally attending to his productions, and rushing off to other cities for the try-out of new plays—besides, of course, being constantly in social demand.
n the spring of 1902 the strain of overwork began to tell on him, and on his physician’s advice to go to the country for rest he bought a piece of land at Greenwich, Connecticut, and before sailing again for Europe he started to build “Quiet Corner. ”
While in Europe he was threatened with appendicitis. At Berne, Switzerland, he was advised to go to St. Moritz, where under care he might avoid an operation. At St. Moritz he slowly improved; but in the autumn, without fully regaining his strength, he returned home, bringing back with him two complete new plays.
Two years later, at the age of twenty-three, he was admitted to partnership in the firm, known first as George J. Weaver aldine and The Girl with the Green Eyes. Between this date and 1907 he produced sixteen plays: ten of them original and six adaptations. On January 7, 1907, he had two plays open on the same night—The Straight Road, and The Truth. For the latter, in which Clara Bloodgood played the leading role, he had high hope, feeling that in it he had achieved his best. The critics gave unstinted praise to The Straight Road (a melodrama of the New York slums), while towards The Truth they were lukewarm. Fitch’s disappointment was bitter. From “Quiet Corner” he wrote, Of course I am pretty depressed over the abuse I get in the press A few days will tell the tale. But I have very little hope. ” A week later the critics had changed their tone. Fitch wrote again: "The Evening Sun was fine and so was Alan Dale today—very fine—my best! But, also, I fear they come too late ! . .. It will be a dreadful blow to me—as it will convince me that it is impossible for me to succeed in New York with the present press. Which will mean my laying down my pen. ” Fitch was right, the damage was done, The Truth closed after a few weeks of vain struggle. Three months later, however, the play made an enormous hit in London. At the end of the first performance the brilliant audience rose and cheered and called again and again for the author. The acting of Marie Tempest as Becky was hailed by all the papers as “a triumph.
Fitch afterward saw The Truth acted in Germany, Italy, Russia, Hungary, and Scandinavia, repeating its London success in each country. In the fall of 1907 Mrs. Bloodgood toured with the play, but after two happy months of success, the tour was brought to a sudden termination by her tragic suicide. At the end of that season Fitch began fighting a losing battle against failing health, but he would not give up. Forced to spend much of his time in the country, he took his manuscripts and his friends with him. Nothing was too good for the latter.
Once, accused of liking too many people, he answered—“I’ve always thought, if you like a lot of other people, you often learn new ways to please the ones you like best. ” Between 1907 and 1909 he wrote and produced two original plays, A Happy Marriage and The Bachelor, and adapted a farce from the German, The Blue Mouse. While writing on this farce, the- idea came to him of a tremendous climax for a new play {The City). From then on, this drama possessed him so completely that he could think of nothing else, writing feverishly, at a furious pace, “as though he knew the night was coming. ” On June 25, 1909, nervously worn out, he boarded the S. S. Lorraine for Havre, leaving behind him the finished work. After two weeks in Paris, he crossed to London to see The Woman in the Case (first produced in 1905), which was having a sensational success.
Happy over its reception, he could not stand the excitement of the demands its popularity made upon him. Very tired, he slipped away, returning to Paris ; and started on a lonely tour through the Tyrol. He carried with him the manuscript of a light comedy, writing on the way. Returning by way of Châlons-sur-Marne, he was taken acutely ill there on August 30, and an emergency operation was resorted to that night.
On September 4 brief cable brought the news to New York of his death. Three months later, on the night of December 21, The City opened at the Lyric Theatre. Every seat was filled. The feeling was intense. By the end of the second act, the developing horror of impending catastrophe swept the audience into a demonstration seldom witnessed in a New York theatre—a scene of hysterical confusion. Men were shouting, women fainted.