May 20, 1956— Sir Max Beerbohm, a Victorian dandy who went on to carve out his own special 20th-century
niche as caricaturist, essayist and fiction writer, died at age 84 in Rapallo, Italy,
where he had lived as an expatriate since 1910.
My first introduction to this English wit took place
in the late 1970s, when I saw The Incomparable Max, an adaptation of two of his macabre
stories by Inherit the Wind playwright
Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee. I saw the play—which premiered in New York
for a brief run in 1971—in a production by Center Stage, a short-lived repertory
company in my hometown of Englewood, NJ.
It made sense that Beerbohm would find a kind of
life after death on stage. Not only had he toured the U.S. in the 1890s as
press agent of his half-brother, the famous London actor-manager Sir Herbert
Beerbohm Tree, but he had also succeeded George Bernard Shaw as chief theater
critic of Saturday Review. (It was,
in fact, the droll Anglo-Irish playwright who not only recommended him for the
job, but also bestowed on him the nickname, “the incomparable Max.”)
That last paragraph only hints at the many famous
people that Beerbohm knew—so many that he refused to become unduly starry-eyed
about them. Some thoughts on Goethe led him to a wider observation that has the
short style of aphorism and the pungent tone of experience: “Men of genius are
not quick judges of character. Deep thinking and high imagining blunt that
trivial instinct by which you and I size people up."
Moreover, in his review of the newly opened revival
of The Judas Kiss, critic Terry
Teachout offered this Beerbohm quote about fellow dandy Oscar Wilde to suggest
that the incomparable one might have been slow to join the contemporary parade
for the creator of The Importance of
Being Earnest: “He felt himself omnipotent, and he became gross not in body
only…but in his relations with people. He brushed people aside; he felt he was
beyond the ordinary human courtesies.”
Last year, essayist Phillip Lopate published a fine
collection of Beerbohm pieces he had selected, The Prince of Minor Writers. Since purchasing it, I’ve derived a
great deal of pleasure from slipping into it at will and discovering droll
little nuggets that somehow retain their freshness a century after they were
written.
Except for World Wars I and II, Beerbohm lived in
Rapallo for all of his last 46 years—starting with his first wife, the American-born
British actress Florence Kahn, then, after her death, with his longtime
secretary-companion, Elizabeth Jungmann, whom he wed just a few weeks before
his death at 84. It is said that he
entertained a constant stream of visitors during these years. And why wouldn't he, considering his bright circle and even brighter wit?
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