Shadows and Illusions

The first direct request for state aid for the performing arts came from a group of stage performers during the winter of 1914. A few well-known personalities, led by the actor Seymour Hicks and his musical wife Ellaline Terriss, decided that it would be a valuable contribution to the war effort if they went over to France and entertained the troops at Christmas time. Lord Burnham agreed to put up half the money for the expedition, and Ellaline Terriss describes how she and Hicks approached the War Office for the rest:

At first I don’t think, from the questions we were called upon to answer, any such thing as entertainment for the soldiers in the War zone had entered the heads of those who were directing operations. Indeed, Lord Kitchener, after enquiring when we wanted to start and being told Xmas Eve, asked if we thought the British Army was going to stop fighting on Xmas Day?

Funds were, however, forthcoming, and Britain’s first state-subsidised performing arts company set off for France on December 22nd. 1914 in a convoy of ten motor cars:

We arrived at Boulogne in the darkness of a late December afternoon. To our surprise, on reaching the pier, we heard a great shout go up. It was thronged with soldiers who had heard we were arriving. An hour from our time of landing we were giving our first concert in the Casino.

Later in the war, the performing arts received one further crumb of state assistance when the War Office gave a grant to the young Basil Dean to support his network of Garrison Theatres. For the most part, however, it was a case of the performing artists raising funds for the war efforts, and the war charities, through a network of charitable matinees and special performances for the invalided troops. As Ellaline Terriss again recalls:

There was much for my profession to do and they did it well. It was only their duty, I know, but with a few miserable exeptions (always to be found in any large community) they none of them shirked anything, most of them going about their duty in the must unostentatious manner. As only one instance among hundreds, I remember meeting Mr. Nelson Keys looking very tired going to his theatre. He had done five hospital turns that day, and that was the reason he smilingly said, ‘I feel a little cheap’, and there were many others like him.

The main beneficiaries of the artists’ work during the years of carnage were the Red Cross and the St. John Ambulance Brigade. No-one suggested that the artists’ work for the troops should itself be registered as a charitable cause.