James Evershed Agate | |
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 Agate in 1931 | |
| Born | (1877-09-09)9 September 1877 Pendleton, Greater Manchester, England |
| Died | 6 June 1947(1947-06-06) (aged 69) Holborn, London |
| Education | Giggleswick School Manchester Grammar School |
| Occupation(s) | Theatre & film critic, writer |
| Spouse | |
| Children | 0 |
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James Evershed Agate (9 September 1877 – 6 June 1947) was an English diarist and theatre critic between the two world wars. He took up journalism in his late twenties and was on the staff ofThe Manchester Guardian in 1907–1914. He later became a drama critic forThe Saturday Review (1921–1923),The Sunday Times (1923–1947) and theBBC (1925–1932). The nine volumes of Agate's diaries and letters cover the British theatre of his time and non-theatrical interests such as sports, social gossip and private preoccupations with health and finances. He published three novels, translated a play briefly staged in London, and regularly published collections of theatre essays and reviews.
Agate, the eldest child of Charles James Agate (1832–1909), a wholesale linen draper, and Eulalie Julianée Young, was born inPendleton, near Manchester, England.[1] His father had a keen interest in music and theatre and connections with them.Gustave Garcia, nephew to theprima donnaMaria Malibran, was Charles's lifelong friend after they were apprenticed together in the cotton warehouse. Agate's mother, educated in Paris and Heidelberg, was an accomplished pianist.[2] Through Agate's family ties with the active German artistic community in Manchester, he had much exposure to performance in his youth. In October 1912,Sarah Bernhardt visited the Agate home, an indication of the family's position in the local arts.[3] Agate's only sister, May, later studied acting under Bernhardt in Paris.[1]
After education atGiggleswick School andManchester Grammar School, where he was academically outstanding, he did not go to a university, but went into his father's business, where he worked for 17 years.[1] In his spare time he was a regular theatre goer, and admired and longed to emulate the critical writing ofGeorge Bernard Shaw inThe Saturday Review. In 1906 he wrote a letter about drama to a local Manchester paper. The editor printed Agate's contribution and invited him to write a weekly theatre column. After a year Agate joined theManchester Guardian's team of critics under the guidance ofC. E. Montague.[1] Even as a junior critic Agate did not hesitate to give bad notices to the leading figures of the English stage when he thought it justified. Within months of taking up his post, he wrote ofHerbert Beerbohm Tree's performance asRichard II, "It was extraordinarily uninteresting, and it is amazing how badly a tragic part can fit an actor so fine as, in other directions, Mr. Tree undoubtedly is."[4] Later, Agate was bested byLilian Braithwaite, who responded to his assertion that she was "the second most beautiful woman in London" by replying, "I shall long cherish that, coming from our second-best theatre critic."[5]
In his early twenties, Agate wrote a play,The After Years, which his biographer,Ivor Brown describes as "less than successfully realized". Another biographer, James Harding, said of Agate's subsequent attempts at fiction (a second play and three novels) that they are "of small import".[6]
Agate volunteered in May 1915 at the age of thirty-seven for theArmy Service Corps, and was posted to France. He had an arrangement to supply a series of open letters about his wartime experiences toAllan Monkhouse atThe Manchester Guardian. These were published in his first book,L. of C. (Lines of Communication), of which a reviewer wrote, "Captain James E. Agate ranks as one of the first hundred thousand soldiers who have written a book about the war, but... one is sure there will be no other book like this one.... It is our old friend 'J. E. A.' at his irritating best in khaki."[7] Agate's fluency in French and knowledge of horses found him a successful job as a hay procurer, described in the first volume of hisEgo. His system of accounting for wartime hay purchases in a foreign land was eventually recognised by theWar Office and made into an official handbook. Captain Agate's name was engraved on theChapel-en-le-Frith War Memorial in Derbyshire. AfterL of C, Agate published a book of essays on the theatre,Buzz, Buzz! (1918). In the same year, while still serving in France, Agate married Sidonie Joséphine Edmée Mourret-Castillon, daughter of a rich landowner. The marriage was short-lived, and after it broke up amicably, Agate's relationships were exclusively homosexual.[1][8]
On returning to civilian life, Agate pursued his career as a theatre critic. In 1919 he published a second book of essays,Alarums and Excursions.[9] In 1921 he secured the post withThe Saturday Review once held by Shaw (and then byMax Beerbohm), and in 1923 he moved toThe Sunday Times, where he remained theatre critic for the rest of his life. From 1925 to 1932 he combined his newspaper work with the post of drama critic for theBritish Broadcasting Corporation.[1] His former paper,The Manchester Guardian, later wrote of him, "That Agate was the first dramatic critic of his time may well be doubted by adherents of Ivor Brown orDesmond MacCarthy, but beyond dispute he was the first theatrical critic. He was native to the theatre, he understood acting, he had in his blood both the French... and English stages."[8]
In addition to his work on theatre, Agate was film critic toThe Tatler and literary critic toThe Daily Express, and also had leisure interests that occupied much time and money. He was a cricket and boxing enthusiast, the owner ofHackney show horses, and an avid golfer. All these are reflected in his diaries, published between 1935 and his death in a series of volumes entitledEgo,Ego 2,Ego 3, etc. (When he publishedEgo 8, his friend and sometime secretary Leo Pavia enquired, "Will the Ninth be choral?")[10] The historianJacques Barzun, a fan of Agate and editor of a reissue of the last two volumes of Agate'sEgo series,[11] highlighted Agate in 2001,[12] which rekindled the interest of a new generation:
"When in 1932 he [Agate] decided to start a diary, he resolved to depict his life entire, which meant giving a place not solely to his daily thoughts and occupations but also to his talk and correspondence with others, including his brothers and sister, no less singular than himself. The resulting narrative, with fragments of hilarious mock-fiction, ranks withPepys's diary for vividness of characterization and fullness of historical detail".
Alistair Cooke was another admirer of Agate, and devoted one of his "Letters from America" to the "Supreme Diarist."[13]
Agate had a series of secretaries, of whomAlan Dent, known as Jock, served for 14 years and became the most prominent. Dent arrived on Agate's doorstep in September 1926: "He announced that his name was Alan Dent, that he resided at some absurd place near Ayr, that he had received university education, hated medicine and refused to be a doctor, that he admired my work, intended to be my secretary willy-nilly, and had walked from Scotland for that purpose. I looked at his boots and knew the last statement to be merelyad captandum and with intent to mollify." (From Ego [1], Page 91.)
Agate's style in the diary entries that constitute the nine volumes of "Ego" is discursive. Anecdotes of the day's news, excerpts from his voluminous correspondence with readers of his reviews and books, frank and often amusing ruminations on his health (he was a hypochondriac and obsessive-compulsive) and poor financial state abound. Many of his diary entries mention his friendsHerbert van Thal,George Lyttelton, Dent and Pavia, and Edward Agate, his much-loved brother. He had recurring themes aroundMalibran,Sarah Bernhardt,Réjane,Rachel, theDreyfus Affair,Shakespeare, andDickens. His style is "vigorous and outspoken, and always entertaining, in spite of his refusal to admit greatness in any actor later thanIrving."[14] He has been compared to critics of an earlier generation,Clement Scott andA B Walkley: "He admired the power Scott had enjoyed on theDaily Telegraph during the last third of the nineteenth century, and enjoyed Walkley's elitism and francophilia onThe Times during the late Victorian and Edwardian periods. Agate sought to position himself in that tradition, and his criticism consequently is verbose and self-indulgent but hugely entertaining and revealing."[15]
Agate made a short-lived, unsuccessful adaptation of a German play,I Accuse! from the original of Dr.Hans Rehfisch andWilhelm Herzog; it opened and closed in London in October 1937.[16]The Times reviewer commented, "Mr. Agate is suspected of having been too faithful to a too earnest German original."[17][18] His theatrical notices appeared in a series of collections. includingBuzz, Buzz!,Playgoing,First Nights andMore First Nights, and are valuable for their history of London theatre between the world wars. His anthologyThe English Dramatic Critics, 1660–1932 is important. He wrote a biography of the French actressRachel, which the novelistArnold Bennett called "excited and exciting" and of its subject "beyond question the best life in English".[19]
Agate's health declined during the Second World War and he began to suffer from heart trouble. He died in June 1947 suddenly at his home in Holborn, London, at the age of 69, shortly after completing his ninthEgo volume.[20]
Agate's nineEgo volumes of autobiography appeared in 1935, 1936, 1938, 1940, 1942, 1944, 1945, 1947 and 1948. He also wrote volumes ofThe Contemporary Theatre published by Chapman and Hall, covering 1923, 1924, 1925, 1926, 1944 and 1945.Other publications were:
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