James Agate

James Evershed Agate (September 9, 1877 – June 6, 1947) was a British diarist and critic, and a notable collector of aphorisms. In the period between the wars, he was one of Britain's most popular theatre critics. He was on the staff of Manchester Guardian (1907-14); drama critic for Saturday Review (1921-23), and the Sunday Times (1923-47).^[1]

Life and writings

He was born on 9 September 1877, to Charles James Agate, a wholesale linen draper, and Eulalie Julia Young in Pendleton, near Manchester, England. His father had a keen interest in, and connections to, music and the theatre. Gustave Garcia, nephew to the prima donna Maria Malibran, was Charles' lifelong friend since they were apprenticed together in the cotton warehouse. Agate's mother was educated in Paris and Heidelberg, and was an accomplished pianist. ^[2] Through James's family connections to 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 Agate family's position in the local arts scene.^[3]

He volunteered in May 1915 at the age of thirty-seven for the Army Service Corps, after hearing the band of the Irish Guards playing in Trafalgar Square. He was sent to Provence. Agate had an arrangement to supply a series of open letters about his wartime experiences to Allan Monkhouse at the Manchester Guardian. These were published in his first book, L. of C. His fluency in French and knowledge of horses landed him a job as a fantastically successful hay procurer (described in the first volume of his Ego) and his system of accounting for hay purchases in a foreign land in wartime was eventually recognized by the War Office and made into an official handbook. Captain Agate's name was engraved on the Chapel-en-le-Frith War Memorial in Derbyshire.

A cricket fan, owner of Hackney show horses, and an avid golfer, Agate reached prominence as a critic for The Sunday Times from 1923 until his death. He published his diaries between 1935 and his death in a series of volumes entitled Ego, Ego 2, Ego 3, etc which are an incomparable record of theatrical gossip of the period. Historian Jacques Barzun, a fan of Agate and editor of a reissue of the last two volumes of Agate's Ego series,^[4] highlighted Agate in 2001^[5], 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 with Pepys'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."^[6]

Agate had a series of secretaries, of whom Alan Dent (Jock), who served for fourteen years, was later 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 merely ad 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 delightfully 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 good friend Herbert Van Thal. He's excellent on recurring themes around Malibran, Sarah Bernhardt, Réjane, Rachel, the Dreyfus Affair, Shakespeare, and Dickens. He adapted a short-lived and unsuccessful German play entitled I Accuse! from the German of Dr. Hans Rehfisch and Wilhelm Herzog; it opened and closed, in London, in 1937.^[7]

His theatrical notices were published in a series of collections including Buzz, Buzz!, Playgoing, First Nights, More First Nights, etc., and are invaluable for their history of London theatre between the world wars. His anthology The English Dramatic Critics, 1660-1932 is important. He wrote an excellent biography of the French actress Rachel, a heroine of his. Arnold Bennett called it an "excited and exciting biography" and "beyond question the best life in English" of the subject.^[8]

Bibliography

References

Further reading

• Agate, James (1976). Beaumont, Tim. ed. The Selective Ego.  (a condensed version of Agate's nine-volume diaries)
• Stern, Keith (2009), "James Agate", Queers in History, BenBella Books, Inc.; Dallas, Texas, ISBN 978-1933771-87-8