DEATH ENDS LADY TREE'S NOTABLE STAGE CAREER

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Volume 81, Issue 20, 16 October 1937, Page 10

DEATH ENDS LADY TREE'S NOTABLE STAGE CAREER

By tlie deatlx of Lady Tree, in TJni- j versity Gollege Hospital, London, recently, the stage loses one of its few remaining lxnks withi ihe great "actormanageF' period of the London theatre ixnmediately befcrro the war. Helen Maud Holt, daughter of WilTxam Holt, of Londpn, she was born in 1864, seventy-tlireo years ago, and married Herbert Beerboiim Tree when she was only twenty. ' Bhe Was thus with him in his early touring period, & dozen .years bcboi'e Hisi Majesty's 'Theatre arose- in its magnificence," proclaiming Tree to be ihe most lavish as well as the most representative actor-manager of that epocix. A list' of the parts that she played ranges. widely over stage history, coverxng plays remembered and torgotten, in theatres still existing, and in. theatres whose sites have long since beexi built over. . ... Her firsi part was at the Gaiety,in a forgotten play called ".Sweethearts," but fifty-three years ago she was appearing, at tlie same theatre, as Olivia xn a better-remembered play called "Twelfth Night." She appeared in a one-act play by her husband few people remembex that he wrote one called "Six and) Eightpence" ; engagements followed at the Olympic and Hengler's Circus (as Oenone in a Greek play); and then, shortly a^ter, followed the great and enduring reigns of Sardou, Wilde, Pinero, and Barrie. Lady Tree played in "A Woman of No Importanco," in "Fedora," in "The Dancing Girl," and in "Tho Hobby Horse," in "John Gahriel Borkman,' and in many revivals of Barrie's "Tho Admirable Crichton." One of her more interestlng feats was to eaxn £1700 for the South African War Fund by recitxng Kipling's "Absent-Minded. Beggar "■ • She twice appeared by Royal Command, at Balmoral in "The Red Lamp," in 1894, and at Windsor Oastle in "A Man's Shadow," in 1909. It is by recalling these successes of generations back that one geta some xneasure of the length of her stage life. It has to be added that phe waB still perfectly well known to the preseni generation of playgoers as a wonderful actresB of old cbaracter parts. "She was appearing as Mrs. Malaprop at the Embassy Theatre and the Ambassadors' three years ago, and as Mistress Quickly at His Majesty's in 1935, not to mention quite recent appearances in lilms. It'is not altogether unfair to say that the older she got the bette'r she acted. and among her personal friends of the last two decades she was known, quoted, and' respected as a "character" and a wit. Lady Tree leaves- three dauglxters: Viola, ihe aciress; Iris, an artist; and Felicity.