Cyril Maude

Artist Info

Cyril MaudeLondon, 1862 - 1951, Dundrum, Ireland

Maude, Cyril Francis (1862–1951), actor and theatre manager, was born on 24 April 1862 at 19 St George's Square, Westminster, London, the eldest of the seven children of Charles Henry Maude (1830–1908), a captain in the 14th Madras infantry and the grandson of the first Viscount Hawarden, and his wife, Georgiana Henrietta Emma Hanbury-Tracy (c.1833–1921), the daughter of the second Baron Sudeley. He was educated at preparatory schools in London, Surrey, and Hampshire and, from 1876 to 1879, at Charterhouse School, where, already intent on a theatrical career (at a time when the stage was gaining in respectability), he took part in plays. He then studied with private tutors and took lessons in dancing, elocution, and fencing. Ill health threatened his ambitions and led to his being sent with his brother Ernest to Canada in 1882 to learn farming.

With renewed health, Maude obtained an engagement in New York with Daniel Bandmann's company in 1884, and his first professional appearance was at Denver, Colorado, that April as the Servant in John Oxenford's East Lynne. After returning to London he was first seen in the modest part of Mr Pilkie in The Great Divorce Case, by John Roe and Richard Doe, at the Criterion Theatre on 18 February 1886. Greater distinction came, following work in the provinces, as the Duke of Courtland in G. H. Macdermott's Racing, which opened at the Grand Theatre, Islington, on 5 September 1887. Maude's career was now assured, and he became best known for his characterizations of a long line of older—often very old—men in both classic and contemporary comedies. The next decade saw engagements at the Gaiety, the Vaudeville, the Criterion, the Avenue, the Strand, the Haymarket, the Comedy, the Lyceum, and the St James's theatres; at the last he created the part of Cayley Drummle in Pinero's The Second Mrs Tanqueray (27 May 1893). In 1888 he twice married the actress Winifred Emery (1861–1924) (on 28 April, and again on 2 June), with whom he co-starred in many productions and with whom he had a son and two daughters. The second wedding (reasons for which remain obscure) took place in the Savoy Chapel, and was said to mark the ‘vast alteration which has taken place in the last few years in the estimation of the stage as a profession by the British aristocracy’ (The Era, 9 June 1888).

On 17 October 1896 Maude began a highly successful partnership with Frederick Harrison (1854–1926) at the Haymarket Theatre, when he opened in the part of Captain Larolle in Edward Rose's Under the Red Robe. The following nine years saw him direct and star in many important productions, including J. M. Barrie's The Little Minister (as Reverend Gavin Dishart), Cousin Kate by H. H. Davies (Heath Desmond), and Robert Marshall's The Second in Command (Major Christopher Bingham), as well as in such classics as The Rivals, The School for Scandal, and She Stoops to Conquer.

In 1905 Maude leased and rebuilt the Avenue Theatre, Northumberland Avenue, which had opened in 1882. As the work neared completion the theatre, now named the Playhouse, was largely destroyed and eight people killed when, on 5 December 1905, the roof of the adjoining Charing Cross Station collapsed. In the year before it could be restored and opened (it cost the London and South-Eastern Railway Company £20,000 to make it good) Maude took over the Waldorf Theatre for some months. He played Lord Meadows in Toddles, by Clyde Fitch, at the Duke of York's, at Wyndham's, and, from its opening on 28 January 1907, at his Playhouse, where the next six years saw a further string of successes. At the same time he appeared at a number of gala and royal command performances.

Maude averred that his greatest enjoyment lay in ‘powder plays’, and he took great pains in studying old men, even following likely models in the street; Sir Peter Teazle in The School for Scandal was his favourite role. His meticulous make-up included ‘blueing the veins of his hands and chalking the knuckles’ (The Sketch, 25 Oct 1893, 658–9). His greatest success, in box-office terms, was as Andrew Bullivant in Grumpy, by Horace Hodges and T. W. Percyval, first performed at Glasgow on 19 September 1913, given more than 1300 performances in Britain and abroad, and filmed in 1930.

Maude relinquished his lease of the Playhouse in 1915. He spent much of the period between 1913 and 1925 on tours in the United States and in 1917–18 was in Australia. Winifred Emery died on 15 July 1924. After marrying Beatrice Mary Trew, the daughter of the Revd John Ellis and the widow of P. H. Trew, on 12 October 1927, Maude lived chiefly in retirement. His last performance was as Sir Peter Teazle, opposite Vivien Leigh, at a benefit on behalf of the RAF Benevolent Fund and the Actors' Orphanage at the Haymarket Theatre on 24 April 1942.

Maude was a ‘sprightly, neat little man’ (Torquay Times, 23 Feb 1951, 2) of ‘bright spirits and high principles’ (Brereton, 42) whose acting was distinguished by ‘gentle pathos’ (ibid., 41). He wrote two reminiscences, The Haymarket Theatre (1903) and Behind the Scenes with Cyril Maude (1927), and co-wrote a novel, The Actor in Room 931 (1925), and a play, Strange Cousins (1934). He appeared in nine films, the first in 1913. He was one of the founders of the (later Royal) Academy of Dramatic Art in 1905 and was elected its president in 1936. In his last years Maude lived in Torquay, where he took up painting and became president of the Devon Art Society, as well as president of the South Devon Literary and Debating Society. He died of influenza at his home, Dundrum, Lower Woodfield Road, on 20 February 1951, and was buried at St John's Church on 23 February.

C. M. P. Taylor

Sources

C. Maude, Behind the scenes with Cyril Maude (1927) · A. Brereton, Cyril Maude: an illustrated memoir (1913) · C. Maude, The Haymarket Theatre (1903) · C. Maude, ‘Cyril Maude's story told by himself’, The Gentlewoman (Dec 1905), 22–30 · C. Maude and R. De Cordova, Parts I have played, 1883–1909 (1909) [souvenir brochure] · The Times (21 Feb 1951) · The Guardian (21 Feb 1951) · Evening Standard (24 April 1951) · Torquay Times (23 Feb 1951) · The Stage (22 Feb 1951) · M. Morley, ‘Cyril Maude’, V&A, London, theatre collections, Maude MSS · ‘Mr Cyril Maude “De Senectute”’, The Sketch (25 Oct 1893), 658–9 · Today (2 Oct 1895) · The Era (9 Dec 1905) · J. Parker, ed., Who’s who in the theatre, 10th edn (1947) · Burke, Peerage (1939) · R. Low, The history of the British film, 4: 1918–1929 (1971) · Debrett's Peerage · The Sketch (23 Sept 1927) · Torquay Times (2 March 1951)