Margaret Webster: A Life in the Theater

Epilogue

Epilogue Margaret Webster’s friends and colleagues eulogized her in memorial services in New York City and in London. At the Episcopal Church of the Trans‹guration (known as “The Little Church around the Corner”) on East Twenty-ninth Street, some two hundred friends and coworkers attended the service held on December 5, 1972, in New York City. Anne Jackson, who had appeared with the American Repertory Theatre in John Gabriel Borkman and Yellow Jack, read tributes from Maurice Evans, Lynn Fontanne, Alfred Lunt, Sir John Gielgud, and Dame Sybil Thorndike. In their tributes sent from London, Maurice Evans commented upon Webster’s “indomitable courage” in the last few months of her illness and John Gielgud praised her high endeavor and sense of discipline that “in›uenced many hundreds of people” in the theater.1 George Voskovec, who had appeared as Trinculo in The Tempest, captured his late friend’s spirit in these words: The forever gallant Peggy who, up to the last, reminds me of a gallant British frigate with all ›ags snapping—and the pennant, signaling her deep sense of the ridiculous, ›ying the highest of all—forever with guts, style and supreme elegance. With heart, too.2 A second service was held two days later at St. Paul’s Church in Covent Garden, known as “The Actors’ Church,” where Webster had been baptized at the age of two. The church was decorated with white and yellow ›owers, and Bach’s prelude “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring” rang out as Webster’s London friends crowded into the small church. The parish priest, the Reverend John Hester, presided. Leo Genn, who had appeared in Twelve Angry Men, read “Fear no more the heat o’ the sun” from Cymbeline; Gwen Ffrangon Davies, a friend since their work together in Richard of Bordeaux, read from
 305 1 Corinthians; and ninety-year-old Dame Sybil Thorndike, dressed in a ›owing white robe, read passages from Teilhard de Chardin in a voice Le Gallienne described as “younger and more resonant than most voices in people of 20!”3 Webster had asked Le Gallienne to attend her memorial service in London . Aware that her departed friend would want a public demonstration of her love and affection, Eva Le Gallienne wrote a ‹nal tribute to her friend of sixty-three years and sent it to the New York Times. I knew Margaret Webster for over 60 years. She was 4 and I was 10 when we ‹rst met. . . . gradually, as the difference in our ages ceased to matter, we became friends—a lasting friendship for which I shall be forever grateful . Peggy had a genius for friendship and her loss will cause widespread grief. She will be sorely missed. Peggy’s true love was acting. She would “rather act than eat,” she used to say. But while she was an excellent actress, it was as a great director that she made her reputation. I use the word “great” advisedly. It is rare for a woman to succeed in this dif‹cult ‹eld. She must be quite exceptionally talented to overcome the ingrained prejudices, the skepticism and distrust that stand in her way. . . . She ranked as the equal, and in many cases the superior, of the most highly considered male directors of her time. Peggy, however, was not an egocentric . She did not try to create a play in her own image. She believed a director should interpret the author, not betray him. . . . She made no use of tricks and gimmicks—she did not need to. . . . Peggy was a truly good, kind and generous human being. Of course, she had faults—many faults, she would have said—or she would not have been human. She could be violently opinionated, ferociously patient; she did not suffer fools gladly.4 As early as the summer of 1967, Eva Le Gallienne and Margaret Webster made preparations for the end of their lives. (Le Gallienne outlived Webster by nineteen years.) Pamela Frankau’s death that year followed by Webster’s diagnosis of cancer compelled them both to consider the ‹nality of death. Although several universities asked to receive their papers, they decided to donate their papers to the Library of Congress, believing fervently in the future of nationally subsidized institutions. They chose the Library of Congress as a symbol of what federal dollars could do for the preservation of literature , the arts, and theatrical history. Both women liked the idea of their papers residing alongside the archives of other...