MEET LENA ASHWELL, OBE (1872-1957)

Bringing Cultural Relief to the soldiers in World War 1

A special thanks to Karen Eterovich, co-chair of the Heritage Committee, The League of Professional Theatre Women and a member of the STAGE STRUCK cast produced by the Society for the Preservation of Theatrical History.  On a recent trip to London, she found an article in the Telegraph Weekend about this brave actress, impresario and suffragette who brought music and theatre to the trenches in World War 1.

"Born in 1872 on board a ship, the Wellesley, she grew up in Canada before studying at the Royal Academy of Music in London where she became a dedicated member of the pre-war suffrage campaign. By the time the war broke out, as a theatre impresario with a track record of successful concerts and drama productions under her belt, she was determined that the soldiers should not be deprived of culture. Actors and musicians, she believed, should be expected to don their gumboots and head for the mud.

By 1914, however, the War Office did not share her views on "entertaining troops". Generals believed that the soldiers made their own amusement: cards, dominoes and writing letters, interspersed with a little football.  However, boredom among the troops led to bawdy concert parties with skit and song routines performed by soldiers in drag with substantial cleavage; nothing like the entertainments Lena Ashwell envisioned.

Seriously concerned about the risque nature of the their jollity, she headed for the War Office and suggested that every camp should have its own theatre--and benefit from the work of professional actors and musicians.  Still the War Office was deaf to the idea. Unperturbed, she sought out some of her former suffrage campaigners. In the Women's Auxiliary Committee of the YWCA she found a royal patron, Princess Helena Victoria, and a cautious enthusiasm for sending concert parties to France.

The YWCA's main concerns about hiring "theatrical people" were not about risk or hardship but probity and modesty: there would be no self-promotion and every artist would be guaranteed for suitability by Ashwell, as well as being "known" to her Royal Highness, who was responsible for their conduct.

             'There is a great prejudice among a section of the nation against artists, especially actors, "wrote Ashwell. "To them we are a class of terribly wicked people who drink champagne all day long, and lie on sofas, receiving bouquets from rows of admirers who patiently wait in queues to present these tokens of rather unsavory regard. I think some expected us to land in France in tights, with peroxide hair, and altogether to be a difficult thing to a religious organisation to camouflage.'

In January 1915 the first concert tour got under way, with 39 concerts in a fortnight. For the performers, life behind the front line was tough. They often found themselves wading knee-deep in mud towards candlelit huts, barns or tents, lugging props and musical instruments and costumes only to find their stage a pile of suitcases.

Ashwell describes performances where the rapt faces and emotional response from the troops were wellnigh overwhelming. In the Harfleur valley she watched Ivor Novello, who had just written Keep the Home Fires Burning, singing in a smoke-filled room jam-packed with soldiers. "When he sang it, the men seemed to drink it in at once and instantly sang the chorus, and as we drove away at the end of the concert, in the dark and the rain and the mud, from all parts of the camp one could hear the refrain."

Violin solos, string quartets, operatic arias, all were delivered across the vast area behind the front lines. Three concerts a day were usually attempted in line with Ashwell's view that culture should be available to everyone. Drama presented a particular challenge: contemporary comedies and romances were played with canteen furniture, and the scenery was often a backdrop of night sky. On one occasion, Shakespeare was declaimed at a horse hospital and on another Sheridan was performed on the dockside in a blowing gale.  It was not unusual for the audience to be in their hospital beds, wheeled out of the wards, and happily soaked as the rain beat down on them and Lady Macbeth.

After concerts, performers spent time with the wounded, sometimes sitting quietly singing to just one man.  As the performers proved their worth, there was increasing demand for "firing-line parties"--willing to go much further towards the front line rather than perform at the base camps. It was not for the faint-hearted.  Heavy artillery, anti-aircraft fire, and sundry explosions punctuated performances. But the show went on, whether it was an aria from Tosca or a poetry recitation by Ashwell. "I found myself in a tent which seemed in the darkness to be far away from everything and everybody. I stood on a table and recited all the poems I knew, but wished with all my heart that I had learnt many more, as the audience grew and grew, and they sat silently around like hungry children. It was a quaint, gentle, peaceful evening, and curious that on that night I should have been nearer the firing line than at any other moment."

More than 600 artists--including nearly 350 women--travelled for four years in France, Malta and Egypt. They gave impromptu performances at railway stations, on ships, and in the desert. Tens of thousands came to their concerts: in one week in Ismailia on the Suez Canal, more than 13,000 men came for the music. by 1917 many of the concert parties were women--only, so great was the effect of the conscription, even though the authorities thought this a "grave innovation". However, Ashwell quaintly observed that the soldiers were always overjoyed "to see a pair of slippers".

Biographical information:  Her acting debut was in 1891 in The Pharisee; in 1895 she appeared in King Arthur with Dame Ellen Terry and Sir Henry Irving. She went on to appear in a number of Shakespearean productions, Quo Vadis, Mrs. Dane's Defence and Leah Kleschna. 

In 1906 she took up theatre management, initially at the Savoy Theatre and in 1907 established her own theatre known as the Kingsway. 

Most recent biography.  Fighting on the Home Front by Kate Adie (2014)

Autobiography:  Lena Ashwell, Myself A Player (London: Michael Joseph Ltd., 1936)