Herbert Beerbohm Tree

Herbert Draper Beerbohm (17 December 1852 – 2 July 1917) was an English actor-manager and wit, whose professional name was Herbert Beerbohm Tree. He was knighted in 1909.

Every man is a potential genius until he does something.

Quotes

• People are too apt to treat God as if he were a minor royalty.
  • "The Importance of Humour in Tragedy: Presidential Address Delivered at the Birmingham Midland Institute, 1915", Nothing Matters, and Other Stories (1917) p. 207.

• Ladies, just a little more virginity, if you don't mind.
  • Remembered by Alexander Woollcott in his Shouts and Murmurs (1922) p. 87.
  • To actresses playing the ladies-in-waiting in a production of Henry VIII, "peering at them plaintively through his monocle".

• A man never knows what a fool he is until he hears himself imitated by one.
  • Quoted by Max Beerbohm in Hebert Beerbohm Tree: Some Memories of Him and of His Art Collected by Max Beerbohm (1920).

Beerbohm Tree (1956)

Quotes of Tree from Beerbohm Tree (1956) by Hesketh Pearson

• My poor fellow, why not carry a watch?
  • Page 110.
  • "To a man who was staggering in the street under the weight of a grandfather clock".

• Every man is a potential genius until he does something.
  • Page 110.

• Never say a humorous thing to a man who does not possess humour: he will always use it in evidence against you.
  • Page 110.

• Sirs, I have tested your machine. It adds a new terror to life and makes death a long-felt want.
  • Page 183
  • His reply to a gramophone company who had asked for a testimonial.

• It is difficult to live up to one's posters…When I pass my name in such large letters I blush, but at the same time instinctively raise my hat.
  • Page 188.

• It depends on each and every one of me.
  • Page 192.

About Herbert Beerbohm Tree

• A charming fellow, and so clever: he models himself on me.
  • Oscar Wilde, quoted in Hesketh Pearson Beerbohm Tree (1956) p. 2.

• As far as I could discover, the notion that a play could succeed without any further help from the actor than a simple impersonation of his part never occurred to Tree.
  • George Bernard Shaw Selected Prose (1952) p. 521.