Viola Tree

Viola Tree, actress and author was born 17th July 1884 and died 15th November 1938 (“Viola Tree: Life”). The eldest of three daughters, Viola Tree was born to actor and stage manager Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree, and actress Helen Maud Tree (“Chapter 3” 52). With such talented and artistic parents influencing her childhood, Viola Tree was destined for the stage. Because of her unconventional upbringing, her childhood was glamorous, as she confesses in one of her works, Can I Help You? (Battershill 20). Tree’s parents did not approve of public education; she was taught by a total of 25 governesses throughout her education. While Tree took an interest in painting and music in her childhood (“Viola Tree: Life”), she ultimately decided to pursue theatre and attended the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts, founded by her father (“Viola Tree, of the Family Tree”).

Tree made her acting debut in March 1904. She played the role of Viola in one of her father’s productions, Twelfth Night,at the TheatreRoyal in Edinburgh. A few months later, Tree performed her first show in London as Ariel in The Tempest (“Viola Tree: Life”). Tree’s acting career extended throughout her life, as she made her New York debut at age 46 in 1930. With the exception of a couple of film roles, Tree mainly performed in Shakespearean plays and comedies (“Viola Tree, of British Stage”). After Tree mastered an American accent for her role in Oscar Wilde’s A Woman of No Importance, she concluded that her dream of becoming an opera singer might also be attainable (“Viola Tree, of Family Tree”).

In 1908, Tree pursued her childhood love of music, studying at the Royal College of Music. Two years later, she landed her first major operatic role as Eurydice in Gluck’s Orpheus. Shortly after her first operatic success, Tree moved to Italy to continue her studies in opera (“Viola Tree entry: Life”). Despite the social expectations that a woman could not pursue a stage career and be married at once (“Chapter 3” 55), Tree married Alan Parsons, a film critic at the London Daily Mail (“Viola Tree, of Family Tree”). After her wedding in London, she returned to Italy to continue her studies. Unfortunately, in 1912 Tree developed throat problems that affected her ability to sing; she thus moved back to England where she lived with her husband and three children (“Viola Tree entry: Life”).

Tree did not embark upon a writing career until later in her life when she co-wrote the play “The Dancers” in 1923 with Gerald de Maurier under the pen name Hubert Parsons. Although the play was not published, its novel adaptation was published by Knopf and illustrated by Grosset and Dunlap the same year the production debuted. Two years later, Tree wrote “The Swallow,” featuring Hilda Moore, Tristan Rawson and Leslie Banks as leads (“Viola Tree entry: Writing”). In 1928, the Hogarth Press published Tree’s Castles in the Air: The Story of my Singing Days. The autobiography featured diary entries, letters Tree wrote and received, and other memories of her time in Italy. Tree also wrote articles for Vogue on decorating, gardening, and theatre as well as an advice column called for the Sunday Dispatch newspaper called “Can I Help You?” (“Viola Tree entry: Writing”).

In 1937, the Hogarth Press published Tree’s advice column-inspired etiquette book, also called Can I Help You?: Your Manners—Menus—Amusements—Friends—Make-Ups—Travel—Calling—Children—Love Affairs (“Viola Tree entry: Writing”). This publication shows how the Hogarth Press began to engage with pieces that “blur boundaries between so-called ‘highbrow’ and ‘middlebrow’ writing” (“Wedding Rituals” 171). The autobiographical content of Tree’s book intrigued the Woolfs as they witnessed not only the blurring of high and middlebrow writing, but a collision of autobiographical and advice genres (Battershill 20). Throughout Can I Help You?, Tree weaves personal anecdotes through her boldly-given advice. This autobiographical element allows the book a tone of intimacy with its reader as Tree unashamedly and cheekily confesses the details of her own social successes and mishaps (Battershill 19). In a section in which Tree critiques and candidly narrates a typical wedding, she describes the wedding cake as “generally resemble[ing] a white sarcophagus with a Georgian temple on the top of it, on which rest wax lilies and deformed doves” (“Wedding Rituals” 187). Tree’s own elaborate wedding allows her to poke fun at what she presents as silly traditions; her entertaining tone brought a new type of writing to the Hogarth Press (Battershill 20). As Tree writes from her own experiences of growing up, the perceived audience for the book is younger women such as her daughter and the illustrator of Can I Help You?, Virginia Parsons (“Wedding Rituals” 186). Responses to Tree’s unique advice book were divided, as Tree faced harsh literary criticism, particularly from Hogarth Press author Vita Sackville-West, who wrote Virginia Woolf a letter questioning why she published Tree (“Chapter 3” 53). Yet Woolf—who worked closely with Tree on both manuscripts—defended Tree and her literary works (“Chapter 3” 53). While some writers judged Tree’s literary style, Gillespie attests that “[r]eviewers of the book as a whole dub her as helpful, wise, witty, kind, and amusing” (“Wedding Rituals” 188).        

Publications:

The Dancers: The Beginning and the End of the Story in the Play (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1923)
"Let's Live in Nassau" (London: Vogue, Jan 1926)
"The Circus and its Pleasure" (London: Vogue, Feb 1926)
"Florida" (London: Vogue, March 1926)
Castles in the Air: The Story of my Singing Days (London: Hogarth Press, April 1926) 
Alan Parsons' Book: A Story in Anthology (London: W. Heinemann, 1937)
Can I help you? (London: Hogarth Press, 1937)
“Can I Help You” (London: Sunday Dispatch, 1929-1937)

Unpublished:

The Dancers (1923)
The Swallow (1925) (“Viola Tree entry: Writing”) 

Bibliography: 

Brown, Susan, Patricia Clements, and Isobel Grundy, eds., “Viola Tree entry: Life” Orlando: Women's Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present (Cambridge: Cambridge UP Online, 2006) online at http://orlando.cambridge.org.proxy.lib.sfu.ca/protected/svPeople?formnam...

Brown, Susan, Patricia Clements, and Isobel Grundy, eds., “Viola Tree entry: Writing” Orlando: Women's Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present, (Cambridge: Cambridge UP Online, 2006) online at http://orlando.cambridge.org.proxy.lib.sfu.ca/protected/svPeople?formnam...

Gillespie, Diane F., “Chapter 3: ‘Can I Help You?’ Virginia Woolf, Viola Tree and the Hogarth Press” Virginia Woolf: Twenty-First-Century Approaches (Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 2015)

——. “‘Please Help Me!’ Virginia Woolf, Viola Tree, and the Hogarth Press.” Contradictory Woolf: Selected Papers from the Twenty-first Annual Conference on Virginia Woolf, Ed. Derek Ryan and Stella Bolaki. Clemson, SC, Clemson U Digital P, 2012: 173-80. Print.  

"Viola Tree, of the Family Tree." (New York: New York Times, 1931) online at https://search-proquest-com.proxy.lib.sfu.ca/docview/99542678?accountid=...

Works Cited:

Battershill, Claire. “‘Works of Merit’: What the Hogarth Press Published (1917– 1946)”.

Brown, Susan, Patricia Clements, and Isobel Grundy, eds. Viola Tree entry: Life screen within Orlando: Women's Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present. Cambridge: Cambridge UP Online, 2006. Web. 6 Feb. 2018. 

Brown, Susan, Patricia Clements, and Isobel Grundy, eds. Viola Tree entry: Writing screen within Orlando: Women's Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present. Cambridge: Cambridge UP Online, 2006. Web. 6 Feb. 2018. 

Carrod, Amanda Juliet. “A plea for a renaissance”: Dorothy Todd’s Modernist experiment in British Vogue, 1922 -1926. North Staffordshire: Keele UP Online, 2015. Web. 6 Feb. 2018.

Gillespie, Diane F., “Chapter 3: ‘Can I Help You?’ Virginia Woolf, Viola Tree and the Hogarth Press” Virginia Woolf: Twenty-First-Century Approaches Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 2015. Print.  

____. “Wedding Rituals: Julia Strachey, Virginia Woolf, and Viola Tree.” Woolf Studies Annual, vol. 19, 2013. Web. 28 April. 2018. 

Hentea, M. "The End of the Party: The Bright Young People in Vile Bodies, Afternoon Men, and Party Going." Texas Studies in Literature and Language, vol. 56 no. 1, 2014, pp. 90-111. Project MUSE. Web. 8 Feb. 2018 

Special Cable to THE NEW YORK TIMES. "MISS VIOLA TREE MARRIED." New York Times (1857-1922): 4. Jul 12 1912. ProQuest. Web. 6 Feb. 2018.

Special Cable to THE NEW YORK TIMES. "VIOLA TREE, STAR OF BRITISH STAGE." New York Times (1923-Current file): 23. Nov 16 1938. ProQuest. Web. 6 Feb. 2018. 

"Viola Tree, of the Family Tree." New York Times (1923-Current file): 1. Jan 04 1931. ProQuest. Web. 6 Feb. 2018.