 |
| Cover of The Wildean (No. 69, July 2026) Detail with image of Robin de la Condamine (Robert Farquharson) [image edited by Paul Collicutt] |
He played Herod in Oscar Wilde's Salome in 1905 and in 1906 (and in 1931). For the 1906 performance Ricketts designed the costumes and set which were greatly appreciated. Roger Fry wrote: 'Charles Ricketts did the staging with ideas of colours that surpassed belief. I've never seen anything so beautiful on the stage'. Ricketts had dressed the cast in every possible shade of blue.
Farquharson's Herod was, Ricketts said, 'the greatest pieces of male acting' he had seen in his lieftime. He told the writers 'Michael Field' that the actor was 'a handsome boy of nineteen with a turned-up nose' (but the actor was 26), and he respected him 'as an artist to the finger-tips with the great gift of abstraction that is the mark of the great artist'. Later, he changed his opinion slightly, and feared that 'he may not have range of genius' . However, he still enjoyed 'his mannered fancy in speech', although he sensed that 'he is false in taste'.
In 1919, Ricketts wrote to Bottomley that he was 'a remarkable, if unreliable, actor capable of fine things which dont come his way and gifted with imagination of a kind, which does not always tell, doubtless through lack of practice'.
 |
| Robin de la Condamine (Robert Farquharson) in the cast of 'The Story of Cupid and Psyche' (1904) [Photo edited by Paul Collicutt] |
Only one letter from Ricketts to Farquharson seems to have survived and can now be found as number 536 in The Collected Letters of Charles Ricketts (volume I, page 565). It was written to thank him for a gift of grapes and contained some gossip.
Sheppard's article provides a welcome insight into the life of the actor, who, thanks to his family’s wealth, did not actually need to work and therefore only took on roles when he felt like it. He often spent the rest of the year in Florence, where his homosexuality was no secret.
Sheppard discusses the three productions in which the actor played Herod, as well as his other roles, his radio performances and his life as a bohemian and a remnant of the spirit of the 1890s.
