Epilogue

Abstract

Gertrude Bugler eventually gained her brief moment on the professional stage. In 1929, Philip Ridgeway asked Florence Hardy if she would consent to a revival of Tess at the Duke of York’s Theatre. She agreed, subject to Gertrude Bugler’s being given first refusal of the part. Armed with the advice and protective assistance of Golding Bright, Sir James Barrie and Florence Hardy, Bugler went to London and on 23 July 1929 finally appeared in the role that she and Dorchester had always regarded as rightfully hers. As Hardy’ s own Tess, she received widespread attention in the popular press, much of it devoted to attempts to extract impressions of London and its theatres as seen through the eyes of bucolic innocence, more used to driving ‘thirty miles in the old car to see a third-rate company at Weymouth’ than being dined in ‘Theatreland’s smartest grill-room’.¹