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diff --git a/old/68853-0.txt b/old/68853-0.txt deleted file mode 100644 index 895bc64..0000000 --- a/old/68853-0.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,6956 +0,0 @@ -The Project Gutenberg eBook of Pastiche and prejudice, by A. B. -Walkley - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and -most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions -whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms -of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at -www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you -will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before -using this eBook. - -Title: Pastiche and prejudice - -Author: A. B. Walkley - -Release Date: August 27, 2022 [eBook #68853] - -Language: English - -Produced by: Charlene Taylor and the Online Distributed Proofreading - Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from - images generously made available by The Internet - Archive/American Libraries.) - -*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PASTICHE AND PREJUDICE *** - - - - - - -PASTICHE AND PREJUDICE - - - - - PASTICHE - AND - PREJUDICE - - BY - A. B. WALKLEY - - [Illustration] - - NEW YORK - ALFRED A. KNOPF MCMXXI - - _Reprinted, by the courtesy of the Proprietors, - from THE TIMES._ - - _Printed in Great Britain._ - - - - -PASTICHE - - -Writing of Lamennais, Renan says: “Il créa avec des réminiscences de -la Bible et du langage ecclésiastique cette manière harmonieuse et -grandiose qui réalise le phénomène unique dans l’histoire littéraire d’un -pastiche de génie.” Renan was nothing if not fastidious, and “unique” is -a hard word, for which I should like to substitute the milder “rare.” -_Pastiches_ “of genius” are rare because genius is rare in any kind, and -more than ever rare in that kind wherein the writer deliberately forgoes -his own natural, instinctive form of expression for an alien form. But -even fairly plausible _pastiches_ are rare, for the simple reason that -though, with taste and application, and above all an anxious care for -style, you may succeed in mimicking the literary form of another author -or another age, it is impossible for you to reproduce their spirit—since -no two human beings in this world are identical. Perhaps the easiest -of all kinds is the theatrical “imitation,” because all that is to be -imitated is voice, tone, gesture—an actor’s words not being his own—yet I -have never seen one that got beyond parody. The sense of an audience is -not fine enough to appreciate exact imitation; it demands exaggeration, -caricature. - -Parody, indeed, is the pitfall of all _pastiche_. Even Mr. Max Beerbohm, -extraordinarily susceptible and responsive to style as he is, did not -escape it in that delightful little book of his wherein, some years -ago, he imitated many of our contemporary authors. I can think of but a -single instance which faithfully reproduces not only the language but -almost the spirit of the authors imitated—M. Marcel Proust’s volume -of “Pastiches et Mélanges.” The only stricture one can pass on it, if -stricture it be, is that M. Proust’s Balzac and St. Simon and the rest -are a little “more Royalist than the King,” a little more like Balzac and -St. Simon than the originals themselves; I mean, a little too intensely, -too concentratedly, Balzac and St. Simon. But Marcel Proust is one of -my prejudices. To say that his first two books, “Swann” and “Les Jeunes -Filles,” have given me more exquisite pleasure than anything in modern -French literature would not be enough—I should have to say, in all modern -literature. Mrs. Wharton, I see from the “Letters,” sent Henry James a -copy of “Swann” when it first came out (1918): I wish we could have had -his views of it. It offers another kind of psychology from Henry James’s, -and he would probably have said, as he was fond of saying, that it had -more “saturation” than “form.” But I am wandering from my subject of -_pastiche_. - -I was present one afternoon at a curious experiment in theatrical -_pastiche_. This was a rehearsal _of_ a rehearsal of the screen scene -from _The School for Scandal_, which was supposed to be directed by -Sheridan himself. Rather a complicated affair, because Miss Lilian -Braithwaite was supposed to be playing not Lady Teazle but Mrs. Abington -playing Lady Teazle, Mr. Gilbert Hare had to play Mr. Parsons playing -Sir Peter, and so forth—histrionics, so to speak, raised to the second -power. To tell the truth, I think the middle term tended to fall out. -It was easy enough for the players to make themselves up after the -originals in the Garrick Club picture of the screen scene, but how these -originals spoke or what their personal peculiarities were, on or off -the stage, who shall now say? There you have the difference between -fact and fiction. Lady Teazle and Sir Peter, having no existence save -in the book of the play, are producible from it at any time, as “real” -as they ever were, but Mrs. Abington and Mr. Parsons are not fixed in -a book, and their reality died with them. Naturally enough the actual -scene written by Sheridan “went” with very much greater force than the -setting of conversations, interruptions, etc., in which it was embedded, -for the simple reason that the one part had had the luck to be imagined -by Sheridan and the other had not. But as a _pastiche_ this new part, -written round the old, seemed to me on the whole very well done; there -was hardly a word that Sheridan and his friends _might_ not have said. -Just one, however, there noticeably was. Mr. Gerald du Maurier (as -Sheridan) was made to tell Mr. Leon Quartermaine (as Charles) that, in -his laughter at the discovery of Lady Teazle, he was not to expect the -“sympathy of the audience.” _That_, I feel sure, was an anachronism, a -bit of quite modern theatrical lingo. I should guess that it came to us -from the French, who are fond of talking of a _rôle sympathique_. Mr. -du Maurier, if any one, must remember his father’s delightful sketch -of English people shopping in Normandy, when the artful shopwoman is -cajoling a foolish-faced Englishman with “le visage de monsieur m’est -si sympathique.” The Italian _simpatico_ is, of course, even more -hard-worked. I felt sure, then, as I say, about the anachronism; but -I am quite aware that it is never safe to trust to one’s instinct -in these matters. It is by no means impossible that some one may -triumphantly produce against me a newspaper or book of 1775 which speaks -of “the sympathy of the audience.” The unexpected in these cases does -occasionally happen. - -And certainly any one who has tried his hand at a _pastiche_ of a -dead and gone author will have frequently been astonished, not at -the antiquity but at the modernity of the style. Language changes -less rapidly than we are apt to suppose. The bad writers seem to get -old-fashioned earliest—because, I suppose, they yield most easily to -ephemeral tricks of speech. For example, Fanny Burney, who, I cannot but -think, wrote a bad style, and in her later books (as Macaulay pointed -out) a kind of debased Johnsonese, is now decidedly old-fashioned. But -Jane Austen, whose style, though scarcely brilliant, was never bad, is -not. A modern Mr. Collins would not talk of “elegant females”—but even -then he was put forward as ridiculous for doing so. Jane was fond of -“the chief of the day” and “the harp was bringing.” These phrases are -_passées_, but I doubt if you will find many others. - -Our sense of the past, in fact, may illude us. And that reminds me of -Henry James’s solitary _pastiche_, his posthumous (and fragmentary) -“Sense of the Past.” The “past” he deals with is, roughly, the Jane -Austen period, and I think his language would very much have astonished -Jane Austen. For one thing, they didn’t colloquially emphasize in her day -as Henry James makes them do. I take a page at random:—“He mustn’t be -_too_ terribly clever for us, certainly! We enjoy immensely your being -so extraordinary; but I’m sure you’ll take it in good part if I remind -you that there _is_ a limit.” Is this our ultra-modern Mrs. Brookenham -speaking? No, it is Mrs. Midmore, somewhere about 1820. To be more -exact, it is Henry James speaking with the emphasis that always abounded -in his novels and his letters and his talk. Again: “I can’t keep off -that strangeness of my momentary lapse.” That doesn’t sound to my ear -a bit like 1820. Again: “It must have been one of your pale passions, -as you call ’em, truly—so that even if her ghost does hover I shan’t be -afraid of so very thin a shade.” Note the “’em,” the author’s timid -little speck of antique colour, but note also how the speaker carries -on the “ghost” figure—in a way that is signed “Henry James, 19—” all -over. The fact is, Henry James, with his marked, individual, curiously -“modern” style, was the last man to express himself in an alien style, -particularly the more simple style of an earlier age. To write a pure -_pastiche_ you must begin by surrendering, putting clean away your own -personality—how otherwise are you to take on another’s? - -I have no illusions about the essays in _pastiche_ to be found in the -earlier of the following papers. If they do not always fall below parody, -they never rise above it. Occasional fragments of authentic text will be -recognized at a glance. “These Things are but Toyes.” - - - - -AN ARISTOTELIAN FRAGMENT - - -In the neighbourhood of Wardour Street, where the princes of the film -hold their Court, a legislative code for film-making, a “Poetics” of the -film, by some _maestro di color che sanno_, has long been yearned for. If -only, they say, if only the _maestro_ himself, the great Aristotle, had -been alive to write it! After all, kinematograph is Greek, isn’t it? It -seems to cry aloud, somehow, for its code by the great Greek authority. -Well, they little knew what luck was in store for them! - -To-day comes a startling piece of news from the East. A certain Major -Ferdinand M. Pinto, O.B.E., R.E., whether on military duty or on -furlough the report does not say, has been sojourning with the monks -of Mount Porthos, and, in the most singular manner, has discovered in -the possession of his hosts a precious treasure of which they were -entirely ignorant. It was a Greek manuscript, and, as the Reverend Prior -laughingly observed, it was Greek to them. It seems that—such is the -licence of modern manners even in monasteries—the monks have lately taken -to smoking, and to using what in lay circles are called “spills.” Now -on the spill which the Major was lighting for his cigar there suddenly -stared him in the face the words - - ὥσπερ Ἀγάθων λέγει - -and the name Agathon thrilled him with memories of a certain Oxford quad, -with dear “old Strachan” annoying the Master by wondering why Agathon -should have said anything so obvious as that “it is probable that many -things should happen contrary to probability.” To examine the spill, -all the spills collected, was the work of a moment. They proved, at a -glance, to be an entirely unknown MS. of the “Poetics,” more complete -even than the Parisian, and with new readings transcending even the -acutest conjectures of Vahlen. But, greatest find of all, there was -disclosed—though with unfortunate _lacunæ_ caused by the monks’ cigars—an -entirely new chapter inquiring into the structure of the Moving Picture -Drama. Through the courtesy of the Pseudo-Hellenic Society I am favoured -with a translation of this chapter, and a few passages, which seemed of -more general interest, are here extracted. - -“As we have said,” the MS. begins, “it is a question whether tragedy is -to be judged in itself or in relation also to the audience. But it is -another story (ἄλλος λόγος) with the moving pictures. For it is not clear -whether they have an ‘itself’ at all, or, if they have, where this self -is to be found, whether on the screen, or in the lens of the camera, or -in the head of the photographic artist. Whereas there is no doubt (save -in very inclement weather) about the audience. They are to be judged, -then, solely in relation to the audience. And, for this reason, they do -not resemble tragedy, whose action, we said, must be whole, consisting -of a beginning, a middle, and an end. For the audience may arrive at -the end of a picture play, and though, in due time, the beginning will -come round again, the audience may not have the patience to wait for it. -Some audiences prefer to arrive in the middle and to proceed to the end, -and then to end with the beginning. By this means the general sense of -confusion in human affairs is confirmed in the picture theatre, and in -this sense, but only in this sense, the picture drama may be said to be, -like tragedy, an imitation of life. - -“Nor can it be said of picture drama, as it was of tragedy, that the -element of plot is more important than the element of character. For -here neither element is important. The important element now is motion. -Any plot will serve the picture poet’s purpose (indeed most of them take -them ready-made from those prose epics known as ‘shockers’), and any -characters likewise (it will suffice if these be simplified types or -‘masks’). The essence of the matter is that all should be kept moving. -And as moving objects are best seen to be moving when they are moving -quickly, the picture poet will contrive that his horses shall always, as -Homer says, devour the ground and his motor cars be ‘all out.’... Unity -of plot—when there is a plot—does not, as some persons think, consist -in the unity of the hero. It consists in the final dwelling together in -unity of the hero and his bride. Final must be understood as posterior to -the pursuit of the bride by other men, who may be either white or red. -Red men are better, as more unbridled in their passions than white. As -Æschylus first introduced a second actor in tragedy, so an American poet, -whose name is too barbarous to be written in Greek, introduced the red -man in picture drama.... - -“With regard to the hero and his bride, though their characters should, -as in tragedy, be morally good (χρηστά), it is chiefly necessary that -their persons should be kinematographically good or good on the film. -For at every peripety of the action they must become suddenly enlarged -by the device of the photographer, so that every furrow of the knitted -brow and every twitch of the agitated mouth is shown as large as life, -if not larger. It is, in fact, by this photographic enlargement that the -critical turns of the action are marked and distinguished, in the absence -of the tragic element of diction. Where the tragic actor talks big, the -picture player looks big. Nevertheless, the element of diction is not -entirely wanting. Sentences (which should comprise as many solecisms as -possible) may be shown on the screen, descriptive of what the players are -doing or saying. But the more skilful players habitually say something -else than what is thus imputed to them, thereby giving the audience the -additional interest of conjecturing what they actually do say in place of -what they ought to have said. - -... “Picture poetry is a more philosophical and liberal thing than -history; for history expresses the particular, but picture poetry the not -too particular. The particular is, for example, what Alcibiades did or -suffered. The not too particular is what Charlie Chaplin did or suffered. -But the moving pictures do to some extent show actual happenings, in -order to reassure people by nature incredulous. For what has not happened -we do not at once feel sure to be possible; but what has happened is -manifestly possible; otherwise it would not have happened. On the whole, -however, as the tragic poet should prefer probable impossibilities to -improbable possibilities, the picture poet should go, as Agathon says, -one better, and aim at improbable impossibilities.”... - - - - -MR. SHAKESPEARE DISORDERLY - - -At the meeting preliminary to “Warriors’ Day” I was wending my way along -the corridor of the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, when I encountered an -amphibious-looking figure with the mien of one of Mr. W. W. Jacobs’s -people, but attired in the classic tunic and sandals of a Greek of -the best period. Knowing that the meeting was to include all sorts -and conditions of theatrical men, I taxed him with being somebody out -of _Orphée aux Enfers_ or _La Belle Hélène_. He said it was not a bad -shot, but, as a matter of fact, he was a ferryman, “saving your honour’s -reverence, name o’ Charon.” “A ferryman?” said I; “then you must be from -the Upper River, Godstow way.” “No, sir,” he answered, “I ply my trade -on the Styx, and I’ve brought over a boatful of our tip-toppers—our -intelli-gents-you-are they calls ’em in the Elysian Fields—to this ’ere -meetin’. Precious dry work it is, too, sir,” he added, wiping his mouth -with the back of his hand. “Where are they?” I asked in high excitement. -“In this ’ere box, sir, where the management have allowed them to sit -incog.” “And who, my good fellow, are they?” “Well, sir, let me see; -there’s Mr. William Shakespeare, one of the most pop’lar of our gents -and the neatest hand at nectar punch with a toast in it. Then there’s -Mr. David Garrick, little Davy, as they calls ’im (though the other one, -’im who’s always a-slingin’ stones at the giants, isn’t no great size, -neither), and there’s ’is friend Dr. Samuel Johnson, a werry harbitrary -cove, and there’s Mrs. Siddons, an ’oly terror of a woman, sir, as you -might say. Likewise, there’s Mr. Sheridan and Mr. Edmund Kean, both on -’em gents with a powerful thirst—just like mine this blessed mornin’, -sir.” At this second reminder I gave him wherewithal to slake his thirst, -directed him to the bar, and, as soon as he was out of sight, slipped -noiselessly into the back of the box, where I hid behind the overcoats. - -Mr. Shakespeare was beckoning Mrs. Siddons to his side. “Come hither, -good mistress Sal” (this to the majestic Sarah, the Tragic Muse!), “and -prythee, dearest chuck, sit close, for ’tis a nipping and an eager air, -and poor Will’s a-cold.” - -MRS. S.—Sir, you are vastly obleeging, but where’s the chair? - -DR. JOHNSON.—Madam, you who have so often occasioned a want of seats to -other people, will the more easily excuse the want of one yourself. - -MR. SHAKESPEARE.—Marry come up! Wouldst not sit in my lap, Sal? ’Tis not -so deep as a well nor so wide as a church door, but ’twill serve. - -MRS. S. (_scandalized but dignified_).—Sir, I am sensible of the honour, -but fear my train would incommode the Immortal Bard. - -MR. SHAKESPEARE.—Oh, Immortal Bard be—— - -MR. GARRICK (_hastily_).—I perceive, sir, a stir among the company. The -gentleman who is taking the chair has notable eyebrows; he must be—— - -MR. SHAKESPEARE.—Master George Robey. I’ve heard of him and his eyebrows. - -MR. G.—No, no, ’tis Sir Arthur Pinero, an actor-dramatist like yourself, -sir. - -MR. SHAKESPEARE.—Beshrew me, but I would hear the chimes at midnight with -him and drink a health unto his knighthood. (_Sings._) “And let me the -canakin clink, clink, and——” - -THE HOUSE (_indignantly_).—Sh-h-h! - -MR. SHAKESPEARE.—A murrain on these gallants! They have no ear for a -catch and should get them to a monastery. But I’ll sit like my grandsire, -carved in alabaster. Who’s the young spark, now speaking? - -DR. J. (_shocked_).—The young spark, sir, is His Royal Highness the -Prince of Wales. - -MR. SHERIDAN.—Egad! This reminds me of old times, but the young man is -not a bit like my friend Prinny. And though _I_ managed Drury Lane, I -never got Prinny on _my_ stage. - -DR. J.—Sir, your Prinny never had so good a cause to be there. He only -_thought_ he fought in the wars; but this Prince is a real ex-Service -man, pleading for the ex-Service men, his comrades in arms. He has been -a soldier, and not a man of us in this box but wishes he could say as -much for himself. Every man thinks meanly of himself for not having been -a soldier; but he will think less meanly if he can help those who have. -That is the very purpose of this numerous assembly. - -MR. SHAKESPEARE.—Oh, most learned doctor, a Daniel come to judgment! I’ -faith I am most heartily of thy mind, and would drink a loving toast to -the young Prince and another to the ex-Service fellows, and eke a third -to this—how runs it?—this numerous assembly. (_Sings._) “And let me the -canakin clink, clink, and——” - -THE HOUSE (_in a frenzy of indignation_).—Sh-h-h! Turn him out! -(_Hisses._) - -MR. SHAKESPEARE.—What! the “bird”! Well-a-day, this isn’t the first time -they’ve hissed my Ghost. - -MR. KEAN.—Sir, they’ve hissed _me_! - -MR. SHAKESPEARE.—Ha! say’st thou, honest Ned! But thou wast a jackanapes -to let thyself be caught with the Alderman’s wife and—— - -Mrs. S. (_icily_).—Mr. Shakespeare, there are ladies present. - -MR. SHERIDAN (_whispering to Dr. J._).—But what does little Davy here, -doctor? He has always been represented as very saving. - -DR. J.—No, sir. Davy is a liberal man. He has given away more money than -any man in England. There may be a little vanity mixed, but he has shown -that money is not his first object. - -At this moment Charon popped his head in at the door, pulling his -forelock, and said, “Time, gen’lemen, time!” The house was rising and I -took the opportunity to step back, unperceived, into the corridor. Mr. -Shakespeare led the procession out, declaring that, as he had come in -a galliard, he must return in a coranto, and offering to dance it with -Mrs. Siddons, who, however, excused herself, saying that she knew no -touch of it, though she had of old taken great strides in her profession. -Dr. Johnson turned back, when half way out, to touch the doorpost. -Mr. Garrick sallied forth arm-in-arm with Mr. Kean and Mr. Sheridan. -“Egad!” chuckled Mr. Sheridan, “Garrick between Tragedy and Comedy,” and -subsequently caused some confusion by tumbling down the stairs and lying -helpless at the bottom. When the attendants ran to his assistance and -asked his name, he said he was Mr. Wilberforce. As they emerged under -the portico the crowd outside raised a loud cheer, and Mr. Shakespeare -doffed his plumed cap and bowed graciously to right and left until they -told him that the crowd were cheering the Prince of Wales, when he looked -crestfallen and called those within earshot “groundlings” and “lousy -knaves.” As he jumped into a taxi, I heard him direct the driver to the -“Mermaid,” when Dr. Johnson, running up and puffing loudly, cried, “A -tavern chair is the throne of human felicity. But the ‘Mitre’ is the -nearer. Let us go there, and I’ll have a frisk with you.” And as the taxi -disappeared down Catherine Street, my ear caught the distant strain, “And -let me the canakin clink, clink.” - - - - -SIR ROGER AT THE RUSSIAN BALLET - -NO. 1000. WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 29TH, 19—. - - _Saltare elegantius quam necesse est probæ._ - SALLUST. - - -My friend Sir Roger de Coverley, when we last met together at the club, -told me that he had a great mind to see the Muscovite dancers with me, -assuring me at the same time that he had not been at a playhouse these -twenty years. When he learnt from me that these dancers were to be sought -in Leicester Fields, he asked me if there would not be some danger in -coming home late, in case the Mohocks should be abroad. “However,” says -the knight, “if Captain Sentry will make one with us to-morrow night, I -will have my own coach in readiness to attend you; for John tells me he -has got the fore-wheels mended.” Thinking to smoak him, I whispered, “You -must have a care, for all the streets in the West are now up,” but he was -not to be daunted, saying he minded well when all the West Country was up -with Monmouth; and the Captain bid Sir Roger fear nothing, for that he -had put on the same sword which he made use of at the battle of Steenkirk. - -When we had convoyed him in safety to Leicester Fields, and he had -descended from his coach at the door, he straightway engaged in a -conference with the door-keeper, who is a notable prating gossip, and -stroak’d the page-boy upon the head, bidding him be a good child and mind -his book. As soon as we were in our places my old friend stood up and -looked about him with that pleasure which a mind seasoned with humanity -naturally feels in itself, at the sight of a multitude of people who seem -pleased with one another, and partake of the same common entertainment. -He seemed to be no less pleased with the gay silks and satins and -sarsenets and brocades of the ladies, but pish’d at the strange sight of -their bare backs. “Not so bare, neither,” I whispered to him, “for if -you look at them through your spy-glass you will see they wear a little -coat of paint, which particularity has gained them the name of Picts.” “I -warrant you,” he answered, with a more than ordinary vehemence, “these -naked ones are widows—widows, Sir, are the most perverse creatures in the -world.” Thinking to humour him, I said most like they were war widows, -whereon the good knight lifted his hat to our brave fellows who fought in -the Low Countries, and offered several reflections on the greatness of -the British land and sea forces, with many other honest prejudices which -naturally cleave to the heart of a true Englishman. - -Luckily, the Muscovites then began dancing and posturing in their -pantomime which they call _Petrouchka_ and the old gentleman was -wonderfully attentive to the antics of the three live _fantoccini_. When -the black fellow, as he called the Moor, clove the head of his rival with -the scimitar, the knight said he had never looked for such barbarity from -a fellow who, but a moment ago, was innocently playing a game of ball, -like a child. What strange disorders, he added, are bred in the minds -of men whose passions are not regulated by virtue, and disciplined by -reason. “But pray, you that are a critic, is this in accordance with your -rules, as you call them? Did your Aristotle allow pity and terror to be -moved by such means as dancing?” I answered that the Greek philosopher -had never seen the Muscovites and that, in any case, we had the authority -of Shakespeare for expecting murder from any jealous Moor. “Moreover, -these Muscovites dance murder as they dance everything. I love to shelter -myself under the examples of great men, and let me put you in mind of -Hesiod, who says, ‘The gods have bestowed fortitude on some men, and on -others a disposition for dancing.’ Fortunately the Muscovites have the -more amiable gift.” The knight, with the proper respect of a country -gentleman for classick authority, was struck dumb by Hesiod. - -He remained silent during the earlier part of _Schéhérazade_ until -Karsavina, as the favourite of the Sultan’s harem, persuaded the Chief -Eunuch to release her orange-tawny favourite, Monsieur Massine, at which -the knight exclaimed, “On my word, a notable young baggage!” I refrained -from telling my innocent friend that in the old Arabian tale these -tawny creatures were apes. He mightily liked the Sultan’s long beard. -“When I am walking in my gallery in the country,” says he, “and see the -beards of my ancestors, I cannot forbear regarding them as so many old -patriarchs, and myself as an idle smock-faced young fellow. I love to see -your Abrahams and Isaacs, as we have them in old pieces of tapestry with -beards below their girdles. I suppose this fellow, with all these wives, -must be Solomon.” And, his thoughts running upon that King, he said he -kept his Book of Wisdom by his bedside in the country and found it, -though Apocryphal, more conducive to virtue than the writings of Monsieur -La Rochefoucauld or, indeed, of Socrates himself, whose life he had -read at the end of the Dictionary. Captain Sentry, seeing two or three -wags who sat near us lean with an attentive ear towards Sir Roger, and -fearing lest they should smoak the knight, plucked him by the elbow, and -whispered something in his ear that lasted until the Sultan returned to -the harem and put the ladies and their tawny companions to the sword. The -favourite’s plunging the dagger into her heart moved him to tears, but he -dried them hastily on bethinking him she was a Mahometan, and asked of -us, on our way home, whether there was no playhouse in London where they -danced true Church of England pantomimes. - - - - -PARTRIDGE AT “JULIUS CÆSAR” - - -Mr. Jones having spent three hours in reading and kissing Sophia’s -letter, and being at last in a state of good spirits, he agreed to carry -an appointment, which he had before made, into execution. This was, to -attend Mrs. Miller and her youngest daughter into the gallery at the St. -James’s playhouse, and to admit Mr. Partridge as one of the company. For, -as Jones had really that taste for humour which many affect, he expected -to enjoy much entertainment in the criticisms of Partridge; from whom he -expected the simple dictates of nature, unimproved, indeed, but likewise -unadulterated by art. - -In the first row, then, of the first gallery did Mr. Jones, Mrs. Miller, -her youngest daughter, and Partridge take their places. Partridge -immediately declared it was the finest place he had ever been in. When -the first music was played he said it was a wonder how so many fiddlers -could play at one time without putting one another out. - -As soon as the play, which was Shakespeare’s _Julius Cæsar_, began, -Partridge was all attention, nor did he break silence till the scene -in Brutus’s orchard, when he asked Jones, “What season of the year is -it, Sir?” Jones answered, “Wait but a moment and you shall hear the boy -Lucius say it is the 14th of March.” To which Partridge replied with a -smile, “Ay, then I understand why the boy was asleep. Had it been in -apple-harvesting time I warrant you he would have been awake and busy as -soon as what’s-his-name, Squire Brutus, had turned his back.” And upon -the entreaties of Portia to share Brutus’s confidence he inquired if she -was not a Somersetshire wench. “For Madam,” said he, “is mighty like the -housewives in our county, who will plague their husbands to death rather -than let ’em keep a secret.” Nor was he satisfied with Cæsar’s yielding -to Calphurnia’s objections against his going to the Capitol. “Ay, -anything to please your wife, you old dotard,” said he; “you might have -known better than to give heed to a silly woman’s nightmares.” - -When they came to the Forum scene and the speeches of Brutus and Antony, -Partridge sat with his eyes fixed on the orators and with his mouth open. -The same passions which succeeded each other in the crowd of citizens -succeeded likewise in him. He was at first all for Brutus and then all -for Antony, until he learnt that Cæsar had left 75 drachmas to every -Roman citizen. “How much is that in our English money?” he asked Jones, -who answered that it was about two guineas. At that he looked chapfallen, -bethinking him that, though a round sum, it was not enough to warrant -the crowd in such extravagant rejoicing. - -“I begin to suspect, Sir,” said he to Jones, “this Squire Antony hath not -been above hoodwinking us, but he seemed so much more concerned about -the matter than the other speaker, Brutus, that I for one couldn’t help -believing every word he said. Yet I believed the other one, too, when he -was talking, and I was mightily pleased with what he said about liberty -and Britons never being slaves.” “You mean Romans,” answered Jones, “not -Britons.” “Well, well,” said Partridge, “I know it is only a play, but if -I thought they were merely Romans, and not Britons at heart, I should not -care a hang about ’em or what became of ’em.” - -To say the truth, I believe honest Partridge, though a raw country fellow -and ignorant of those dramatic rules which learned critics from the -Temple and the other Inns of Court have introduced, along with improved -catcalls, into our playhouses, was here uttering the sentiments of -nature. Should we be concerned about the fortunes of those ancient Romans -were they utter strangers to us and did we not put ourselves in their -places, which is as much as to turn them all from Romans into Britons? -To be sure, while our imagination is thus turning them, it will not -forbear a few necessary amendments for the sake of verisimilitude. For, -to name only one particular, no free and independent Briton could imagine -himself bribed by so paltry a legacy as a couple of guineas; but he -can multiply that sum in his mind until it shall have reached the much -more considerable amount which he will consent to take for his vote at a -Westminster election; and thus honour will be satisfied. And the critics -aforesaid will then be able to point out to us the advantages of British -over Roman liberty, being attended not only with the proud privileges of -our great and glorious Constitution, but also with a higher emolument. - -Mr. Jones would doubtless have made these reflections to himself had -he not, while Partridge was still speaking, been distracted by the -sudden appearance in an opposite box of Lady Bellaston and Sophia. As -he had only left her ladyship that very afternoon, after a conversation -of so private a nature that it must on no account be communicated to -the reader, he would have disregarded the imperious signals which she -forthwith began making to him with her fan; but the truth is, whatever -reluctance he may have felt to rejoin her ladyship at that moment was -overborne by his eagerness to approach the amiable Sophia, though he -turned pale and his knees trembled at the risk of that approach in -circumstances so dangerous. As soon as he had recovered his composure he -hastened to obey her ladyship’s commands, but on his entry into the box -his spirits were again confounded by the evident agitation of Sophia, -and, seizing her hand, he stammered, “Madam, I——.” “Hoity, toity! Mr. -Jones,” cried Lady Bellaston; “do you salute a chit of a girl before -you take notice of a dowager? Are these the new manners among people of -fashion? It is lucky for my heart that I can call myself a dowager, for -I vow to-night you look like a veritable Adonis, and,” she added in a -whisper too low to be heard by Sophia, “your Venus adores you more madly -than ever, you wicked wretch.” - -Jones was ready to sink with fear. He sat kicking his heels, playing with -his fingers, and looking more like a fool, if it be possible, than a -young booby squire when he is at first introduced into a polite assembly. -He began, however, now to recover himself; and taking a hint from the -behaviour of Lady Bellaston, who, he saw, did not intend openly to claim -any close acquaintance with him, he resolved as entirely to affect the -stranger on his part. Accordingly, he leaned over to Sophia, who was -staring hard at the stage, and asked her if she enjoyed the performance. -“Pray, don’t tease Miss Western with your civilities,” interrupted Lady -Bellaston, “for you must know the child hath lost her heart this night to -that ravishing fellow Ainley, though I tell her to my certain knowledge -he is a husband already, and, what is more, a father. These country -girls have nothing but sweethearts in their heads.” “Upon my honour, -madam,” cried Sophia, “your ladyship injures me.” “Not I, miss, indeed,” -replied her ladyship tartly, “and if you want a sweetheart, have you not -one of the most gallant young fellows about town ready to your hand in -Lord Fellamar? You must be an arrant mad woman to refuse him.” Sophia -was visibly too much confounded to make any observations, and again -turned towards the stage, Lady Bellaston taking the opportunity to dart -languishing glances at Jones behind her back and to squeeze his hand; -in short, to practise the behaviour customary with women of fashion who -desire to signify their sentiments for a gentleman without expressing -them in actual speech; when Jones, who saw the agitation of Sophia’s -mind, resolved to take the only method of relieving her, which was by -retiring. This he did, as Brutus was rushing upon his own sword; and -poor Jones almost wished the sword might spit him, too, in his rage and -despair at what her ladyship had maliciously insinuated about Sophia and -Mr. Ainley. - - - - -DR. JOHNSON AT THE STADIUM - - -I am now to record a curious incident in Dr. Johnson’s life, which fell -under my own observation; of which _pars magna fui_, and which I am -persuaded will, with the liberal-minded, be in no way to his discredit. - -When I was a boy in the year 1745 I wore a white cockade and prayed for -King James, till one of my uncles gave me a shilling on condition that -I should pray for King George, which I accordingly did. This uncle was -General Cochran; and it was with natural gratification that I received -from another member of that family, Mr. Charles Cochran, a more valuable -present than a shilling, that is to say, an invitation to witness the -Great Fight at the Stadium and to bring with me a friend. “Pray,” said I, -“let us have Dr. Johnson.” Mr. Cochran, who is much more modest than our -other great theatre-manager, Mr. Garrick, feared that Dr. Johnson could -hardly be prevailed upon to condescend. “Come,” said I, “if you’ll let me -negotiate for you, I will be answerable that all shall go well.” - -I had not forgotten Mrs. Thrale’s relation (which she afterwards printed -in her “Anecdotes”) that “Mr. Johnson was very conversant in the art -of attack and defence by boxing, which science he had learned from his -uncle Andrew, I believe; and I have heard him discourse upon the age -when people were received, and when rejected, in the schools once held -for that brutal amusement, much to the admiration of those who had no -expectation of his skill in such matters, from the sight of a figure -which precluded all possibility of personal prowess.” This lively lady -was, however, too ready to deviate from exact authenticity of narration; -and, further, I reflected that, whatever the propensities of his youth, -he who had now risen to be called by Dr. Smollett the Great Cham of -literature might well be affronted if asked to countenance a prize-fight. - -Notwithstanding the high veneration which I entertained for him, I -was sensible that he was sometimes a little actuated by the spirit of -contradiction, and by means of that I hoped I should gain my point. -I therefore, while we were sitting quietly by ourselves at his house -in an evening, took occasion to open my plan thus:—“Mr. Cochran, sir, -sends his respectful compliments to you, and would be happy if you -would do him the honour to visit his entertainment at the Stadium on -Thursday next?” JOHNSON.—“Sir, I am obliged to Mr. Cochran. I will go——” -BOSWELL.—“Provided, sir, I suppose, that the entertainment is of a kind -agreeable to you?” JOHNSON.—“What do you mean, sir? What do you take me -for? Do you think I am so ignorant of the world as to imagine that I am -to prescribe to a gentleman what kind of entertainment he is to offer his -friends?” BOSWELL.—“But if it were a prize-fight?” JOHNSON.—“Well, sir, -and what then?” BOSWELL.—“It might bring queer company.” JOHNSON.—“My -dear friend, let us have no more of this. I am sorry to be angry with -you; but really it is treating me strangely to talk to me as if I could -not meet any company whatever occasionally.” Thus I secured him. - -As it proved, however, whether by good luck or by the forethought of -the ingenious Mr. Cochran, Dr. Johnson could not have found himself in -better company than that gathered round him in Block H at the Stadium. -There were many members of the Literary Club, among them Mr. Beauclerk, -Mr. Burke, Mr. Garrick, Mr. Gibbon, Sir Joshua Reynolds, and Mr. R. -B. Sheridan. A gentleman present, who had been dining at the Duke of -Montrose’s, where the bottle had been circulated pretty freely, was -rash enough to rally Dr. Johnson about his Uncle Andrew, suggesting -that his uncle’s nephew might now take the opportunity of exhibiting -his prowess in the ring. JOHNSON.—“Sir, to be facetious, it is not -necessary to be indecent. I am not for tapping any man’s claret, but -we see that _thou_ hast already tapped his Grace’s.” BURKE.—“It is -remarkable how little gore is ever shed in these contests. Here have we -been for half an hour watching—let me see, what are their names?—Eddie -Feathers and Gus Platts—and not even a bleeding nose between them.” -REYNOLDS.—“In a previous contest one boxer knocked the other’s teeth -out.” SHERIDAN.—“Yes, but they were false teeth.” - -At this moment the talk was interrupted by the arrival of the Prince. -As His Highness passed Dr. Johnson, my revered friend made an obeisance -which was an even more studied act of homage than his famous bow to the -Archbishop of York; and he subsequently joined in singing “For he’s a -jolly good fellow” with the most loyal enthusiasm, repeating the word -“fe-ellow” over and over again, doubtless because it was the only one he -knew. (“Like a word in a catch,” Beauclerk whispered.) I am sorry that -I did not take note of an eloquent argument in which he proceeded to -maintain that the situation of Prince of Wales was the happiest of any -person’s in the kingdom, even beyond that of the Sovereign. - -But there was still no sign of Beckett and Carpentier, the heroes of -the evening, and the company became a little weary of the preliminary -contests. A hush fell upon the assembly, and many glanced furtively -towards the alley down which the champions were to approach. GIBBON.—“We -are unhappy because we are kept waiting. ‘Man never is, but always to -be, blest.’” JOHNSON.—“And we are awaiting we know not what. To the -impatience of expectation is added the disquiet of the unknown.” GARRICK -(_playing round his old friend with a fond vivacity_).—“My dear sir, -men are naturally a little restless, when they have backed Beckett at -70 to 40.” REYNOLDS.—“But, see, the lights of the kinematographers” (we -were all abashed by the word in the presence of the Great Lexicographer) -“are brighter than ever. I observe all the contestants take care to -smile under them.” SHERIDAN.—“When they _do_ agree, their unanimity is -wonderful.” JOHNSON.—“Among the anfractuosities of the human mind, I know -not if it may not be one, that there is a morbid longing to attitudinize -in the ‘moving pictures.’” - -But at length Beckett and Carpentier made their triumphal entry. Beckett -first, quietly smiling, with eyes cast down, Carpentier debonair and -lightly saluting the crowd with an elegant wave of the hand. After the -pair had stripped and Dr. Johnson had pointed out that “the tenuity, -the thin part” in Carpentier’s frame indicated greater lightness, if -Beckett’s girth promised more solid resistance, Mr. Angle invited the -company to preserve silence during the rounds and to abstain from -smoking. To add a last touch to the solemnity of the moment, Carpentier’s -supernumerary henchmen (some six or eight, over and above his trainer and -seconds) came and knelt by us, in single file, in the alley between Block -H and Block E, as though at worship. - -What then happened, in the twinkling of an eye, all the world now knows, -and knows rather better than I knew myself at the moment, for I saw -Beckett lying on his face in the ring without clearly distinguishing -the decisive blow. While Carpentier was being carried round the ring -on the shoulders of his friends, being kissed first by his trainer -and then by ladies obligingly held up to the ring for the amiable -purpose, I confess that I watched Beckett, and was pleased to see he had -successfully resumed his quiet smile. As I carried my revered friend -home to Bolt Court in a taximetric cabriolet, I remarked to him that -Beckett’s defeat was a blow to our patriotic pride, whereupon he suddenly -uttered, in a strong, determined tone, an apophthegm at which many will -start:—“Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel!” “And yet,” said -Beauclerk, when I told him of this later, “he had not been kissed by -Carpentier.” - - - - -MY UNCLE TOBY PUZZLED - - -“’Tis a pity,” cried my father, one winter’s night, after reading the -account of the Shakespeare Memorial meeting—“’tis a pity,” cried my -father, putting my mother’s thread-paper into the newspaper for a mark -as he spoke,—“that truth, brother Toby, should shut herself up in such -impregnable fastnesses, and be so obstinate as to surrender herself up -sometimes only upon the closest siege.” - -The word siege, like a talismanic power, in my father’s metaphor, wafting -back my uncle Toby’s fancy, quick as a note could follow the touch, he -opened his ears. - -“And there was nothing to shame them in the truth, neither,” said my -father, “seeing that they had many thousands of pounds to their credit. -How could a bishop think there was danger in telling it?” - -“Lord bless us! Mr. Shandy,” cried my mother, “what is all this story -about?” - -“About Shakespeare, my dear,” said my father. - -“He has been dead a hundred years ago,” replied my mother. - -My uncle Toby, who was no chronologer, whistled “Lillibullero.” - -“By all that’s good and great! ma’am,” cried my father, taking the oath -out of Ernulphus’s digest, “of course. If it was not for the aids of -philosophy, which befriend one so much as they do, you would put a man -beside all temper. He is as dead as a doornail, and they are thinking of -building a theatre to honour his memory.” - -“And why should they not, Mr. Shandy?” said my mother. - -“To be sure, there’s no reason why,” replied my father, “save that they -haven’t enough money left over after buying a plot of land in Gower -Street to build upon.” - -Corporal Trim touched his Montero-cap and looked hard at my uncle Toby. -“If I durst presume,” said he, “to give your honour my advice, and -speak my opinion in this matter.” “Thou art welcome, Trim,” said my -uncle Toby. “Why then,” replied Trim, “I think, with humble submission -to your honour’s better judgment, I think that had we but a rood or a -rood and a half of this ground to do what we pleased with, I would make -fortifications for you something like a tansy, with all their batteries, -saps, ditches, and palisadoes, that it should be worth all the world’s -riding twenty miles to go and see it.” - -“Then thou wouldst have, Trim,” said my father, “to palisado the Y.M.C.A.” - -“I never understood rightly the meaning of that word,” said my Uncle -Toby, “and I am sure nothing of that name was known to our armies in -Flanders.” - -“’Tis an association of Christian young men,” replied my father, “who for -the present hold the Shakespeare Memorialists’ ground in Gower Street.” -’Twas no inconsistent part of my uncle Toby’s character that he feared -God and reverenced religion. So the moment my father finished his remark -my uncle Toby fell a-whistling “Lillibullero” with more zeal (though more -out of tune) than usual. - -“And the money these Christian youths pay for rents,” continued my -father, “is to be used to maintain a company of strolling players” [Here -my uncle Toby, throwing back his head, gave a monstrous, long, loud -whew-w-w.], “who are to go up and down the country showing the plays of -Shakespeare. Up and down, and that, by the way, is how their curtain went -on twenty-two occasions in _Romeo and Juliet_.” - -“Who says so?” asked my uncle Toby. - -“A parson,” replied my father. - -“Had he been a soldier,” said my uncle, “he would never have told such a -taradiddle. He would have known that the curtain is that part of the wall -or rampart which lies between the two bastions, and joins them.” - -“By the mother who bore us! brother Toby,” quoth my father, “you would -provoke a saint. Here have you got us, I know not how, souse into the -middle of the old subject again. We are speaking of Shakespeare and not -of fortifications.” - -“Was Shakespeare a soldier, Mr. Shandy, or a young men’s Christian?” said -my mother, who had lost her way in the argument. - -“Neither one nor t’other, my dear,” replied my father (my uncle Toby -softly whistled “Lillibullero”); “he was a writer of plays.” - -“They are foolish things,” said my mother. - -“Sometimes,” replied my father, “but you have not seen Shakespeare’s, -Mrs. Shandy. And it is for the like of you, I tell you point-blank——” - -As my father pronounced the word point-blank my uncle Toby rose up to say -something upon projectiles, but my father continued:— - -“It is for the like of you that these Shakespeare Memorialists are -sending their strolling players around the country, to set the goodwives -wondering about Shakespeare, as they wondered about Diego’s nose in the -tale of the learned Hafen Slawkenbergius.” - -“Surely the wonderful nose was Cyrano’s?” said my mother. “Cyrano’s or -Diego’s, ’tis all one,” cried my father in a passion. “Zooks! Cannot a -man use a plain analogy but his wife must interrupt him with her foolish -questions about it? May the eternal curse of all the devils in——” - -“Our armies swore terribly in Flanders,” cried my uncle Toby, “but -nothing to this.” - -“As you please, Mr. Shandy,” said my mother. - -“Where was I?” said my father, in some confusion, and letting his hand -fall upon my uncle Toby’s shoulder in sign of repentance for his violent -cursing. - -“You was at Slawkenbergius,” replied my uncle Toby. - -“No, no, brother, Shakespeare, I was speaking of Shakespeare, and how -they were going to carry him round the country because they had not money -enough to build a theatre for him in London.” - -“But could they not hire one?” said my uncle Toby. - -“No, for my Lord Lytton said that would be too speculative a venture.” - -“’Tis a mighty strange business,” said my uncle, in much perplexity. -“They buy their land, as I understand it, brother, to build a house for -Shakespeare in London, but lease it for a house for young Christians -instead, and spend their money on sending Shakespeare packing out of -London.” - -“’Tis all the fault of the Londoners,” replied my father. “They have no -soul for Shakespeare, and for that matter, as I believe, no soul at all.” - -“A Londoner has no soul, an’ please your honour,” whispered Corporal Trim -doubtingly, and touching his Montero-cap to my uncle. - -“I am not much versed, Corporal,” quoth my uncle Toby, “in things of that -kind; but I suppose God would not leave him without one, any more than -thee or me.” - - - - -LADY CATHERINE AND MR. COLLINS - - -Elizabeth and Charlotte were seated one morning in the parlour at -Hunsford parsonage, enjoying the prospect of Rosings from the front -window, and Mr. Collins was working in his garden, which was one of his -most respectable pleasures, when the peace of the household was suspended -by the arrival of a letter from London:— - - “THEATRE ROYAL, DRURY LANE, - - “LONDON, _December, 19—_. - - “DEAR COUSIN WILLIAM,—We have long neglected to maintain a - commerce of letters, but I have learned through the public - prints of your recent union with an elegant female from - Hertfordshire and desire to tender you and your lady my - respects in what I trust will prove an agreeable form. I am - directing an entertainment at this theatre, which is designed - to be in harmony with the general Christmas rejoicings, and, - you may rest assured, in no way offends the principles of the - Church which you adorn. Will you not honour it by your presence - and thus confer an innocent enjoyment upon your lady? In that - hope, I enclose a box ticket for the pantomime on Monday - se’nnight and remain your well-wisher and cousin, - - “ARTHUR COLLINS.” - -Smiling to herself, Elizabeth reflected that the two Messrs. Collins -might certainly call cousins in epistolary composition, while Charlotte -anxiously inquired if the proposal had her William’s approval. - -“I am by no means of opinion,” said he, “that an entertainment of this -kind, given by a man of character, who is also my own second cousin, to -respectable people, can have any evil tendency; but, before accepting the -invitation, it is, of course, proper that I should seek the countenance -of Lady Catherine de Bourgh.” Accordingly, he lost no time in making his -way to Rosings. - -Lady Catherine, who chanced to be meditating that very morning on a -visit to London for the purchase of a new bonnet and _pèlerine_, was all -affability and condescension. - -“To be sure, you will go, Mr. Collins,” said her ladyship. “I advise you -to accept the invitation without delay. It is the duty of a clergyman of -your station to refine and improve such entertainments by his presence. -Nay,” she added, “Sir Lewis highly approved them and _I_ myself will -go with you.” Mr. Collins was overwhelmed by civility far beyond his -expectations, and hurried away to prepare Charlotte and Elizabeth for -this splendid addition to their party. - -Early on the Monday se’nnight they set out for London in one of her -ladyship’s carriages, for, as Mr. Collins took the opportunity of -remarking, she had several, drawn by four post-horses, which they changed -at the “Bell” at Bromley. On the way her ladyship examined the young -ladies’ knotting-work and advised them to do it differently, instructed -Elizabeth in the humility of deportment appropriate to the front seat of -a carriage, and determined what the weather was to be to-morrow. - -When they were at last arrived and seated in their box Lady Catherine -approved the spacious dignity of the baronial hall, which, she said, -reminded her of the great gallery at Pemberley, but was shocked at the -familiarities which passed between the Baron and Baroness Beauxchamps -and their page-boy. “These foreign nobles,” she exclaimed, “adventurers, -I daresay! It was Sir Lewis’s opinion that _all_ foreigners were -adventurers. No English baron, it is certain, would talk so familiarly -to a common domestic, a person of inferior birth, and of no importance -in the world. Honour, decorum, prudence, nay, interest, forbid it. With -such manners, I do not wonder that the domestic arrangements are in -disorder, the very stair-carpet unfastened, and a machine for cleaning -knives actually brought into a reception room! See, they cannot even lay -a table-cloth!” And her ladyship advised Charlotte on the proper way of -laying table-cloths, especially in clergymen’s families. - -After a song of Miss Florence Smithson’s Charlotte talked in a low tone -with Elizabeth, and her ladyship called out:—“What is that you are -saying, Mrs. Collins? What is it you are talking of? What are you telling -Miss Bennet? Let me hear what it is.” - -“We are speaking of music, madam,” said Charlotte. - -“Of music! Then pray speak aloud. It is of all subjects my delight. I -must have my share in the conversation, if you are speaking of music. -There are few people in England, I suppose, who have more true enjoyment -of music than myself, or a better natural taste. If I had ever learnt, I -should have been a great proficient.” - -When Cinderella set out for the ball in her coach-and-six with a whole -train of running-footmen Lady Catherine signified her approbation. “Young -women should always be properly guarded and attended, according to -their situation in life. When my niece Georgiana went to Ramsgate last -summer, I made a point of her having two men-servants go with her. I am -excessively attentive to all those things.” - -But now they were at the ball, and the box party was all attention. The -Prince, dignified and a little stiff, reminded Elizabeth of Mr. Darcy. -But guests so strange as Mutt and Jeff, she thought, would never be -allowed to pollute the shades of Pemberley. Mr. Collins’s usually cold -composure forsook him at the sight of the Baroness playing cards with -the Baron on one of her _paniers_ as a table, and felt it his duty to -apologize to Lady Catherine for the unseemly incident. “If your ladyship -will warrant me,” he began, “I will point out to my cousin that neither -a person of your high station nor a clergyman of the Church of England -ought to be asked to witness this licentiousness of behaviour.” “And -advise him,” said her ladyship, “on the authority of Lady Catherine de -Bourgh, that _paniers_ were never used for this disgraceful purpose. -There is no one in England who knows more about _paniers_ than myself, -for my grandmother, Lady Anne, wore them, and some day Mrs. Jennings, the -housekeeper, shall show them to Miss Bennet,” for Elizabeth could not -forbear a smile, “at Rosings.” - -The party retired early, for Elizabeth had to be conveyed to her uncle’s -as far as Gracechurch Street, and Lady Catherine desired the interval of -a long night before choosing her new bonnet. It was not until Mr. Collins -was once more in his parsonage that he sent his cousin an acknowledgment -of the entertainment afforded at Drury Lane, as follows:— - - “HUNSFORD, _near_ WESTERHAM, KENT, - - “_January, 19—_. - - “DEAR SIR,—We withdrew from your Christmas entertainment - on Monday last with mingled feelings of gratification and - reprobation. When I say ‘we’ I should tell you that my - Charlotte and I not only brought with us a Miss Elizabeth - Bennet, one of the friends of her maiden state, but were - honoured by the company of the Right Honourable Lady Catherine - de Bourgh, widow of Sir Lewis de Bourgh, whose bounty and - beneficence have, as you know, preferred me to the valuable - rectory of this parish, where it shall be my earnest endeavour - to demean myself with grateful respect towards her ladyship, - and be ever ready to perform those rites and ceremonies which - are instituted by the Church of England. It is as a clergyman - that I feel it my duty to warn you against the sinful game of - cards exhibited in the scene of the Prince’s ball. If it had - been family whist, I could have excused it, for there can be - little harm in whist, at least among players who are not in - such circumstances as to make five shillings any object. But - the Baroness Beauxchamps is manifestly engaged in a game of - sheer chance, if not of downright cheating. The admission of - this incident to your stage cannot but have proceeded, you must - allow me to tell you, from a faulty degree of indulgence. And - I am to add, on the high authority of Lady Catherine, probably - the highest on this as on many other subjects, that there is no - instance on record of the _paniers_ once worn by ladies being - used as card-tables. With respectful compliments to your lady - and family, - - “I remain, dear sir, your cousin, - - “WILLIAM COLLINS.” - - - - -MR. PICKWICK AT THE PLAY - - -“And now,” said Mr. Pickwick, looking round on his friends with a -good-humoured smile, and a sparkle in the eye which no spectacles could -dim or conceal, “the question is, Where shall we go to-night?” - -With the faithful Sam in attendance behind his chair, he was seated at -the head of his own table, with Mr. Snodgrass on his left and Mr. Winkle -on his right and Mr. Alfred Jingle opposite him; his face was rosy with -jollity, for they had just dispatched a hearty meal of chops and tomato -sauce, with bottled ale and Madeira, and a special allowance of milk -punch for the host. - -Mr. Jingle proposed Mr. Pickwick; and Mr. Pickwick proposed Mr. Jingle. -Mr. Snodgrass proposed Mr. Winkle; and Mr. Winkle proposed Mr. Snodgrass; -while Sam, taking a deep pull at the stone bottle of milk punch behind -his master’s chair, silently proposed himself. - -“And where,” said Mr. Pickwick, “shall we go to-night?” Mr. Snodgrass, -as modest as all great geniuses are, was silent. Mr. Winkle, who had -been thinking of Arabella, started violently, looked knowing, and was -beginning to stammer something, when he was interrupted by Mr. Jingle—“A -musical comedy, old boy—no plot—fine women—gags—go by-by—wake up for -chorus—entertaining, very.” - -“And lyrics,” said Mr. Snodgrass, with poetic rapture. - -“I was just going to suggest it,” said Mr. Winkle, “when this individual” -(scowling at Mr. Jingle, who laid his hand on his heart, with a derisive -smile), “when, I repeat, this individual interrupted me.” - -“A musical comedy, with all my heart,” said Mr. Pickwick. “Sam, give me -the paper. H’m, h’m, what’s this? _The Eclipse_, a farce with songs—will -that do?” - -“But is a farce with songs a musical comedy?” objected Mr. Winkle. - -“Bless my soul,” said Mr. Pickwick, “this is very puzzling.” - -“Beggin’ your pardon, sir,” said Sam, touching his forelock, “it’s a -distinction without a difference—as the pork pieman remarked when they -asked him if his pork wasn’t kittens.” - -“Then,” said Mr. Pickwick, with a benevolent twinkle, “by all means let -us go to _The Eclipse_.” - -“Beg pardon, sir,” said Sam again, doubtfully, “there ain’t no -astrongomies in it, is there?” Sam had not forgotten his adventure with -the scientific gentleman at Clifton. But, as nobody knew, they set off -for the Garrick Theatre, and were soon ensconced in a box. - -They found the stage occupied by a waiter, who was the very image of the -waiter Mr. Pickwick had seen at the Old Royal Hotel at Birmingham, except -that he didn’t imperceptibly melt away. Waiters, in general, never walk -or run; they have a peculiar and mysterious power of skimming out of -rooms which other mortals possess not. But this waiter, unlike his kind, -couldn’t “get off” anyhow. He explained that it was because the composer -had given him no music to “get off” with. - -“Poor fellow,” said Mr. Pickwick, greatly distressed; “will he have to -stop there all night?” - -“Not,” muttered Sam to himself, “if I wos behind ’im with a bradawl.” - -However, the waiter did at last get off, and then came on again and sang -another verse, amid loud hoorays, until Mr. Pickwick’s eyes were wet with -gratification at the universal jollity. - -“Fine fellow, fine fellow,” cried Mr. Pickwick; “what is his name?” - -“Hush-h-h, my dear sir,” whispered a charming young man of not much more -than fifty in the next box, in whom Mr. Pickwick, abashed, recognized Mr. -Angelo Cyrus Bantam, “_that_ is Mr. Alfred Lester.” - -“A born waiter,” interjected Mr. Jingle, “once a waiter always -a waiter—stage custom—Medes and Persians—wears his napkin for a -nightcap—droll fellow, very.” - -By and by there was much talk of a mysterious Tubby Haig, and they even -sang a song about him; but he did not appear on the stage, and Mr. -Pickwick, whose curiosity was excited, asked who this Tubby Haig was. - -Sam guessed he might be own brother to Mr. Wardle’s Fat Boy, Joe, or -perhaps “the old gen’l’m’n as wore the pigtail—reg’lar fat man, as hadn’t -caught a glimpse of his own shoes for five-and-forty year,” but Mr. -Bantam again leaned over from his box and whispered:— - -“Hush-h-h, my dear sir, nobody is fat or old in Ba-a——I mean in literary -circles. Mr. Tubby Haig is a popular author of detective stories, much -prized, along with alleytors and commoneys, by the youth of this town.” - -But a sudden start of Mr. Winkle’s and a rapturous exclamation from Mr. -Snodgrass again directed Mr. Pickwick’s attention to the scene. He almost -fainted with dismay. Standing in the middle of the stage, in the full -glare of the lights, was a lady with her shoulders and back (which she -kept turning to the lights) bare to the waist! - -“Bless my soul,” cried Mr. Pickwick, shrinking behind the curtain of the -box, “what a dreadful thing!” - -He mustered up courage, and looked out again. The lady was still there, -not a bit discomposed. - -“Most extraordinary female, this,” thought Mr. Pickwick, popping in -again. - -She still remained, however, and even threw an arch glance in Mr. -Pickwick’s direction, as much as to say, “You old dear.” - -“But—but—” cried Mr. Pickwick, in an agony, “won’t she catch cold?” - -“Bless your heart, no, sir,” said Sam, “she’s quite used to it, and it’s -done with the very best intentions, as the gen’l’man said ven he run away -from his wife, ’cos she seemed unhappy with him.” - -If Mr. Pickwick was distressed, very different was the effect of the -lovely vision upon Mr. Winkle. Alas for the weakness of human nature! -he forgot for the moment all about Arabella. Suddenly grasping his hat, -he rose from his seat, said “Good-night, my dear sir,” to Mr. Pickwick -between his set teeth, added brokenly, “My friend, my benefactor, my -honoured companion, do not judge me harshly”—and dashed out of the box. - -“Very extraordinary,” said Mr. Pickwick to himself, “what _can_ that -young man be going to do?” - -Meanwhile, for Mr. Winkle to rush downstairs, into the street, round -the corner, as far as the stage-door, was the work of a moment. Taking -out a card engraved “NATHANIEL WINKLE, M.P.C.,” he hastily pencilled a -few fervent words on it and handed it to the door-keeper, requiring him -instantly to convey it to Miss Teddie Gerard. - -“What now, imperence,” said the man, roughly pushing him from the door -and knocking his hat over his eyes. - -At the same moment Mr. Winkle found his arms pinioned from behind by Sam -Weller, who led him, crestfallen, back into the street and his senses. -The public were now leaving the theatre, and Mr. Pickwick, beckoning Mr. -Winkle to approach, fixed a searching look upon him, and uttered in a -low, but distinct and emphatic, tone these remarkable words:— - -“You’re a humbug, sir.” - -“A what!” said Mr. Winkle, starting. - -“A humbug, sir.” - -With these words, Mr. Pickwick turned slowly on his heel, and rejoined -his friends. - - - - -MR. CRICHTON AND MR. LITTIMER - - -They were seated together, Mr. and Mrs. Crichton in the bar-parlour of -their little public-house in the Harrow Road, at the more fashionable -end, for which Mr. Crichton had himself invented the sign (in memory of -his past experiences) of “The Case is Altered.” Mr. Crichton, too, was -altered and yet the same. He wore one of the Earl’s old smoking-jackets, -with a coronet still embroidered on the breast pocket—not, he said, out -of anything so vulgar as ostentation, but as a sort of last link with -the Upper House—but his patent leather boots had given place to carpet -slippers, and his trousers, once so impeccable, were now baggy at the -knees. Altogether he was an easier, more relaxed Crichton, freed as he -was from the restraining, if respectful, criticism of the servants’ hall. -Indeed, Miss Fisher, who had always hated him, hinted that he had become -slightly Rabelaisian—a reference which she owed to mademoiselle—though -she would not have dared to repeat the hint to Mrs. Crichton (_née_ -Tweeny). For marriage had in no degree abated Tweeny’s reverence for her -Crichton, or rather, as old habit still impelled her to call him, her -Guv. - -The Guv. was at this moment comforting himself with a glass of port -(from the wood) and thinking of that bin of ’47 he had helped the Earl -to finish in past days. And now he was inhabiting a road where (at least -at the other, the unfashionable, end) port was invariably “port wine.” -Such are the vicissitudes of human affairs. Tweeny herself was guilty -of the solecism, as was perhaps to be expected from a lady who, for her -own drinking, preferred swipes. Though she had made great strides in her -education under the Guv.’s guidance (she was now nearly into quadratic -equations, and could say the dates of accession of the kings of England -down to James II.), she still made sad havoc of her nominatives and verbs -in the heat of conversation. - -“A gent as wants to see the Guv.,” said the potboy, popping his head in -at the bar-parlour door—the potboy, for Tweeny knew better than to have a -barmaid about the place for the Guv. to cast a favourable eye on. - -A not very clean card was handed in, inscribed:— - - “MR. LITTIMER,” - -and the owner walked in after it. Or, rather, glided softly in, shutting -the door after entry as delicately as though the inmates had just fallen -into a sweet sleep on which their life depended. Mr. Littimer was an -old-fashioned looking man, with mutton-chop whiskers, a “stock,” tied in -a large bow, a long frock-coat, and tight trousers—the whole suggesting -nothing of recent or even modern date, but, say, 1850. It was an -appearance of intense respectability, of super-respectability, of that -1850 respectability which was so infinitely more respectable than any -respectability of our own day. Mr. Crichton stared, as well he might, and -washed his hands with invisible soap. Though, in fact, now middle-aged, -he felt in this man’s presence extremely young. He clean forgot that he -had been a King in Babylon. Indeed, for the first time in his life he, -the consummate, the magisterial, the admirable Crichton, felt almost -green. - -“Mr. Crichton, sir,” said the visitor, with an apologetic inclination -of the head, “I have ventured to take the great liberty of calling upon -you, if you please, sir, and,” he added with another inclination of -the head to Mrs. Crichton (who felt what she would herself have called -flabbergasted), “if _you_ please, ma’am, as an old friend of your worthy -father. He was butler at Mrs. Steerforth’s when I valeted poor Mr. -James.” His eye fell, respectably, on Mr. Crichton’s port. “Ah!” he said, -“_his_ wine was Madeira, but——” A second glass of port was thereupon -placed on the table, and he sipped it respectably. - -Mr. Crichton could only stare, speechless. All his _aplomb_ had gone. He -gazed at a ship’s bucket, his most cherished island relic, which hung -from the ceiling (as a shade for the electric light—one of his little -mechanical ingenuities), and wondered whether he ever _could_ have put -anybody’s head in it. His philosophy was, for once, at fault. He knew, -none better, that “nature” had made us all unequal, dividing us up into -earls and butlers and tweenies, but now for the first time it dawned upon -him that “nature” had made us unequally respectable. Here was something -more respectable, vastly more respectable, than himself; respectable not -in the grand but in the sublime manner. - -He could not guess his visitor’s thoughts, and it was well for his peace -of mind that he could not. For Mr. Littimer’s thoughts were, respectably, -paternal. He thought of Mr. Crichton, sen., and still more of the senior -Mrs. Crichton, once “own woman” to Mrs. Steerforth. Ah! those old days -and those old loves! How sad and bad and mad it was—for Mr. Littimer’s -poet was Browning, as his host’s was Henley, as suited the difference -in their dates—and how they had deceived old Crichton between them! So -this was _his_ boy, his, Littimer’s, though no one knew it save himself -and the dead woman! And as he gazed, with respectable fondness, at this -image, modernized, modified, subdued, of his own respectability, he -reflected that there was something in heredity, after all. And he smiled, -respectably, as he remembered his boy’s opinion that the union of butler -and lady’s maid was perhaps the happiest of all combinations. Perhaps, -yes; but without any perhaps, if the combination included the valet. - -Unhappy, on the other hand, were those combinations from which valets -were pointedly excluded. There was that outrageous young person whom Mr. -James left behind at Naples and who turned upon him, the respectable -Littimer, like a fury, when he was prepared to overlook her past in -honourable marriage. - -His meditations were interrupted by Mrs. Crichton, who had been mentally -piecing together her recollections of “David Copperfield”—her Guv. had -given her a Dickens course—and had now arrived at a conclusion. “Axin’ -yer pardon, mister,” she said (being still, as we have stated, a little -vulgar when excited), “but if you was valet to Mr. James Steerforth, -you’re the man as ’elped ’im to ruin that pore gal, and as afterwards -went to quod for stealin’. I blushes”—here her eye fell on the Guv., who -quietly dropped the correction “blush”—“I _blush_ for yer, Mr. Littimer.” -“Ah, ma’am,” Mr. Littimer respectably apologized, “I attribute my past -follies entirely to having lived a thoughtless life in the service -of young men; and to having allowed myself to be led by them into -weaknesses, which I had not the strength to resist.” - -“And that, I venture to suggest, ma’am,” he respectably continued, “is -why your worthy husband has been so much more fortunate in the world -than myself. We are both respectable, if I may say so, patterns of -respectability” (Crichton coloured with gratification at this compliment -from the Master), “and yet our respectability has brought us very -different fates. And why, if you please, ma’am? Because I have served the -young, while he has served the old—for I believe, ma’am, the most noble -the Earl of Loam is long past the meridian. Besides, ma’am, we Early -Victorians had not your husband’s educational advantages. There were no -Board schools for me. Not that I’m complaining, ma’am. We could still -teach the young ’uns a thing or two about respectability.” And so with -a proud humility (and an intuition that there was to be no more port) -he took his leave, again shutting the door with the utmost delicacy. He -was, in truth, well content. He had seen his boy. The sacred lamp of -respectability was not out. - -But Mr. Crichton sat in a maze, still washing his hands with invisible -soap. - - - - -HENRY JAMES REPUDIATES “THE REPROBATE” - - -He had dropped, a little wearily, the poor dear man, into a seat at the -shady end of the terrace, whither he had wended or, it came over him -with a sense of the blest “irony” of vulgar misinterpretation, almost -zig-zagged his way after lunch. For he had permitted himself the merest -sip of the ducal Yquem or Brane Cantenac, or whatever—he knew too well, -oh, _didn’t_ he? after all these years of Scratchem house-parties, -the dangerous convivialities one had better show for beautifully -appreciating than freely partake of—but he had been unable, in his -exposure as the author of established reputation, the celebrity of the -hour, the “master,” as chattering Lady Jemima _would_ call him between -the omelette and the chaudfroid, to “take cover” from the ducal dates. -Well, the “All clear” was now sounded, but his head was still dizzy -with the reverberating ’87’s and ’90’s and ’96’s and other such bombs -of chronological precision that the host had dropped upon the guests as -the butler filled their glasses. His subsequent consciousness was quite -to cherish the view that dates which went thus distressingly to one’s -head must somehow not be allowed to slip out of it again, but be turned -into “copy” for readers who innocently look to their favourite romancers -for connoisseurship in wines. What Lady Jemima had flung out at lunch -was true, readers _are_ a “rum lot,” and, hang it all, who says art says -sacrifice, readers were a necessary evil, the many-headed monster must -be fed, and he’d be blest if he wouldn’t feed it with dates, and show -himself for, indulgently, richly, chronologically, “rum.” - -It marked, however, the feeling of the hour with him that this vision of -future “bluffing” about vintages interfered not at all with the measure -of his actual _malaise_. He still nervously fingered the telegram handed -to him at lunch, and, when read, furtively crumpled into his pocket -under Lady Jemima’s celebrated nose. It was entirely odious to him, the -crude purport of the message, as well as the hideous yellow ochre of -its envelope. “Confidently expect you,” the horrid thing ran, “to come -and see your own play.” This Stage Society, if that was its confounded -name, was indeed of a confidence! Yes, and of the last vulgarity! -His conscience was not void, but, on the contrary, quite charged and -brimming with remembered lapses from the ideal life of letters—it was -the hair-shirt he secretly wore even in the Scratchem world under the -conventional garment which the Lady Jemimas of that world teased him by -calling a “boiled rag”—but the “expected,” _that_, thank goodness, he -had never been guilty of. Nay, was it not his “note,” as the reviewers -said, blithely and persistently to balk “expectation”? Had he not in -every book of his successfully hugged his own mystery? Had not these same -reviewers always missed his little point with a perfection exactly as -admirable when they patted him on the back as when they kicked him on the -shins? Did a single one of them ever discover “the figure in the carpet”? -How many baffled readers hadn’t written to him imploring him to divulge -what _really_ happened between Milly and Densher in that last meeting -at Venice? Certainly he was in no chuckling mood under the smart of the -telegram, but it seemed to him that he could almost have chuckled at the -thought that he beautifully didn’t know what happened in that Venetian -meeting himself! And this impossible Stage Society, with that collective -fatuity which seems always so much more gross than any individual sort, -“confidently expected” him to come! - -What was it, please, he put the question to himself with a heat which -seemed to give even the shady end of the terrace the inconvenience of an -exposure to full sun, they expected him to come _to_, or, still worse, -for having probed the wound he must not flinch with the scalpel, to come -_for_? Oh, no, he had not forgotten _The Reprobate_, and what angered -him was that _they_ hadn’t, either. He had not forgotten a blessed one -of the plays he had written for the country towns a score of years ago, -when he had been bitten by the tarantula of the theatre, and, remembering -them, he felt now viciously capable of biting the tarantula back. He had -written them, God forgive him, for country towns. He positively shuddered -when he found himself in a country town, to this day. The terrace at -Scratchem notoriously commanded a distant prospect of at least three, -in as many counties, with cathedrals, famous inns, theatres—the whole -orthodox equipment, he summed it up vindictively in cheap journalese, of -country towns. Vindictive, too, was his reflection that these objects -of his old crazy solicitude must have been revolutionized in twenty -years, their cathedrals “restored,” their inns (the “A.B.C.” vouched -for it) “entirely refitted with electric light,” their theatres turned -into picture palaces. All the old associations of _The Reprobate_ were -extinct. It was monstrous that it should be entirely refitted with -electric light. - -And in the crude glare of that powerful illuminant, with every switch -or whatever mercilessly turned—didn’t they call it?—“on,” he seemed to -see the wretched thing, bare and hideous, with no cheap artifice of -“make-up,” no dab of rouge or streak of burnt cork, spared the dishonour -of exposure. The crack in the golden bowl would be revealed, his awkward -age would be brought up against him, what Maisie knew would be nothing -to what everybody would now know. His agony was not long purely mental; -it suddenly became intercostal. A sharp point had dug him in the ribs. -It was Lady Jemima’s, it couldn’t _not_ be Lady Jemima’s, pink parasol. -Aware of the really great ease of really great ladies he forced a smile, -as he rubbed his side. Ah, Olympians were unconventional indeed—that was -a part of their high bravery and privilege. - -“Dear Master,” she began, and the phrase hurt him even more than the -parasol, “won’t you take poor little _me_?” - -The great lady had read his telegram! Olympian unconventionality was of a -licence! - -“Yes,” she archly beamed, “I looked over your shoulder at lunch, and——” - -“And,” he interruptingly wailed, “you know all.” - -“All,” she nodded, “_tout le tremblement_, the whole caboodle. Now be an -angel and take me.” - -“But, dear lady,” he gloomed at her, “that’s just it. The blest play is -so naïvely, so vulgarly, beyond all redemption though not, thank Heaven, -beyond my repudiation, caboodle.” - -“Oh, fiddlesticks,” she playfully rejoined, and the artist in him -registered for future use her rich Olympian vocabulary, “you _wrote_ it, -Master, anyhow. We’ve all been young once. Take me, and we’ll both be -young again,” she gave it him straight, “together.” - -Ah, then the woman _was_ dangerous. Scratchem gossip had, for once, not -overshot the mark. He would show her, all Olympian though she was, that -giving it straight was a game two could play at. - -“Dear lady,” he said, “you’re wonderful. But I won’t take you. What’s -more, I’m not”—and he had it to himself surprisingly ready—“taking -_any_.” - - - - -M. BERGERET ON FILM CENSORING - - -A late October sun of unusual splendour lit up the windows of M. -Paillot’s bookshop, at the corner of the Place Saint-Exupère and the -Rue des Tintelleries. But it was sombre in the back region of the shop -where the second-hand book shelves were and M. Mazure, the departmental -archivist, adjusted his spectacles to read his copy of _Le Phare_, with -one eye on the newspaper and the other on M. Paillot and his customers. -For M. Mazure wished not so much to read as to be seen reading, in order -that he might be asked what the leading article was and reply, “Oh, a -little thing of my own.” But the question was not asked, for the only -other _habitué_ present was the Lecturer in Latin at the Faculty of -Letters, who was sad and silent. M. Bergeret was turning over the new -books and the old with a friendly hand, and though he never bought a -book for fear of the outcries of his wife and three daughters he was on -the best of terms with M. Paillot, who held him in high esteem as the -reservoir and alembic of those humaner letters that are the livelihood -and profit of booksellers. He took up Vol. XXXVIII. of “L’Histoire -Générale des Voyages,” which always opened at the same place, p. 212, -and he read:— - - “ver un passage au nord. ‘C’est à cet échec, dit-il, que nous - devons n’avoir pu visiter les îles Sandwich et enrichir notre - voyage d’une découverte qui....’” - -For six years past the same page had presented itself to M. Bergeret, -as an example of the monotony of life, as a symbol of the uniformity of -daily tasks, and it saddened him. - -At that moment M. de Terremondre, president of the Society of Agriculture -and Archæology, entered the shop and greeted his friends with the slight -air of superiority of a traveller over stay-at-homes. “I’ve just got back -from England,” he said, “and here, if either of you have enough English -to read it, is to-day’s _Times_.” - -M. Mazure hastily thrust _Le Phare_ into his pocket and looked askance at -the voluminous foreign journal, wherein he could claim no little thing of -his own. M. Bergeret accepted it and applied himself as conscientiously -to construing the text as though it were one of those books of the Æneid -from which he was compiling his “Virgilius Nauticus.” “The manners of -our neighbours,” he presently said, “are as usual more interesting to -a student of human nature than their politics. I read that they are -seriously concerned about the ethical teaching of their kinematography, -and they have appointed a film censor, the deputy T. P. O’Connor.” - -“I think I have heard speak of him over there,” interrupted M. de -Terremondre; “they call him, familiarly, Tépé.” - -“A mysterious name,” said M. Bergeret, “but manifestly not abusive, and -that of itself is a high honour. History records few nicknames that -do not revile. And if the deputy O’Connor, or Tépé, can successfully -acquit himself of his present functions he will be indeed an ornament -to history, a saint of the Positivist Calendar, which is no doubt less -glorious than the Roman, but more exclusive.” - -“Talking of Roman saints,” broke in M. Mazure, “the Abbé Lantaigne has -been spreading it abroad that you called Joan of Arc a mascot.” - -“By way of argument merely,” said M. Bergeret, “not of epigram. The Abbé -and I were discussing theology, about which I never permit myself to be -facetious.” - -“But what of Tépé and his censorial functions?” asked M. de Terremondre. - -“They are extremely delicate,” replied M. Bergeret, “and offer pitfalls -to a censor with a velleity for nice distinctions. Thus I read that -this one has already distinguished, and distinguished _con allegrezza_, -between romantic crime and realistic crime, between murder in Mexico -and murder in Mile End (which I take to be a suburb of London). He has -distinguished between ‘guilty love’ and ‘the pursuit of lust.’ He has -distinguished between a lightly-clad lady swimming and the same lady at -rest. Surely a man gifted with so exquisite a discrimination is wasted -in rude practical life. He should have been a metaphysician.” - -“Well, I,” confessed M. de Terremondre, “am no metaphysician, and it -seems to me murder is murder all the world over.” - -“Pardon me,” said M. Bergeret, “but there, I think, your Tépé is quite -right. Murder is murder all the world over if you are on the spot. But -if you are at a sufficient distance from it in space or time, it may -present itself as a thrilling adventure. Thus the Mexican film censor -will be right in prohibiting films of murder in Mexico, and not wrong in -admitting those of murder in Mile End. Where would tragedy be without -murder? We enjoy the murders of Julius Cæsar or of Duncan because -they are remote; they gratify the primeval passion for blood in us -without a sense of risk. But we could not tolerate a play or a picture -of yesterday’s murder next door, because we think it might happen to -ourselves. Remember that murder was long esteemed in our human societies -as an energetic action, and in our manners and in our institutions there -still subsist traces of this antique esteem. And that is why I approve -the English film censor for treating with a wise indulgence one of the -most venerable of our human admirations. He gratifies it under conditions -of remoteness that deprive bloodshed of its reality while conserving its -artistic verisimilitude.” - -“But, bless my soul,” said M. de Terremondre “how does the man -distinguish between guilty love and lust?” - -“It is a fine point,” said M. Bergeret. “The Fathers of the Church, the -schoolmen, the Renaissance humanists, Descartes and Locke, Kant, Hegel, -and Schopenhauer, have all failed to make the distinction, and some of -them have even confounded with the two what men to-day agree in calling -innocent love. But is love ever innocent—unless it be that love Professor -Bellac in Pailleron’s play described as _l’amour psychique_, the love -that Petrarch bore to Laura?” - -“If I remember aright,” interposed M. Mazure, “someone else in the play -remarked that Laura had eleven children.” - -Just then Mme. de Gromance passed across the Place. The conversation was -suspended while all three men watched her into the patissier’s opposite, -elegantly hovering over the plates of cakes, and finally settling on a -_baba au rhum_. - -“Sapristi!” exclaimed M. de Terremondre, “she’s the prettiest woman in -the whole place.” - -M. Bergeret mentally went over several passages in Æneid, Book IV., -looked ruefully at his frayed shirt cuffs, and regretted the narrow life -of a provincial university lecturer that reduced him to insignificance in -the eyes of the prettiest woman in the place. - -“Yes,” he said with a sigh, “it is a very fine point. I wonder how on -earth Tépé manages to settle it?” - - - - -THE CHOCOLATE DRAMA - - -Civilization is a failure. That we all knew, even before the war, and -indeed ever since the world first began to suffer from the intolerable -nuisance of disobedient parents. But the latest and most fatal sign of -decadence is the advent of a paradoxical Lord Chancellor. I read in a -_Times_ leader:—“When the Lord Chancellor ponderously observes in the -House of Lords that the primary business of theatres ‘is not to sell -chocolates but to present the drama,’ he is making a statement which is -too absurd to analyse.” _The Times_, I rejoice to see, is living up to -its high traditions of intrepid and incisive utterance. I should not -myself complain if the Lord Chancellor was merely ponderous. As the -dying Heine observed, when someone wondered if Providence would pardon -him, _c’est son métier_. What is so flagrant is the Lord Chancellor’s -ignorance of the commanding position acquired by chocolate in relation to -the modern drama. - -Let me not be misunderstood. I am not a _chocolatier_. I have no vested -interest in either Menier or Marquis. But I am a frequenter of the -playhouse, and live, therefore, in the odour of chocolate. I know that -without chocolates our womenkind could not endure our modern drama; -and without womenkind the drama would cease to exist. The question is, -therefore, of the deepest theatrical importance. I feel sure the British -Drama League must have had a meeting about it. The advocates of a -national theatre have probably considered it in committee. The two bodies -(if they are not one and the same) should arrange an early deputation to -the Food Controller. - -Meanwhile the Lord Chancellor wantonly paradoxes. Evidently he is no -playgoer. That is a trifle, and since the production of _Iolanthe_ -perhaps even (in the phrase of a famous criminal lawyer) “a amiable -weakness.” But, evidently also, he is not a chocolate eater, and that -is serious. I suppose, after all, you are not allowed to eat chocolates -on the Woolsack. But there is the Petty Bag. It would hold at least 2 -lb. of best mixed. Why not turn it to a grateful and comforting purpose? -The Great Seal, too, might be done in chocolate, and as I understand -the Lord Chancellor must never part with it, day or night, he would -have a perpetual source of nourishment. It is time that the symbols of -office ceased to be useless ornaments. Stay! I believe I have stumbled -incidentally on the secret of Lord Halsbury’s splendid longevity. Ask -Menier or Marquis. - -But the present Chancellor has, clearly, missed his opportunities. -Let him visit our theatres and there recognize the futility of his -pretence that their primary business is to present drama. He will see -at once that what he put forward as a main business is in reality a -mere parergon. Drama is presented, but only as an agreeable, not too -obtrusive, accompaniment to the eating of chocolate. The curtain goes -up, and the ladies in the audience, _distraites_, and manifestly feeling -with Mrs. Gamp (or was it Betsy Prig?) a sort of sinking, yawn through -the first scene or two. Then there is a rustle of paper wrappings, little -white cardboard boxes are brought out and passed from hand to hand, there -is a dainty picking and choosing of round and square and triangular, with -a knowing rejection of the hard-toffee-filled ones, and now the fair -faces are all set in a fixed smile of contentment and the fair jaws are -steadily, rhythmically at work. To an unprepared observer it cannot be -a pretty sight. Fair Americans chewing gum are nothing to it. There are -superfine male voluptuaries who do not much care to see women eat, even -at the festive board. But to see scores of women simultaneously eating -chocolates at the theatre is an uncanny thing. They do it in unison, -and they do it with an air of furtive enjoyment, as though it were some -secret vice and all the better for being sinful. The act-drop goes up and -down, actors are heard talking or the orchestra playing, men pass out for -a cigarette and repass, but the fair jaws never cease working. The habit -of needlework, lace-making, and perhaps war knitting has given lovely -woman that form of genius which has been defined as a long patience. -They eat chocolates with the monotonous regularity with which they -hemstitch linen or darn socks. It has been said that women go to church -for the sake of the _hims_, but they go to the theatre for the sake of -chocolates. And the Lord Chancellor, good, easy man, says the primary -business of the theatre is to present drama! - -No, its primary business is to provide comfortable and amusing -surroundings for fair chocolate-eaters. The play is there for the same -reason the coon band is at a restaurant, to assist mastication. That is -the real explanation of recent vicissitudes in the dramatic _genres_. -Why has tragedy virtually disappeared from the stage? Because it will go -with neither _fondants_ nor _pralinés_. Why the enormous vogue of revues? -Because they suit every kind of chocolate from 4_s_. to 6_s_. per lb. -Why is Mr. George Robey so universal a favourite? Because he creates the -kind of laughter which never interferes with your munching. The true, if -hitherto secret, history of the drama is a history of theatrical dietary. -Why is the Restoration drama so widely different from the Victorian? -Because the first was an accompaniment to oranges and the second to -pork-pies. We live now in a more refined age, the age of chocolate, and -enjoy the drama that chocolate deserves. There has been what the vulgar -call a “slump” in the theatrical world, and all sorts of far-fetched -explanations have been offered, such as the dearth of good plays and -the dismissal of the “temporary” ladies from Government offices, with -consequent loss of pocket-money for playgoing. The real cause is quite -simple, as real causes always are. Chocolate has “gone up.” - -And that is the secret of all the agitation about the 8 o’clock rule. The -purveyors know that, once in the theatre, ladies _must_ eat chocolate, -whatever its price. It is a necessity for them there, not a luxury, -and after 8 p.m., when the imported supplies are running low, almost -any price might be obtained for the staple article of food on the -spot. But why, it may be asked, are the imported supplies, in present -circumstances, insufficient for the whole evening’s consumption? Simply -because the chocolates eaten by women are purchased by men, and men are -_so_ forgetful. Besides they have an absurd prejudice against bulging -pockets. Clearly “Dora” ought gracefully to withdraw the 8 o’clock -prohibition. It would not only be a kindness to those meritorious -public servants, the chocolate vendors, but be also a great lift to the -languishing drama. Ladies who have emptied their chocolate boxes are -apt to become peevish—and then woe to the last act. With still another -smooth round tablet to turn over on the tongue (especially if it is the -delightful sort that has peppermint cream inside) the play might be -followed to the very end with satisfaction, and even enthusiasm. The -Lord Chancellor may ignore these facts, but they are well known to every -serious student of the chocolate drama. - - - - -GROCK - - -There must be a philosophy of clowns. I would rather find it than look -up their history, which is “older than any history that is written in -any book,” though the respectable compilers of Encyclopædias (I feel -sure without looking) must often have written it in their books. I -have, however, been reading Croce’s history of Pulcinella, because that -is history written by a philosopher. It is also a work of formidable -erudition, disproving, among other things, the theory of the learned -Dieterich that he was a survival from the stage of ancient Rome. No, he -seems to have been invented by one Silvio Fiorillo, a Neapolitan actor -who flourished “negli ultimi decenni del Cinquecento e nei primi del -Seicento”—in fact, was a contemporary of an English actor, one William -Shakespeare. Pulcinella, you know (transmogrified, and spoiled, for us -as Punch), was a sort of clown, and it is interesting to learn that he -was invented by an actor all out of his own head. But I for one should be -vastly more interested to know who invented Grock. For Grock also is a -sort of clown. Yet no; one must distinguish. There are clowns and there -is Grock. For Grock happens to be an artist, and the artist is always -an individual. After all, as an individual artist, he must have invented -himself. - -It was a remarkably happy invention. You may see that for yourselves -at the Coliseum, generally, though true clown-lovers follow it about -all over the map wherever it is to be seen. Victor Hugo (and the theme -would not have been unworthy of that lyre) would have described it in -a series of antitheses. It is genial and _macabre_, owlishly stupid -and Macchiavellianly astute, platypode and feather-light, cacophonous -and divinely musical. Grock’s first act is a practical antithesis. A -strange creature with a very high and very bald cranium (you think of -what Fitzgerald said of James Spedding’s: “No wonder no hair can grow -at such an altitude”) and in very baggy breeches waddles in with an -enormous portmanteau—which proves to contain a fiddle no larger than -your hand. The creature looks more simian than human, but is graciously -affable—another Sir Oran Haut-ton, in fact, with fiddle substituted for -Sir Oran’s flute and French horn. - -But Sir Oran was dumb, whereas Grock has a voice which reverberates -along the orchestra and seems almost to lift the roof. He uses it to -counterfeit the deep notes of an imaginary double bass, which he balances -himself on a chair to play, and he uses it to roar with contemptuous -surprise at being asked if he can play the piano. But it is good-humoured -contempt. Grock is an accommodating monster, and at a mere hint from -the violinist waddles off to change into evening clothes. In them he -looks like a grotesque beetle. Then his antics at the piano! His chair -being too far from the keyboard he makes great efforts to push the piano -nearer. When it is pointed out that it would be easier to move the chair -he beams with delight at the cleverness of the idea and expresses it in -a peculiarly bland roar. Then he slides, in apparent absence of mind, -all over the piano-case and, on finally deciding to play a tune, does it -with his feet. Thereafter he thrusts his feet through the seat of the -chair and proceeds to give a performance of extraordinary brilliance on -the concertina.... But I am in despair, because I see that these tricks, -which in action send one into convulsions of laughter, are not ludicrous, -are not to be realized at all in narrative. It is the old difficulty -of transposing the comic from three dimensions into two—and when the -comic becomes the grotesque, and that extreme form of the grotesque -which constitutes the clownesque, then the difficulty becomes sheer -impossibility. - -Why does this queer combination of anthropoid appearance, unearthly -noises, physical agility, and musical talent—so flat in description—make -one laugh so immoderately in actual presentation? Well, there is, first, -the old idea of the parturient mountains and the ridiculous mouse. Of -the many theories of the comic (all, according to Jean Paul Richter, -themselves comic) the best known perhaps is the theory of suddenly -relaxed strain. Your psychic energies have been strained (say by Grock’s -huge portmanteau), and are suddenly in excess and let loose by an -inadequate sequel (the tiny fiddle). Then there is the old theory of -Aristotle, that the comic is ugliness without pain. That will account -for your laughter at Grock’s grotesque appearance, his baggy breeches, -his beetle-like dress clothes, his hideous mouth giving utterance to -harmless sentiments. Again, there is the pleasure arising from the -discovery that an apparent idiot has wholly unexpected superiorities, -acrobatic skill, and virtuosity in musical execution. But “not such a -fool as he looks” is the class-badge of clowns in general. There is -something still unexplained in the attraction of Grock. One can only call -it his individuality—his benign, bland outlook on a cosmos of which he -seems modestly to possess the secret hidden from ourselves. One comes in -the end to the old helpless explanation of any individual artist. Grock -pleases because he is Grock. - -And now I think one can begin to see why literature (or if you think -that too pretentious a word, say letterpress) fails to do justice to -clowns. Other comic personages have their verbal jokes, which can be -quoted in evidence, but the clown (certainly the clown of the Grock -type) is a joke confined to appearance and action. His effects, too, -are all of the simplest and broadest—the obvious things (obvious when -he has invented them) which are the most difficult of all to translate -into prose. You see, I have been driven to depend on general epithets -like grotesque, bland, _macabre_, which fit the man too loosely (like -ready-made clothes cut to fit innumerable men) to give you his exact -measure. My only consolation is that I have failed with the best. Grock, -with all his erudition, all his nicety of analysis, has failed to realize -Pulcinella for me. And that is where clowns may enjoy a secret, malign -pleasure; they proudly confront a universe which delights in them but -cannot describe them. A critic may say to an acrobat, for instance:—“I -cannot swing on your trapeze, but I can understand you, while you cannot -understand me.” But Grock seems to understand everything (he could do no -less, with that noble forehead), probably even critics, while they, poor -souls, can only struggle helplessly with their inadequate adjectives, and -give him up. But if he condescended to criticism, be sure he would not -struggle helplessly. He would blandly thrust his feet through the seat -of his chair, and then write his criticism with them. And (Grock is a -Frenchman) it would be better than Sainte-Beuve. - - - - -THE FUNCTION OF CRITICISM - - -Every critic or would-be critic has his own little theory of criticism, -as every baby in _Utopia Limited_ had its own ickle prospectus. This -makes him an avid, but generally a recalcitrant, student of other -people’s theories. He is naturally anxious, that is, to learn what -the other people think about what inevitably occupies so much of his -own thoughts; at the same time, as he cannot but have formed his -own theory after his own temperament, consciously or not, he must -experience a certain discomfort when he encounters other theories based -on temperaments alien from his own. You have, in fact, the converse -of Stendhal’s statement that every commendation from _confrère_ to -_confrère_ is a certificate of resemblance; every sign of unlikeness -provokes the opposite of commendation. So I took up with somewhat mixed -feelings an important leading article in the _Literary Supplement_ on -“The Function of Criticism.” Important because its subject is, as Henry -James said once in a letter to Mrs. Humphry Ward, among “the highest -speculations that can engage the human mind.” (Oho! I should like to hear -Mr. Bottles or any other _homme sensuel moyen_ on _that_!) Well, after -reading the article, I have the profoundest respect for the writer, -whoever he may be; he knows what he is talking about _au fond_, and can -talk admirably about it. But then comes in that inevitable recalcitrancy. -It seems to me that if the writer is right, then most art and criticism -are on the wrong tack. Maybe they are—the writer evidently thinks they -are—but one cannot accept that uncomfortable conclusion offhand, and so -one cannot but ask oneself whether the writer _is_ right, after all. - -He is certainly wrong about Croce. The ideal critic, he says, “will -not accept from Croce the thesis that all expression is art; for he -knows that if expression means anything it is by no means all art.” Now -the very foundation-stone of the Crocean æsthetic is that art is the -expression of intuitions; when you come to concepts, or the relations of -intuitions, though the expression of them is art, the concepts themselves -(what “expression means”) are not; you will have passed out of the region -of art. Thus your historian, logician, or zoologist, say, has a style of -his own; that side of him is art. But historical judgments, logic, or -zoology are not. Croce discusses this distinction exhaustively, and, I -should have thought, clearly. Yet here our leader-writer puts forward as -a refutation of Croce a statement carefully made by Croce himself. But -this is a detail which does not affect the writer’s main position. I only -mention it as one of the many misrepresentations of Croce which students -of that philosopher are, by this time, used to accepting as, apparently, -inevitable. - -Now, says the writer, the critic must have a philosophy and, what -is more, a philosophy of a certain sort. That the critic must have -a philosophy we should, I suppose, all agree; for the critic is a -historian, and a historian without a theory of realities, a system of -values, _i.e._, a philosophy, has no basis for his judgments—he is merely -a chronicler. (And a chronicler, let me say in passing, is precisely what -I should call the writer’s “historical critic”—who “essentially has no -concern with the greater or less literary excellence of the objects whose -history he traces—their existence is alone sufficient for him.”) But what -particular philosophy must the critic have? It must be, says the writer, -“a humanistic philosophy. His inquiries must be modulated, and subject to -an intimate, organic governance by an ideal of the good life.” Beware of -confusing this ideal of good life with mere conventional morality. Art -is autonomous and therefore independent of that. No; “an ideal of the -good life, if it is to have the internal coherence and the organic force -of a true ideal, _must inevitably_ be æsthetic. There is no other power -than our æsthetic intuition by which we can imagine or conceive it; we -can express it only in æsthetic terms.” And so we get back to Plato and -the Platonic ideas and, generally, to “the Greeks for the principles of -art and criticism.” “The secret” of the humanistic philosophy “lies in -Aristotle.” - -But is not this attempt to distinguish between conventional morality and -an ideal of the good life, æsthetically formed, rather specious? At any -rate, the world at large, for a good many centuries, has applauded, or -discountenanced, Greek criticism as essentially moralistic—as importing -into the region of æsthetics the standards of ordinary, conventional -morality. That is, surely, a commonplace about Aristotle. His ideal -tragic hero is to be neither saint nor utter villain, but a character -between these two extremes. Further, he must be illustrious, like Œdipus -or Thyestes (Poetics, ed. Butcher, XIII. 3). Again, tragedy is an -imitation of persons who are above the common level (XV. 8). It seems -to me that the standards applied here are those of our ordinary, or -conventional, morality, and I am only confused by the introduction of -the mysterious “ideal of the good life.” It seems to me—that may be my -stupidity—but it seemed so, also, to our forefathers, for it was this -very moralism of Greek criticism that led men for so many centuries to -demand “instruction” from art. And that is why it was such a feather in -Dryden’s cap (Dryden, of whom our leader-writer has a poor opinion, as -a critic without a philosophy) to have said the memorable and decisive -thing: “delight is the chief if not the only end of poesy; instruction -can be admitted but in the second place, for poesy only instructs as it -delights.” - -This “ideal of good life” leads our leader-writer far—away up into the -clouds. Among the activities of the human spirit art takes “the place -of sovereignty.” It “is the manifestation of the ideal in human life.” -This attitude, of course, will not be altogether unfamiliar to students -of æsthetics. Something not unlike it has been heard before from the -“mystic” æstheticians of a century ago. It leaves me unconvinced. I -cannot but think that that philosophy makes out a better case which -assigns to art, as intuition-expression, not the “place of sovereignty” -but the place of foundation in the human spirit; for which it is not -flower nor fruit, but root. You see, Croce, like “cheerfulness” in -Boswell’s story of the other philosopher, will come “breaking in.” - - - - -COTERIE CRITICISM - - -A young critic was recently so obliging as to send me the proof of an -article in the hope that I might find something in it to interest me. -I did, but not, I imagine, what was expected. The article discussed a -modern author of European reputation, and incidentally compared his mind -and his style with that of Mr. X., Mrs. Y., and Miss Z. These three, -it appeared, were contemporary English novelists, and—here was the -interesting thing to me in our young critic’s article—I had never heard -of one of them. They were evidently “intellectuals”—the whole tenor of -the article showed that—the idols of some young and naturally solemn -critical “school,” familiar classics, I dare say, in Chelsea studios -and Girton or Newnham rooms. One often wonders what these serious young -people are reading, and here, it seemed, was a valuable light. They must -be reading, at all events, Mr. X., and Mrs. Y., and Miss Z. Otherwise, -our young critic would never have referred to them with such gravity -and with so confident an assumption that his particular set of readers -would know all about them. And yet the collocation of these three names, -these coterie classics, with that of the great European author, famous -throughout the whole world of polite letters, struck one as infinitely -grotesque. It showed so naïve a confusion of literary “values,” so queer -a sense of proportion and congruity. It was, in short, coterie criticism. - -There seems to be a good deal of that about just now. One sees -innumerable reviews of innumerable poets, which one supposes to be -written by other poets, so solemnly do the writers take their topic and -their author and themselves. And for the most part this writing bears the -mark of “green, unknowing youth”—the bland assumption that literature -was invented yesterday, and that, since the Armistice, we cannot but -require a brand-new set of literary canons, estimates, and evaluations. -Evidently our young warriors have come back from the front with their -spirit of _camaraderie_ still glowing within them. Well, youth will be -served, and we must resign ourselves, with a helpless shrug, to a deluge -of crude over-estimates, enthusiastic magnifications of the ephemeral, -and solemn examinations of the novels of Mr. X., Mrs. Y., and Miss Z. And -we must be prepared to see the old reputations going down like a row of -ninepins. We shall have to make a polite affectation of listening to the -young gentlemen who dismiss Meredith as “pretentious” and tell us that -Hardy “can’t write” and that Anatole France is _vieux jeu_. For if you -are always adoring the new because it is new, then you may as well make -a complete thing of it by decrying the old because it is old. The breath -you can spare from puffing the “Georgians” up you may as well use for -puffing the “Victorians” out. And thus the world wags. - -What is more, it is thus that the history of literature gets itself -evolved. For it is time that I tried to see what good can be said of -the coteries, as well as what ill, and this, I think, can be said for -them—that they keep the ball rolling. It is they, with their foolish face -of praise, who discover the new talents and begin the new movements. -If you are always on the pounce for novelties you must occasionally -“spot a winner” and find a novelty that the outer world ratifies into a -permanency. The minor Elizabethan dramatists were once the darlings of -a coterie, but Webster and one or two others still survive. The Lakists -were once coterie poets, and, if Southey has petered out, Wordsworth -remains. Of course they make awful “howlers.” A coterie started the -vogue of that terribly tiresome “Jean Christophe,” of Romain Rolland, -and where is it now? On the other hand, a coterie “discovered” Pater, -and it was a real find; the world will not willingly let die “Marius” or -the “Renaissance.” Henry James began as the idol of a coterie, and “The -Golden Bowl” is not yet broken. It may be—who knows?—that the novels of -Mr. X., Mrs. Y., and Miss Z. will by and by range themselves proudly on -our shelves alongside Fielding and Jane and Meredith and Hardy. - -But while these young reputations are still to make in the great world, -let us not, as Mrs. Gamp says, proticipate; let us keep our high estimate -of them modestly to ourselves, and not stick them up on the classic shelf -among the best bindings before their time. What makes it worse is that -the coteries are apt to have no classic shelf. Their walls are lined and -their boudoir tables littered with new books, and nothing but new books. -Women are great offenders in this way, especially the women whom American -journals call “Society Ladies”—who are accustomed, in the absence of -contradiction and criticism and other correctives (tabooed as “bad -form”), to mistake their wayward fancies for considered judgments. We -want a modern Molière to write us another _Femmes Savantes_. (I present -the idea to Mr. Bernard Shaw. They have dubbed him “the English Molière.” -Well, here’s a chance for him to make good.) There is Lady Dulcibella. -She is always recommending you a new book that nobody else has ever heard -of. “Oh, how perfectly sweet of you to call on this horrid wet afternoon! -_Have_ you read ‘Mes Larmes’? It’s written by a Russian actress with such -wonderful red hair, you can’t think, and they say she was a princess, -until those dreadful Bolshevists, you know. We met her at Florence in -the winter, and everybody said she was just like one of the Botticellis -in the Accademia. They _do_ say that Guido da Verona—or D’Annunzio, or -somebody (don’t you think that horrid little D’Annunzio is just like a -frog?)—was quite mad about her. But ‘Mes Larmes’ is perfectly _sweet_, -and don’t forget to order it. Two lumps or three?” And listen to the -chatter of some of those wonderfully bedizened ladies who variegate, if -they don’t exactly decorate, the stalls of one of our Sunday coterie -theatres. The queer books they rave about! The odd Moldo-Wallachian or -Syro-Phœnician dramatists they have discovered! - -All this, it is only fair to remember, may leave our young critic -inviolate. After all, he may belong to no coterie, or only to a coterie -of one; he may have sound critical reasons for the faith that is in him -about Mr. X., and Mrs. Y., and Miss Z. And even if he does represent a -coterie, he might, I suppose, find a fairly effective retort to some -of my observations. “You talk of our love of novelties for novelty’s -sake. But you have admitted that, if we always go for the new, we must -sometimes light on the true. What we really go for is life. The new is -more lively than the old. The actual, the present, the world we are at -this moment living in, has more to say to us in literature than the old -dead world, the ‘sixty years since’ of your classic Scott. The classic, -as Stendhal said, is what pleased our grandfathers; but I am out to -please my grandfather’s grandson. And our coteries, I dare say, are often -kept together by the mere docility of mind, the imitative instinct, of -their members. But is there not a good deal of mere docility among the -old fogey party, the people who reject the new because it is new and -admire the old because it is old? Is not this mere imitative instinct at -work also among the upholders of literary traditions and the approved -classics? Absurdity for absurdity, the youthful coterie is no worse than -the old fogey crowd.” To put all straight I will now go and read the -novels of Mr. X., Mrs. Y., and Miss Z. - - - - -CRITICISM AND CREATION - - -A play of Dryden’s has been successfully revived by the Phœnix Society. -One or two others might be tried, but not many. For most of Dryden’s -plays, as the curious may satisfy themselves by reading them, are as -dead as a doornail. They bore us in the reading, and would simply drive -us out of the theatre. Some of Dryden’s non-dramatic poems still permit -themselves to be read, but the permission is rarely sought by modern -readers, apart from candidates for some academic examination in English -literature, who have no choice. Yet we all render him lip service as -a great poet. How many are there to pay him proper homage as a great -critic? For a great critic he was, and, moreover, our first dramatic -critic in time as well as in importance. He discussed not the details of -this or that play, but the fundamental principles of drama. He abounded -in ideas, and expressed them with a conversational ease which, in his -time, was an entirely new thing. But it would be impertinent to praise -Dryden’s prose style after Johnson’s exhaustive eulogy and the delicate -appreciations of Professor Ker. What I would point out is that all -Dryden’s critical work can still be read with pleasure, while most of -his dramatic work cannot be read at all. And the humour of it is that -I shall at once be told the dramatic work was “creative,” while the -critical was not. - -This distinction, an essentially false one, as I shall hope to show, is -still a great favourite with our authors of fiction; they “create,” their -critics do not. Authors who write, in Flaubert’s phrase, like _cochers -de fiacre_, and who are particularly given to this contrast, it would -be cruel to deprive of a comforting illusion; but authors of merit and -repute also share it, and to them I would urge my modest plea for a -reconsideration of the matter. - -What does the dramatist, or writer of fiction in general, create? -Actions and characters? Not so, for these are only created in real life, -by the contending volitions of real men and the impact between their -volitions and external reality. The author creates images of actions and -characters, or, in other words, expresses his intuitions of life. When -the intuition is vivid, when the image is a Falstaff, a Baron Hulot, -a Don Quixote, a Colonel Newcome, we are apt to think of it as a real -person. And they are, in truth, as real to us as anybody in the actual -world whom we have never met but only know of. For the historic person, -unmet, is, just like the imaginary person, only a bundle for us of our -intuitions. Julius Cæsar was a real person, but we can only know of him, -as we know of Mr. Pickwick, by hearsay. These vivid intuitions are what -your author likes to call “creations.” So they are. That is the magic of -art. - -And because, to the vast majority of men, their intuitions (in the case -of actual reality encountered, their perceptions) of other men and their -actions are their most interesting experience, art is allowed without -challenge to arrogate to itself this quality of “creation.” There is a -biographical dictionary of Balzac’s personages—some 2,000, if I remember -rightly—of whom a few are actual historical people. But, in fact, you -make no distinction. The one set are as real to you as the others. In -this way the _Comédie Humaine_ does, as its author said, compete with the -_État Civil_. There are few ideas, speculations, judgments in Balzac that -are worth a rap; when he tried abstract thought he was apt to achieve -nonsense. But very few readers want abstract thought. They want “to know -people,” “to see people.” Balzac makes “people,” tells you all about -their families, their incomes, their loves and hates, “splendours and -miseries,” their struggles, their orgies, their squalor, their death. -That is “creative” art. Let us admire it. Let us revel in it. Let us be -profoundly thankful for it. - -But when, as so frequently happens, one hears some fourteenth-rate -yarn-spinner, who also makes “people,” but people who were not worth -making, people who are puppets or the mere phantoms of a greensick -brain—when one hears this gentleman claiming kinship with Balzac or with -my friend the distinguished novelist and real artist already mentioned, -as a “creator” one is inclined to smile. “Creation” is a blessed word. -But the thing created may be quite valueless. - -And so it is, precisely, with criticism. For criticism is also -“creative.” But it does not create images of people or their lives; it -creates thought, ideas, concepts. That is, it builds up something new -out of the artist’s intuitions and exhibits the relations between them. -Here, in the conceptual world, we are in a different region from the -intuitional world of the artist. Those who care to enter it, who feel at -home in it, are comparatively few; the absence of personal interest, of -“people,” makes it seem cold to the average, gregarious man. “People” -are a natural, ideas an acquired, taste. But the one set are just as -much a “creation” as the other. And in the one set just as in the -other the thing created may not be worth creating. Ideas, expositions, -illustrations in criticism have a distressing habit of being as poor -and conventional and mechanical as many a novelist’s or playwright’s -characters and life histories. There is not a pin to choose between them. -For as the one thing that matters in art is the artist behind it, so the -critic behind it is the one thing that matters in criticism. - -These are elementary commonplaces. But they need restating from time -to time. For the average man, with all his interest in life fixed -on “people,” is always falling into the error that the novelist or -playwright makes something, while the critic makes nothing. And your -fourteenth-rate author, sharing the temperament of the average man, falls -into the same error and seems, indeed, inordinately proud of it. He seems -to say: “Why, you, good master critic, couldn’t even begin to do what -_I_, the ‘creative’ artist, do”; and he would probably be surprised by -the answer that it is the critic’s very critical faculty, his endowment -of judgment and taste, which makes the writing of bad plays or novels -impossible, because repugnant to him. It is precisely because the -critical faculty is so rare a thing that so many bad novels and plays get -themselves written. - -But enough of these sharp distinctions between the “creation” of images -and the “creation” of concepts! Is not a union of the two, like the union -of butler and lady’s-maid, as described by Mr. Crichton, “the happiest of -all combinations”? Who does not feel how immensely the mere story part -of “Tom Jones” gains by the critical chapter introductions? And, on the -other hand, how the mere critical part of Dryden’s “Essay of Dramatic -Poesy” gains by the little touches of story, from the opening moment when -“they ordered the watermen to let fall their oars more gently” to the -close at Somerset Stairs, where “they went up through a crowd of French -people, who were merrily dancing in the open air”? - - - - -ACTING AND CRITICISM - - -A veteran who has been regaling the readers of _The Times_ with his -recollections of the London stage has dropped by the way a remark on -modern theatrical criticism. For it, he says, “the play is everything, -and the leading actor or actress has often to be content with a few -lines.” Dean Gaisford began a sermon, “Saint Paul says, and I partly -agree with him.” I partly agree with the veteran. Criticism has -occasionally to deal with plays that cannot be “everything” for it. -There are new plays that are merely a vehicle for the art of the actor, -who must then get more than a few lines. There are old plays revived to -show a new actor in a classic part, and the part is then greater than -the whole. This, I think, accounts for “the space devoted to the acting -in London criticisms at the time Henry Irving rose to fame.” Either he -appeared in new plays of little intrinsic merit, like _The Bells_, or -else in classic parts of melodrama (made classic by Frédéric Lemaître) -or of Shakespeare. In these conditions criticism must always gravitate -towards the acting. It did so, long before Irving’s time, with Hazlitt -over Edmund Kean. It has done so, since Irving’s time, over Sarah and -Duse, and must do so again over every new Shylock or Millamant or Sir -Peter. - -But these conditions are exceptional, and it is well for the drama that -they are. For the vitality of the drama primarily depends not upon the -talent of its interpreters but on that of its creators, and a new image -or new transposition of life in a form appropriate to the theatre is more -important than the perfection of the human instrument by which it is -“made flesh.” If criticism, then, has of late years and on the whole been -able to devote more attention to the play than to the playing, I suggest -to our veteran that the fact is a healthy sign for our drama. It shows -that there have been plays to criticise and that criticism has done its -duty. - -But that, I hasten to add, is its luck rather than its merit. One must -not ride the high ethical horse, and I should be sorry to suggest that -good criticism is ever written from a sense of duty, any more than a -good play or any other piece of good literature. Good criticism is -written just because the critic feels like that—and bad, it may be -added, generally because the critic has been trying to write something -which he supposes other people will feel like. The good critic writes -with his temperament—and here is a reason why, in the long run, plays -will interest him more than players. For are we not all agreed about the -first principle of criticism? Is it not to put yourself in the place of -the artist criticized, to adopt his point of view, to recreate his work -within yourself? Well, the critic can put himself in the place of the -playwright much more readily than into that of the actor. The playwright -and he are working in different ways, with much the same material, ideas, -and images, or, if you like, concepts and intuitions mainly expressed -in words—which is only a long way of saying that they are both authors. -And they have in common the literary temperament. Now the literary -temperament and the histrionic are two very different things. - -The actor, as his very name imports, is an active man, a man of action. -At his quietest, he perambulates the stage. But violent physical exercise -is a part of his trade. He fights single combats, jumps into open graves, -plunges into lakes, is swallowed down in quicksands, sharpens knives on -the sole of his boot, deftly catches jewel caskets thrown from upper -windows, wrestles with heavy-weight champions, knouts or is knouted, -stabs or is stabbed, rolls headlong down staircases, writhes in the -agonies of poison, and is (or at any rate in the good old days was) -kicked, pinched, and pummelled out of the limelight by the “star.” And -all this under the handicap of grease-paint and a wig! It must be very -fatiguing. But then he enjoys the physical advantages of an active life. -He has Sir Willoughby Patterne’s leg (under trousers that never bag at -the knee, and terminating in boots of the shiniest patent leather), and -all the rest to match. As becomes a man of action, he is no reader. I -have heard the late Mr. Henry Neville declare that an actor should never -be allowed to look at a book. This may seem to the rest of us a sad fate -for him, but look at his compensations! He spends much, if not most, of -his stage-life making love to pretty women, wives, widows, or _ingénues_. -Frequently he kisses them, or seems to—for he will tell you, the rogue, -that stage-kisses are always delivered in the air. Let us say then that -he is often within an inch of kissing a pretty woman—which is already a -considerable privilege. When he is not kissing her (or the air, as the -case may be), he is sentimentally bidding her to a nunnery go or dying in -picturesque agonies at her feet. Anyhow he goes through his work in the -society and with the active co-operation of pretty women. And note, for -it is an enormous advantage to him, that that work is a fixed, settled -thing. His words have been invented for him and written out in advance. -He has rehearsed his actions. He knows precisely what he is going to do. - -Contrast with this alluring picture the temperament and working habits -of the critic. He is a man, not of action, but of contemplation. His -pursuit is sedentary, and with his life of forced inaction he risks -becoming as fat as Mr. Gibbon, without the alleviation of the Gibbonian -style. Personal advantages are not aids to composition, and he may be -the ugliest man in London, like G. H. Lewes, whose dramatic criticisms, -nevertheless, may still be read with pleasure. His fingers are inky. His -face is not “made up,” but sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought. -No pretty women help him to write his criticisms. Indeed, if Helen of -Troy herself, or Aphrodite new-risen from the sea came into his study he -would cry out with writer’s petulance (a far more prevalent and insidious -disease than writer’s cramp), “Oh, do please go away! Can’t you see I’m -not yet through my second slip?” (She will return when he is out, and -“tidy up” his desk for him—a really fiendish revenge). Books, forbidden -to the actor, are the critic’s solace—and also his despair, because they -have said all the good things and taken the bread out of his mouth. And, -unlike the actor, he is working in the unknown. His head is filled with -a chaos of half-formed ideas and the transient embarrassed phantoms of -logical developments. Will he ever be able to sort them out and to give -them at any rate a specious appearance of continuity? Nay, can he foresee -the beginning of his next sentence, or even finish this one? Thus he is -perpetually on the rack. “Luke’s iron crown and Damien’s bed of steel” -are nothing to it. It is true that his criticism does, mysteriously, get -itself completed—mysteriously, because he seems to have been no active -agent in it, but a mere looker-on while it somehow wrote itself. - -Is it surprising that it should generally write itself about the play -(which, I daresay, writes itself, too, and with the same tormenting -anxiety) rather than about the playing, which proceeds from so different -a temperament from the critic’s and operates in conditions so alien from -his? But, let me add for the comfort of our veteran, there are critics -and critics. If some of us displease him by too often sparing only a few -lines for the leading actor or actress, there will always be plenty of -others who are more interested in persons than in ideas and images, who -care less for transpositions of life than for Sarah’s golden voice and -Duse’s limp, and “Quin’s high plume and Oldfield’s petticoat.” These will -redress the balance. - - - - -ACTING AS ART - - -Nothing could be more characteristically English than the circumstances -which gave rise the other day to the singular question, “Is acting an -art?” There was a practical issue, whether the Royal Academy of Dramatic -Art was or was not entitled to exemption under an Act of 1843 from the -payment of rates. Sir John Simon argued it, of course, as a practical -question. He dealt with custom and precedent and authority, dictionary -definitions and judicial decisions. He had to keep one eye on æsthetics -and the other on the rates. This is our traditional English way. We -“drive at practice.” Nevertheless, this question whether acting is an -art is really one of pure æsthetics, and is in no way affected by any -decision of the Appeal Committee of the London County Council. - -You cannot answer it until you have made up your mind what you mean -by art. Sir John Simon seems to have suggested that art was something -“primarily directed to the satisfaction of the æsthetic sense.” But is -there any such thing as a special “æsthetic sense”? Is it anything more -than a name for our spiritual reaction to a work of art, our response -to it in mind and feeling? And are we not arguing in a circle when we -say that art is what provokes the response to art? Perhaps it might -amuse, perhaps it might irritate, perhaps it might simply bewilder the -Appeal Committee of the London County Council to tell them that art -is the expression of intuitions. They might reply that they cannot -find intuitions in the rate-book, and that the Act of 1843 is silent -about them. Yet this is what art is, and you have to bear it in mind -when you ask, “Is the actor an artist?” Art is a spiritual activity, -and the artist’s expression of his intuitions (the painter’s “vision,” -the actor’s “conception” of his part) is internal; when he wishes to -externalize his expression, to communicate it to others, he has to use -certain media—paint and canvas, marble and brick, musical notes, words -and gestures. But it is the spiritual activity, the intuition-expression, -that makes the artist. The medium is no part of his definition. - -And yet, I suggest, it is the peculiarity of the actor’s medium that has -often withheld from him, at any rate with unthinking people, his title to -rank as an artist. He is his own medium, his own paint and canvas, his -own brick and marble. The works of other artists, the picture, the poem, -the sonata, have an independent life, they survive their authors; the -actor’s works are inseparable from his actual presence, and die with him. -Hence a certain difficulty for the unsophisticated in distinguishing -the artist from what the philosophers call the empirical man; the Edmund -Kean whose genius is illuminating and revitalizing Shylock from the -Edmund Kean who is notoriously fond of the bottle and who has lately got -into trouble with an alderman’s wife. The physique, the temperament, of -the empirical man furnish the medium for the artist. He arrives at the -theatre in a taxi, or his own Rolls-Royce, smoking a big cigar, every -inch of him a man of to-day; the next moment he is pretending to be an -old mad King of Britain. This confusion is behind Johnson’s “fellow who -claps a hump on his back and calls himself Richard the Third.” It leaves -out of account the imaginative side of him, the artist. Johnson might -just as well have dismissed Shakespeare as a “fellow who supposed a hump -clapped on the back of one of his fancies, which he calls Richard the -Third.” Lamb raised another objection, that the bodily presence of the -actor materialized, coarsened, the finer elements of the part—hid from -sight “the lofty genius, the man of vast capacity, the profound, the -witty, accomplished Richard.” The medium, in other words, is a hindrance -to the art, not so much a medium as a nuisance. - -These are the objections of ignorance or of whim. Certainly the -peculiarity of his medium imposes peculiar restrictions on the actor. If -the painter lacks a certain pigment he can get it at the colour-man’s. -If the composer needs a certain _timbre_ he can add the necessary -instrument to his orchestra. All the quarries are open to the architect. -But no “make up” box will furnish a resonant voice to a shrill-piped -actor or make Garrick six feet high. An actress may be at the height -of her powers, and yet too old to play Juliet. Sir Henry Irving’s -physical oddities went far to ruin some of his impersonations. But these -limitations of the medium do not affect the actor’s status as an artist. -They only restrict the range in which he may exercise his art. - -And can it be gainsaid that what he exercises is true art, a spiritual -activity, the expression of his intuitions? People, comparing his work -with the “creations” of the playwright, are apt to speak of him as -a mere “interpreter.” He has his words given him, they say, and his -significant acts prescribed for him in advance. The truth is, “creation” -and “interpretation” are figurative terms; it would be quite reasonable -to interchange them. Shakespeare “interprets” life by giving form to it, -by piecing together, say, certain scraps of actual observation along with -the image of his fancy into the character of Falstaff. With the printed -words and stage-directions as data, the actor re-imagines Falstaff, -brings his own temperament and feelings and sympathetic vision to the -service of Shakespeare’s indications, and “creates” the living, moving -man. True, the processes are at different stages, and may be of different -importance. Shakespeare has intuited and expressed life, the actor has -intuited and expressed Shakespeare. But both expressions are art. - -And note that while Shakespeare “created” Falstaff, no playgoer has -ever seen or ever will see Shakespeare’s Falstaff. For the image formed -in Shakespeare’s mind has always on the stage to be translated for us -in terms of other minds which can never be identical with his—is, in -fact, “re-created” by each actor in turn. It is the actor who converts -the “cold print” of the text into vivid, concrete life. Life! that is -the secret of the actor’s “following,” a much more notable fact in the -world of the theatre than the “following” of this or that playwright. -The actor, like all who, in Buffon’s phrase, “_parlent au corps par -le corps_,” expresses a temperament, a personality, himself; imposes -himself on his part and on us. People “follow” a favourite actor in all -his impersonations because his art gives them more pleasure than the -playwright’s, or because his art must be added to the playwright’s before -they will care about that. - -When I say “people” I don’t mean “littery gents.” The typical playgoer -prefers life to literature. He is as a rule no great reader. Nor are -the actors. There has always been a certain coolness between the men -of letters and the actors—their temperaments are so opposed. I have -quoted from Lamb. Anatole France said much the same thing of the Comédie -Française— “_Leur personne efface l’œuvre qu’ils représentent._” Views -like these merely express a preference for one art over another. They -do not contest the actor’s right to rank as an artist. That, to speak -rigorously, is a rank held by many people “for the duration”—_i.e._, -while and whenever they express their intuitions. But it would be -impolitic to insist on this strict view. The rate-payers’ list might be -seriously affected and much uneasiness occasioned to the Appeal Committee -of the London County Council. - - - - -AUDIENCES - - -Audiences may be divided into first-nighters, second-nighters, and -general playgoers. All audiences are important, but first-nighters -most of all. Without them the acted drama would not begin to exist. -For obvious reasons, I have nothing but good to say of them. I wish to -live at peace with my neighbours. And I do not believe the malicious -story told about a manager, now dead, that he liked to fill the second -row of his stalls on first-nights with his superannuated sweethearts. -Nobody is fat or old in Ba-ath, and there are no superannuitants among -first-nighters. - -I find, from Mr. Max Beerbohm’s entirely delightful book “Seven Men,” -that it is possible to get tired of first-nighters. I should never have -guessed it myself. But this is what he says:—“I was dramatic critic for -the _Saturday Review_, and, weary of meeting the same lot of people over -and over again at first nights, had recently sent a circular to the -managers, asking that I might have seats for second nights instead.” But -mark what follows:—“I found that there existed as distinct and invariable -a lot of second-nighters as of first-nighters. The second-nighters -were less ‘showy’; but then, they came more to see than to be seen, and -there was an air that I liked of earnestness and hopefulness about them. -I used to write a good deal about the future of the British drama, and -they, for their part, used to think and talk a great deal about it. -Though second-nighters do come to see, they remain rather to hope and -pray.” Because I have quoted I must not be understood as accepting Mr. -Beerbohm’s implied aspersion on first-nighters. It is all very well for -him. He has retired (the more’s the pity) from dramatic criticism. But I -take his account of second-nighters on trust, because the exigencies of -a daily newspaper prevent me from observing them for myself. Evidently -they, no more than first-nighters, are average playgoers. - -Not that I would disparage the general playgoer. Indeed, I am not sure -that he is not, in another sense than Labiche’s, _le plus heureux des -trois_. I can speak for myself. Mind, I am saying nothing against -first-nighters. They are entirely admirable persons—I could never bring -myself, like Mr. Beerbohm, to call them a lot. But oh! the joy of being, -on holiday occasions, a general playgoer, of throwing one’s considering -cap over the mills, of garnering no impressions for future “copy,” of -blithely ignoring one’s better judgment, of going comfortably home from -the play, like everybody else, instead of dashing madly into a taxi for -the newspaper office! The play will be well on in its run, the comedian -will have polished up his jokes, the superfluities will have been cut -out, the programme girls will long since have given up leading the -applause, you won’t know a soul, and you won’t even bother to look at -the author’s name. You surrender your individuality and drift with the -crowd, or, in more pretentious language, merge yourself in the collective -consciousness. - -Which reminds me. The general playgoer just because he is general, is -what Henry James called George Sand: remarkably accessible. Everybody -knows him. He is a public theme. Theorists won’t leave him alone. In -particular, the collective psychologists have marked him for their -prey. For them he typifies the theatrical “crowd,” with the peculiar -crowd characteristics these theorists profess to have scientifically -classified. Sarcey began it. Lemaître followed. And comparatively obscure -scribes have devoted attention to the general playgoer. They have said -that he is no philosopher; he cannot adopt a detached, impersonal, -disinterested view of life; he must take sides. Hence the convention of -the “sympathetic personage.” He has not the judicial faculty, is not -accustomed to sift evidence or to estimate probabilities. Hence the -convention of the “long arm of coincidence” and the convention that the -wildest improbability may be taken as the starting-point of a play. The -general playgoer, as such, is virtuous and generous; for we are all on -our best behaviour in public. And he insists upon a strict separation of -virtue and vice. He wants his personages all of a piece. The composite -characters, blends of good and evil, he refuses to recognize. Hence the -conventions of “hero” and “villain,” of “poetic justice” and of “living -happy ever afterwards.” Further, it has been suggested that a crowd of -general playgoers, having an individuality of its own, cannot but be -interested in that individuality, apart from all reference to the cause -which brought it together. Once assembled, it becomes self-conscious, -self-assertive. It finds itself an interesting spectacle. And the general -playgoer is not of the cloistered but of the gregarious type of mankind; -he must have bustle, the sense of human kinship brought home to him by -sitting elbow by elbow with his neighbours. The faculty of intellectual -attention is seldom high in such a temperament as this. Hence the -playwright has to _force_ the attention of a temperamentally inattentive -audience. Mark, once more, that I am not speaking of first-nighters. -Their individuality is too strong to be crowd-immersed. I would not -for worlds speak of them as a crowd at all. They are an assemblage, a -constellation, a galaxy. Admirable persons! - -But there is one thing for which I envy the general playgoer above -all. I mean his freedom and pungency of criticism. Anonymity gives him -irresponsibility, and, his resentment at being bored not being subject -to the cooling process of literary composition, his language is apt to -be really terrible. Talk of printed criticism! Actors and authors do -talk of it often enough, and on the whole don’t seem to like it; but let -them mingle with the general playgoer and keep their ears open! Who was -the man in Balzac who said that it was absurd to speak of the danger of -certain books when we all had the corrupt book of the world open before -us, and beyond that another book a thousand times more dangerous—all that -is whispered by one man to another or discussed behind ladies’ fans at -balls? So the general playgoer is the great purveyor of secret criticism. -Disraeli, or another, said that the secret history of the world, which -never got into the history books, was the only true history. Let us hope -that secret criticism is not the only true sort, but it is certainly the -most live. It is free from the literary bias, the cant of criticism, the -smell of the lamp. And it is the most potent of persuasives. Published -criticism is powerless against it. The fate of a play is not decided by -newspaper criticisms (thank goodness! I should be miserable if it were), -but by what the general playgoers say to one another and pass on to their -friends. How many plays with “record” runs have been dismissed by the -newspapers on the morrow of the first night with faint praise or positive -dispraise? The general playgoer has said his say, and what he says -“goes.” I know he is giving many worthy people just now much uneasiness. -They form little theatrical societies _à côté_ to keep him out. They -deplore his taste and organize leagues for his education and improvement. -I rather fancy he is like the young lady in the play who “didn’t want -to have her mind improved.” But that is another story. What I have -been envying him for is not his taste but the heartiness with which he -“abounds in his own sense” and his freedom in expressing it. After all, -perhaps criticism that is so free and so pervasive and so potent is not -exactly to be called “secret.” I seek the _mot juste_. Or I would if that -were not a back-number. Has not Mr. Beerbohm finally put it in its place -as the Holy Grail of the nineties? - - - - -FIRST NIGHTS - - -There is a movement, I am told, in certain critical circles in favour -of the system which obtains in Parisian theatres of the _répétition -générale_. This, as most playgoers know, is a final “dress rehearsal” -held on the evening (at the Français, where evening performances must -be continuous, on the afternoon) of the day before the actual “first -night” production, or _première_, of the play. The seats, including the -exceptionally large number allotted in Paris to the Press, are filled by -invitation. It is the real “first night”; only there is no “money” in the -house. Notoriously, there is a formidable cohort of Parisians who regard -their seat at a _répétition générale_ as a kind of vested interest, and -who would be affronted by having to put up with the _première_. A very -remarkable public this is, the public of the _répétition générale_, with -its members virtually all known to one another, filling the _foyer_ with -chatter and much scent, and patiently sitting through a performance -which is apt to begin a good half-hour after the advertised time, and to -end in the small hours of the morning. The inter-acts are of inordinate -length, perhaps in the interests of the buffet, more likely because of -the inveterate leisureliness of the Parisians. The whole thing, at any -rate as I have found it, is a weariness to English flesh. But then the -gentlemen (and ladies) of the Press have the advantage of being able to -go home straight to bed, and of having all next day to think over their -“notices.” - -That is the reason, I suppose, why some critics would like to see the -system introduced in London. They want more time. They want to sleep on -it. They would write, they think, better in the morning. Let me leave -that point, however, for the moment to turn to what an incorrigibly -commercial world will probably think a more important one, the question -of finance. To the theatrical manager the introduction of this system -would mean the loss of a whole night’s receipts. With theatre rents -and expenses at their present height, could they possibly contemplate -so heavy a sacrifice? They are already complaining that theatre seats -at their present prices do not pay—and here they would be giving away, -for one night, the whole house. Further, however they might gratify the -friends whom they invited, nothing could save them from the wrath of -those who were left over. Some of these, perhaps, might be mollified by -a subsequent invitation—for the “deadhead” habit becomes an insidious -disease, and, I am told, the Paris theatres groan under the hordes of -playgoers who consider themselves entitled to gratuitous admission. On -the whole, I think our managers would be ill-advised to countenance the -suggested change. - -Another thing. The _répétition générale_ is a trial performance. Effects -which don’t “tell,” incidents which shock or provoke ridicule, are -often cut out next morning, so that the play actually presented at -the _première_ differs, sometimes vitally, from that presented to the -critics, so that the “notice” not seldom describes and criticizes various -matters which the public are never shown. If the English manager imitated -this example—and as a practical man of business he would be sure to -imitate it—the unhappy critic after writing his notice would have to go -to the play again, before printing it, in order to assure himself that it -still represented the facts. It would have to be two bites at a cherry. -Now, new plays are often produced on two nights running, in which case -two bites at the same cherry would be impossible. In the most favourable -case, two successive visits to a play would be a heavy addition to the -burden of life. - -But would criticism benefit in quality? I venture to doubt that, too. I -think that theatrical “notices” are all the better for being piping hot. -One’s impressions of the play are stronger, more definite in outline, -richer in colour, when one leaves the theatre than next morning, when -they have had time to cool and to fade into “second thoughts,” which in -criticism are far from being always the best. When Jules Lemaître went -from the _Débats_ to the _Deux Mondes_ he found that his thoughts about -the play, instead of maturing with the longer interval for writing, were -apt to become simply vague and general. If the play happened to be one -“of ideas,” not so much harm was done, because ideas stick in the mind, -and are revolved there. But a play of emotion or a play dependent on -fine shades of acting is bound to suffer by the gradual waning of the -first impression. And my own experience is that in writing about a play -of which one has lost the first hot impression, and which one has to -recall by an effort of memory, the proportions get altered, so that the -criticism is thrown out of gear. Some point, a mere minor point, perhaps, -that attracted one’s attention, remains in the mind and assumes an undue -importance in relation to other details that have faded. I went to see -_Grierson’s Way_ revived the other night after a quarter of a century. -When I asked myself beforehand what I remembered of it, I could only -answer that I had been originally much struck by its merits, but that -the only one of these merits that remained in my mind was a conversation -wherein, under a surface of small talk, two people were revealing depths -of tragic emotion. I had forgotten the characters, the _motif_, the very -story. And when my conversation turned up (in Act III.), though I was as -delighted as ever, I saw, of course, that it was only an item, not the -sole memorable thing in the play. - -An interval of a quarter of a century is rather different from one -of four-and-twenty hours? Undoubtedly; but my point is that one’s -impressions begin to wane and to alter in “values” from the very outset. -After all it is the business of critics not merely to criticize, analyse, -and judge a play, to try and “place” it in the realm of art; they have -also the perhaps minor but still important duty of acting as public -“tasters.” They have to represent facts, to give the public a reasonably -accurate notion of what they are likely to see. And they are in a much -better position for doing this if they set down their facts and their -views of the facts at once, while they are still quivering with the -excitement (or yawning with the boredom) of them. - - - - -PLAYS WITHIN PLAYS - - -Representative arts will represent everything they can, including -themselves. The theatre likes to show an image of its own life, life -behind the scenes, actors acting on the stage, audiences listening, -applauding, or interrupting in front. Hence the plays within plays which -Shakespeare found so alluring. It was a comparatively simple problem of -technique in his time because of the simplicity of the “platform” stage -and of the Elizabethan playhouse. - -A standing audience, as his for the most part was, is obviously easier to -represent than a seated audience; it is just a crowd of “citizens” like -any other stage crowd. The only important question for the stage-manager -was the relative position of the mimic players and the mimic public. -Clearly your mimic players must be seen by the real public, or what -becomes of your play within a play? The position of your mimic public -must have been more or less dependent on their importance in the action. -But, I take it, the Elizabethan arrangement, in any case, must have been -of a pre-Raphaelite symmetry. I presume the play scene in _Hamlet_ must -have taken place in the lower part of the permanent erection at the back -of the stage and that the mimic public was ranged down each side of the -stage. The old arrangement has remained essentially unaltered. The mimic -players are generally shown in some raised, arcaded terrace at the back -of the stage; the King and Queen face Hamlet and Ophelia (in profile -with respect to the real public) in front. It would obviously never do -to let Hamlet and the King face the performers in the rear and so turn -their backs on the real public, for the whole point of the scene is the -effect of the mimic play on the King and on Hamlet watching the King. -But I do not, for my part, see why more might not be made out of this -“psychologic” effect by an arrangement which placed the mimic players -nearer the front of the actual stage, on one side, so that the King might -be turned full-face towards us as he watched them. If the King were -played by an actor of the first importance (which he seldom or never is), -with a gift of facial play, we may be sure that this would be done. - -There is a somewhat similar scene in the first act of _Cyrano de -Bergerac_. The chief centre of attraction here is not the mimic play -itself, but the behaviour of the audience, disturbed by Cyrano’s -interruption of the players. That is why I think that Coquelin’s -arrangement with the players on one side and the audience in profile -was better than Mr. Loraine’s, with the players in the rear and the -mimic audience turning its back to the real one. But it is a point of -comparative insignificance. As it was the old playhouse and the old -standing audience that was being represented, the stage-management was -essentially as simple as that of the play-scene in _Hamlet_. - -So soon, however, as you come to represent the very different modern -“picture” stage and the modern seated audience you see at once that -the problem becomes immensely more difficult. Accordingly you find a -revolution in the method of treating a play within a play. I do not know -whether the Guitrys invented it or Reinhardt or whoever, but certainly -the most conspicuous illustration we have had of it has been presented by -the Guitrys. It is something much more than a mechanical change; it is -psychological as well. The mimic stage, the stage of the play within the -play, now occupies the whole of the actual stage, and the mimic audience -is identified with the real audience. - -We saw this startling innovation first in _Pasteur_. Pasteur is supposed -to be addressing a meeting of the French Academy of Medicine. His rostrum -is at the footlights, and he addresses _us_, the real audience. _We_ have -to suppose ourselves the Academy of Medicine. To help us to this illusion -one or two actors are scattered about the house, who interrupt, argue -with Pasteur, and are personally answered by him. We find ourselves, -in fact, at once listening to a debate, as real audience, and, in the -thick of it, taking part in it, as supposed audience. There is a French -proverb which says you cannot both join in a procession and look out -of the window; but this experience upsets it. The result is a curious -blend of sensations; you feel yourself both spectator and actor, _at_ a -play and _in_ a play. But there is no doubt that the effect is much more -vivid and exciting than that which would have attended the mere spectacle -of Pasteur addressing a crowd upon the stage itself. You have, by the -way, exactly the same effect in Mr. Galsworthy’s _Skin Game_, where an -auctioneer addresses us, the public, who are supposed to represent the -competing purchasers. - -A still more striking instance has been seen in _L’Illusioniste_. Here -the first act shows the stage of a music-hall and presents three actual -“turns.” We, the actual audience, become the music-hall audience, and -again there are actors scattered among us to help the illusion. They are -addressed by the conjurer and answer him; a lady in a box throws him -ardent glances which are returned with interest. But one of the “turns,” -an act by acrobatic clowns, has absolutely nothing to do with the play; -it is there purely for its own interest, a substantive performance. -This shows, what we knew before, that revolutions run to excess. We are -so engrossed by the clowns that we are tempted to forget what we are -there for, to see a play. Anyhow, it is a most amusing innovation, this -conversion of the actual stage into an imaginary stage within the play, -and of the actual public into an imaginary public taking part in the -play. It is a real enrichment of stage resources. - -But there are obvious dangers. One I have just pointed out, the danger of -introducing irrelevancies for their own intrinsic interest, which tend to -impair the artistic unity of the play. Another is the danger of applying -this method to cases (as in _Hamlet_ and _Cyrano_) where the real centre -of interest is not the mimic play but the mimic audience. Imagine the -whole stage given up to the _Mouse Trap_, with the front row of stalls -occupied by the courtiers, and Hamlet and Ophelia in one box watching the -King and Gertrude in the opposite box! That is an extreme instance, which -traditional respect for Shakespeare will probably save us from; but some -ambitious producer will probably try this game with some modern play, and -then I predict disaster. - - - - -PLAYS OF TALK - - -The production on two successive nights of two plays so violently -contrasted in method as Mr. Harwood’s _Grain of Mustard Seed_ and Mr. -Galsworthy’s _Skin Game_—the first a play mainly of talk, the second a -play entirely of action—sets one thinking. According to the orthodox -canons, the second is the right, nay, the only method. Drama, we are -told, is a conflict of wills and all the interest is in the action, the -external manifestation of the conflict. There should be just enough talk -to carry that on and not an idle word should be spoken. Diderot, indeed, -professed to think that words were almost superfluous, and went to the -play with cotton-wool in his ears in order to judge its merits on the -dumb show; yet he wrote the most wordy and tedious plays. And there is, -or was, a certain school of theatrical criticism which forever quotes -the old Astley maxim, “Cut the cackle and come to the ’osses”—which was -no doubt a most appropriate maxim, for quadrupeds. Others have mistaken -action for physical, preferably violent action—Maldonado sweeping the -crockery off the chimney-piece or Lady Audley pushing her husband down -the well—and have ignored the fact that talk also may be action, “and -much the noblest,” as Dryden says. “Every alteration or crossing of -a design, every new-sprung passion, and turn of it, is a part of the -action, and much the noblest, except we perceive nothing to be action, -till they come to blows; as if the painting of the hero’s mind were -not more properly the poet’s work than the strength of his body.” How -often we were told in the old days that Dumas _fils_ and Ibsen were too -“talky,” when their talk was mainly psychological action. - -But this demand for action and nothing but action, so persistently -uttered of late years, would deprive the world of much of its best -entertainment. Apply it to Congreve, “cut the cackle” of his plays, and -you come to the ’osses, spavined hacks, of plots childishly complicated -and perfunctorily wound up. Would any one of taste suppress the “cackle” -of Sheridan’s scandalous college? Is not, in short, much of the pleasure -of comedy in resting from the action, in getting away from it, in the -relief of good talk? Yes, and often enough the pleasure of tragedy, too. -There is a bustling, melodramatic action in _Hamlet_. But with what -relief Hamlet gets away from his revenge “mission” at every moment, puts -it out of sight, forgets it! His interview with the players and advice to -them on histrionics, his chat with the gravedigger, what else are these -but the sheer delight of good talk? For him the joy of living is the joy -of talking, and with the chance of these before him his revenge-mission -may go hang! - -Obviously we never get so near Shakespeare and Shakespeare’s natural -temperament, as in these moments of talk for its own sake, talk -unfettered by the exigencies of the plot. For that talk wells up -spontaneously and is not turned on to order; the poet has something -interesting in his mind which he is bursting to say, and if to say it -will keep the plot waiting, why, so much the worse for the plot. And -here is a reason, I think, in favour of plays of talk. We get nearer -the author in them; in good talk the author is expressing a pleasure so -strong as to override the objection of irrelevance, and in sharing that -pleasure we get the best of him, the spontaneous element in him, the man -himself. On the other hand, mere yarn-spinning, mere plot-weaving, may -be an almost mechanical exercise. Not necessarily, of course. I should -be sorry to call Mr. Galsworthy’s _Skin Game_ a mechanical bit of work. -The will-conflict there has an intense reality and is fought tooth and -nail. Irrelevant talk in such a white-hot play would obviously be fatal. -Everybody speaks briefly, plainly, and to the point. Artistic work of -any kind gives pleasure, and it is possible to be as delighted with Mr. -Galsworthy’s kind as with Mr. Harwood’s. I am not comparing two artists -of two different kinds, which would be absurd. I am only pleading for a -kind which is not what a vain people supposeth, and which is apt to be -stupidly condemned. - -Not that it would be fair, either, to call Mr. Harwood’s brilliant task -irrelevant. It helps to paint character. Thus, parents expect their -son to have returned from the war a compound of Sir Galahad and Mr. -Bottomley, and instead of that he is only a good bridge-player, after -four hours’ bridge a day for four years. These witticisms help to tell -you something about the young man whose family reputation gives rise -to them in the family circle. When the old Parliamentary hand compares -government to ’bus-driving, seeking to get through the traffic with the -minimum of accident, or remarks on the reputation Canute would have -made had he only waited for high tide, he is telling us something about -himself and his political principles. But primarily these things are -enjoyable for their wit and not for their relevance. In a play of fierce -will-conflict they would have been impossible. These plays of brilliant -talk belong to the quiet _genre_, and quiet in the theatre, as in art -generally, is perhaps an acquired taste. “Punch,” we are constantly being -told by the natural unsophisticated man, is what is wanted—the word -itself is the invention of an unquiet people. Well, give me wit, and let -who will have the “punch.” - -The occasional tendency in the theatre to revolt against the restraint of -the action and to play lightly round it has its counterpart in criticism. -What is it gives so peculiar a charm to the criticism of Dryden? Is it -not his discursiveness, his little descriptive embellishments—as, for -example, in the “Essay of Dramatic Poesy,” the river trip, the listening -for the distant thunder of the Dutch guns “on that memorable day,” the -moonlight on the water, the landing at Somerset Stairs among the crowd of -French dancers? I have elsewhere said how Hazlitt’s theatrical criticisms -lose in readableness by their strict attention to business, compared -with his miscellaneous essays, where he permits himself to wander “all -over the place.” George Henry Lewes’s theatrical criticisms can still be -read with pleasure for the very reason that they were diversified with -deliberate, almost frivolous irrelevancies. And then there was Jules -Lemaître with his perpetual “moi,” which provoked the austere Brunetière -to quote Pascal’s “_le moi est haïssable_.” Yet where will you find more -enjoyable criticism than Lemaître’s? But I must keep off Lemaître and the -charm of him, or I shall become, what he never was, tiresome. Even as it -is, I may resemble the parson who said he had aimed at brevity in order -to avoid tediousness, and was answered, “You _were_ brief, and you _were_ -tedious.” - - - - -“THE BEGGAR’S OPERA” - - -One of Boswell’s projected works was a history of the controversy over -_The Beggar’s Opera_. The best known of the works he actually did -write contains several references to this controversy. Reynolds said -it afforded a proof how strangely people will differ in opinion about -a literary performance. Burke thought it had no merit. Johnson thought -very much the opposite, but said characteristically, “There is in it -such a labefactation of all principles as may be injurious to morality.” -Gibbon suggested that it might refine the manners of highwaymen, “making -them less ferocious, more polite—in short, more like gentlemen.” It is -noteworthy that the work was half a century old when these observations -were made about it. It had become a classic. And later generations -treated it as a classic—that is to say, kept on refashioning it to the -taste of their own time. The version, for instance, that Hazlitt was so -fond of writing about (in the second decade of the last century) was a -sad mangling of the original. Even so, it represented for Hazlitt the -high-water mark of theatrical enjoyment, just as the original did for -Boswell, who said, “No performance which the theatre exhibits delights -me more.” You cannot take up a volume of Swift’s correspondence, or -Horace Walpole’s or Arbuthnot’s, without mention of _The Beggar’s Opera_. -It even got into Grimm. It was the _H.M.S. Pinafore_ of the time. - -And that reminds me. As I sat at the Hammersmith Lyric listening to the -dialogue between Peachum and Mrs. Peachum on the question whether Polly -was Macheath’s wife or his mistress, the thing seemed strangely modern, -and not only modern, but Gilbertian. (I am speaking, of course, of the -tone, not of the sentiment—Gilbert was a very Victorian of propriety.) -Peachum is Gilbertian. “Do you think your mother and I should have liv’d -comfortably so long together if ever we had been married? Baggage!” Mrs. -Peachum is Gilbertian. “If you must be married, could you introduce -nobody into our family but a highwayman? Why, thou foolish jade, thou -wilt be as ill-used and as much neglected as if thou hadst married a -lord!” Again, “If she had only an intrigue with the fellow, why the -very best families have excus’d and huddled up a frailty of that sort. -’Tis marriage, husband, that makes it a blemish.” Once more. “Love him! -Worse and worse! I thought the girl had been better bred.” Polly herself -is Gilbertian. “Methinks I see him already in the cart, sweeter and -more lovely than the nosegay in his hand! I hear the crowd extolling -his resolution and intrepidity! What volleys of sighs are sent from -the windows of Holborn, that so comely a youth should be brought to -disgrace! I see him at the tree! The whole circle are in tears! Even -butchers weep!” Lucy is Gilbertian. When Macheath is at the “tree,” -her comment is, “There is nothing moves one so much as a great man in -distress.” And not only the tone, but the very principle of the play is -Gilbertian. Gilbert took some typical figure of the social hierarchy—a -Lord Chancellor, a First Lord of the Admiralty—and set the Chancellor -capering and the First Lord singing about the handle of the big front -door. He put a familiar figure in unfamiliar postures. Gay took a typical -figure of his own time—the highwayman—and showed him, not at work on the -highway, but enjoying an elegant leisure, behaving like a Chesterfield or -one of Congreve’s fine gentlemen. It was the realism, the actuality of -the subject, combined with the burlesque of the treatment, that delighted -the London of 1728 as it delighted the London of a century and a half -later. At each date it was a new experiment in opera libretto. Boswell -specified the attraction of Gay’s realism—“the real pictures of London -life.” Johnson singles out the “novelty” of the treatment. - -But it is time that I said something about Mr. Nigel Playfair’s revival. -This is a remarkable success, from every point of view. For the original -attraction of realism is, of course, no longer there. We have to take -it all historically. And the revival has been particularly careful -of historical accuracy. Just as Gay’s dialogue prompts you to say -“Gilbert,” so Mr. Lovat Fraser’s scenery and costumes prompt you to -exclaim “Hogarth!” By the way, on one of Hazlitt’s visits he records the -exclamation of an old gentleman in the pit, after the scuffle between -Peachum and Lockit, “Hogarth, by G—d!” This was, no doubt, a tribute to -the grim, ugly squalor of that particular scene. But the whole _décor_ -and atmosphere of the present affair are Hogarthian—the stiff, flattened -hoops of the women, the tatterdemalion aspect of Macheath’s rabble, -Peachum’s dressing-gown (which I suppose is “documentary”), Macheath’s -scarlet coat and flowing wig. And the dresses are accurately simple. The -women wear plain stuffs; Polly alone is allowed a little finery. Indeed, -there is an almost austere simplicity about the whole affair. One scene, -with just the alteration of a few accessories, serves for Peachum’s -house, for a tavern, and for Newgate. There is an orchestra of five -strings, a flute, an oboe, and a harpsichord. It seems to me that their -playing has the delicate charm of chamber music rather than the power and -colour of orchestral—but I must not stray out of my province. - -Hazlitt indulged in raptures over Miss Stephens, the first Polly -he heard, and never failed to contrast with her her less pleasing -successors. He had evidently lost his heart to her—a somewhat susceptible -heart, if you think of the “Liber Amoris.” I have no Miss Stephens to -compare Miss Arkandy with, and can only say the songstress is quite -sweet enough for my taste and the actress a charming little doll. Miss -Marquesita, the Lucy, is a good contrast, a voluptuous termagant. Boswell -says of Walker, the original Macheath, that he “acquired great celebrity -by his grave yet animated performance of it.” Mr. Ranalow’s Macheath -is decidedly more grave than animated, is in fact a little solemn—long -before he gets to the Condemn’d Hold. There is an almost Oriental -impassiveness about him, something of the jaded sultan—which, after all, -is not an inappropriate suggestion, surrounded as the poor man is by his -seraglio of town-ladies. Miss Elsie French bravely makes a thorough hag -of Mrs. Peachum; the Peachum and Lockit of Mr. Wynne and Mr. Rawson are -properly, Hogarthianly, crapulous; and Mr. Scott Russell makes a good, -vociferous Filch, leading with a will the fine drinking-song “Woman -and Wine” and the still finer “Let us take the Road” (to the tune of -Handel’s march in _Rinaldo_). Altogether a delicious entertainment: gay, -despite the solemn deportment of Macheath, and dainty, despite the sordid -_crapule_ of Newgate. Yes, my final impression of the affair is one of -daintiness. Even the women of the town are dainty. They might almost be -Dresden china shepherdesses (which would be bearing out the original -suggestion of a Newgate “pastoral” very literally). For the sordid -_milieu_ is so remote from us as to have become fantastically unreal; -the Peachums and the Lockits are no longer ugly men, but have been -turned into grotesque gargoyles; the rabble round Tyburn Tree has lived -to see a Russian ballet and learnt to move in its elegant arabesques. It -is a Hogarth retouched by a Shepperson—or rather, to speak by the card, -by a Lovat Fraser. - - - - -GRAND GUIGNOLISM - - -Dandin, the judge in Racine’s comedy of _Les Plaideurs_, offers to -amuse Isabelle by the spectacle of a little torturing. “Eh! Monsieur,” -exclaims Isabelle, “eh, Monsieur, peut on voir souffrir des malheureux?” -and Dandin, in his reply, speaks for a by no means negligible proportion -of the human race: “Bon! cela fait toujours passer une heure ou deux.” -Dandin was a Guignolite. - -We all have our Guignolite moments, moments of Taine’s “ferocious -gorilla” surviving in civilized man, when we seek the spectacle of -torture or physical suffering or violent death; but we are careful to -æsthetize them, refine them into moments of poetry or art. The pleasure -of tragedy is æsthetic. Nevertheless, tragedy involves violent death, -and without that would be an idle tale. So Rousseau was not altogether -wrong when he said we go to a tragedy for the pleasure of seeing others -suffer, without suffering ourselves. Your true Guignolite simply prefers -his tragedy “neat,” without æsthetic dilution. But I think it is unfair -to charge him, as he is so often charged, with a love of the horrible for -its own sake. I think, rather, that he is moved, a little more actively -than the rest of the world, by curiosity. - -It is customary to talk of curiosity as though it were essentially -ignoble. Children, women, and savages are said to have most of it. It -accounts for “fortune-telling,” prophetic almanacs, spiritualistic -_séances_ and other forms of alleged communication with the dead. But -the truth is, curiosity, the desire to enlarge experience, is a highly -valuable, or, rather, indispensable, human attribute. Without it there -could be no science, no progress, and finally no human life at all. And -you cannot restrict it. It must crave for all forms of experience. Some -of us will be sweeping the heavens for new stars, and others will want to -peep into Bluebeard’s cupboard. More particularly we are curious to know -what is already known to others. We desire to see with our own eyes what -others have seen and reported to us. That is why so many people have gone -to _Chu Chin Chow_. We wish to realize for ourselves, by the direct aid -of our own senses, “What it’s like.” And the more difficult it is to see, -the greater the secrecy, the intimacy, of its actual happening in life, -the greater our curiosity to see a picture or other representation of -it. Hence the vogue of stage bedroom scenes, newspaper portraits of “the -victim” and “the place of the crime,” and Tussaud’s Chamber of Horrors. - -I believe that is why “cela”—the horrible, the dreadful, the -gruesome—“fait toujours passer une heure ou deux” for your Guignolite. -It satisfies his curiosity about an experience which in real life it is -rare or difficult to obtain. For instance, they have been showing at the -London Grand Guignol a representation of a criminal’s last half-hour -before execution. Time was when you could see that for yourself, follow -the prisoner in the cart to Tyburn, and offer him nosegays or pots -of beer. In that time, enjoying the real thing, you wanted no mimic -representation of it. For stage purposes you only cared to have it -fantasticated—as in _The Beggar’s Opera_. To-day you cannot (unless you -are a prison official or the hangman himself) enjoy the real thing; the -Press is excluded; so you seek the next best thing, a realistic stage -picture of it. “Realistic,” I say. That is the merit of Mr. Reginald -Berkeley’s _Eight o’Clock_, wherein there is not a trace of staginess or -imported sentiment. He gives you what you are looking for, the nearest -substitute for the real thing. You are shown, as accurately as possible, -“what it’s like.” You see how the warders behave, and how the chaplain -and how the prisoner—with the result that you feel as though, for that -terrible half-hour, you had been in Newgate yourself. You have gone -through an experience which in actual life (let us hope) you will never -have. Your curiosity has been satisfied. - -And I think realism will have to be the mainstay of the Grand Guignol -programmes. There is another “shocker” in the bill, _Private Room No. 6_, -by a French author, M. de Lorde, which seemed to me not half so effective -as the other because it was largely tinged with romance. Here again was -an attempt to gratify curiosity about an unusual experience. The incident -was distinctly “private and confidential.” How many of us have had the -chance of seeing a fiercely-whiskered Muscovite kissing and biting a -(conveniently _décolletée_) lady on the shoulder, subsequently swallowing -a tumblerful of kummel at a draught, and presently being strangled by -the lady’s glove? This, you may say, was realistic enough, but what made -it romantic, theatrical, was the obviously artificial arrangement of the -story, the “preparations,” the conventional types. You knew at once you -were in the theatre and being served with carefully calculated “thrills.” -That is to say, your curiosity was solely about what was going to happen -next in the playwright’s scheme—the common interest of every stage -plot—which is a very different thing from curiosity about strange, rare, -experiences in actual life. You felt that Mr. Berkeley had really shown -you “what it’s like.” You felt that M. de Lorde had only shown you what -his skill in theatrical invention was like. - -And there, I suspect, we reach a limitation of Grand Guignolism. The -art of drama at its best—shall we call it grand art, as distinguished -from Grand Guignol art?—does not exist to gratify curiosity. The best -drama does not provoke the spectator’s curiosity about what is going -to happen so much as excite in him a keen desire that a certain thing -shall happen and then satisfy that desire to the full. The Greek -tragedians did not scruple to announce their plot in advance. Lessing, -in his “Hamburg Dramaturgy,” maintains that “the dramatic interest is -all the stronger and keener the longer and more certainly we have been -allowed to foresee everything,” and adds, “So far am I from holding -that the end ought to be hidden from the spectator that I don’t think -the enterprise would be a task beyond my strength were I to undertake -a play of which the end should be announced in advance, from the very -first scene.” The truth is, in the fine art of drama we are seeking -what we seek in every fine art—beauty, a new form and colouring to be -given to the actions and emotions of the real world by the artist’s -imagination. But even on the lower plane of realism Grand Guignolism has -ample scope. The one-act formula has a clear technical advantage in the -single scene and strict coincidence of supposed with actual time, great -helps both to unity of impression. (One counted the minutes in _Eight -o’Clock_ almost as anxiously as the condemned man did.) And it has the -immense fun of theatrical experiment, of seeing how far you can go, what -shocks the public can stand and what it can’t, the joy of adventurously -exploring the unknown and the _inédit_. Above all, if it is wise it -will remember that (as I believe at any rate) its public does not yearn -for the “shocking” incident merely as such, but as representing a rare -experience, and it will look for some rarities that are not shocking. - - - - -A THEATRICAL FORECAST - - -Newspapers periodically publish their review of the past theatrical year. -But it is always a sad thing to recall the past, especially the immediate -past, which is too recent to be history and only old enough to be stale. -Why not, then, let bygones be bygones and turn to the future, about which -hope springs eternal, and which gives free scope to the imagination -instead of imposing the tedious labour of research? What are our leading -dramatists going to give us next year? The question might be treated in a -matter-of-fact way by just going and asking them—and perhaps getting very -disappointing answers. It seems more sportsmanlike to guess; besides, it -leaves room for some piquant surprises when one is by and by confronted -with the actual. These, then, are one or two guesses for next season. - -It is long, too long, since London had a play from Sir Arthur Pinero. -When he writes a play he gives you a play, not a symposium or a sermon -or a piece of propagandism, but a dramatic action which interests you in -its story, makes you wonder what is going to happen next, and takes care -that something does happen, striking at the moment and worth thinking -about afterwards. His characters are presented in strong relief, there -is always a dramatic conflict of wills, his women are never insipid, are -sometimes deliciously perverse, and, if not past redemption (in which -case they commit suicide), are “saved” by the nearest Anglican bishop -or dean. His forthcoming play will ignore the Church and will deal with -a household divided on the “spiritualistic” question. The husband, who -suffers from mild shell-shock and saw the “angels of Mons,” will have -come back from the war a devoted follower of Sir Oliver Lodge and Sir -Conan Doyle. The wife (Miss Irene Vanbrugh) will be a pretty sceptic, -adoring her husband, but impatient of his credulity and determined to -“laugh him out” of it. An opportunity occurs. The young pair have been -having a sarcastic scene (a fine opportunity for Miss Irene’s merry -ringing laugh) about the husband’s bosom-friend Jack, whom he had left -for dead on the field at Mons. The husband eagerly hopes to get into -communication with Jack “on the other side.” The wife only remembers, -with twinges of conscience, certain love passages she had, before her -marriage, with the said Jack, of which she has never told her husband. -Now Jack is not dead, but on his way to his bosom-friend, when the wife -meets him. She sees at once a chance of opening her husband’s eyes. -“We’ll have a _séance_,” she says to Jack; “you shall pretend to be your -own spirit, and then suddenly reveal yourself as flesh and blood—and -Tom will be for ever cured of his foolishness.” Jack agrees, but he -also is suffering from shell-shock (two in one play! you can imagine -how clever the critics will be over this—it will have to be made clear -that it was the same shell), forgets himself at the _séance_, and at -sight of his old lady-love cries “Darling!”; then, horrified at his own -misbehaviour, disappears, and the same night is either run over by a -motor-car or tumbles into a canal. The wife’s reputation is saved by -another lady present, who takes the “darling!” to herself. It is not yet -settled whether this shall be a comic amorous dame, really self-deceived -(say, Miss Lottie Venne), or a shrewd, kindly woman of the world (Miss -Compton, for choice), who promptly sees how the land lies and sacrifices -herself for her little married friend. In either case, the wife has to -keep up the illusion that the voice came from “the other side,” while -the husband, though confirmed in his spiritualism, is secretly disgusted -to discover that the spirits can be such “bad form.” Thus the final -situation is an ironic transmutation of the first. The divided pair are -now united, the merry sceptic being frightened into simulating belief, -while the believer ruefully finds belief without zest. Much will depend -on the acting of this final situation. Miss Irene may safely be trusted -to transfer her laugh adroitly to the wrong side of her mouth, but great -subtlety will be required from the actor who has to convey the mixed joy -and pain of a belief proved at once true and not worth having. It may, -perhaps, count among Mr. Henry Ainley’s triumphs. Mr. Gerald du Maurier -will play Jack the friend—another triumph, for even in his moment of -breakdown he will still keep the sympathy of the audience. - -Sir James Barrie has not yet exhausted the variations on his -“enchantment” theme. After the enchanted wood of _Dear Brutus_, where -people get a second chance in life, and the enchanted island of _Mary -Rose_, where time stands still with you, he will with his next play -sound enchanted bagpipes. These will be heard as a weird _obbligato_, -whenever any one of the characters falls into insincerity, from _pp_ -(amiable taradiddle) to _ff_ (thumping lie), and, while they are playing, -the character will talk broad Scotch and sketch the postures of or, in -extreme cases, wildly dance a Highland Reel. As the characters will be -drawn exclusively from the Holland House set (the scene throughout will -be one of the famous breakfasts), the extravagance of the compulsory fits -of Caledonianism can be seen a mile off. The dismay of the poet Rogers -(Mr. George Robey, specially engaged) at finding his best _méchancetés_, -in his notoriously low voice, unexpectedly uttered in the broadest Scotch -will only be equalled by the surprise of Sydney Smith at hearing his -choicest witticisms in the same lingo. At one supreme moment the whole -party will be joining in a Reel, led recalcitrantly but majestically by -Lady H. Fashionable dames (a great opportunity for the costumier, and -fabulous sums will be spent on the wardrobe) will suddenly change from -lisping “vastly amusing I declare!” and rolled-collared _beaux_ from -murmuring “monstrous fine women, egad!” to “aiblins,” “hoots, mon,” -“hech, sirs,” etc. The situation will ultimately be saved by a little -Scottish maiden, in a plaid (Miss Hilda Trevelyan), who, being sincerity -itself, will never speak anything but the purest English, and a baby in a -box nailed against the wall, who will not speak at all. For the enchanted -bagpipes a squad of pipe-majors of the Black Watch, splendid fellows in -review order, will be kindly lent from the Edinburgh garrison. - -Mr. Maugham has been to China, and has brought back a play which will -aim at being as unlike _Mr. Wu_ as possible. In fact, no Chinaman will -figure in it—Mr. Maugham would never do anything so artistically vulgar -as that—nor anything Chinese except a little porcelain curio of the best -period. This will be sold by auction in a scene (it will be the talk -of London) faithfully reproducing a celebrated establishment in King -Street, St. James’s, with Mr. Hawtrey and Miss Gladys Cooper as the rival -bidders. It will serve, later, for chief _pièce justificative_ in a -divorce case between the same parties (with a really witty judge—for he -will have the wit of Mr. Maugham—who will make a certain actual humorist -on the Bench green with envy), and in the end will be broken by an -excited counsel (played by the famous crockery-smashing artist from the -music-halls). - -Mr. Shaw—but no, it is impossible for Mr. Shaw himself, let alone any -one else, to guess beforehand what Mr. Shaw will do. Finally, it may be -conjectured that the rank and file of our playwrights will write for us -precisely the same plays they have written before, under new titles. It -would be an agreeable innovation if they would keep the old titles and -write new plays for them. - - - - -A THEORY OF BRUNETIÈRE - - -There is a theory of the late Ferdinand Brunetière about the periods of -dramatic activity which the time we are now passing through ought to put -to the test. Brunetière was an incorrigible generalizer, first because -he was a Frenchman, and next because he was a born critic. Criticism -without general ideas, without a substructure of principle and theory to -build upon, is an idle thing, the mere expression of likes and dislikes, -or else sheer verbiage. This French critic was always throwing theories -at the drama, and some of them have stuck. Perhaps the soundest of them -and the most lasting was his theory of the drama as the spectacle of the -struggle of will against obstacles. There has been much controversy about -it, there has been no difficulty in instancing cases which it fails to -cover, but I venture to think that as a rough generalization it still -holds good. I am not, however, concerned with that famous theory for the -moment. I am thinking of another theory—a historical one. Brunetière -asserted that every outburst of dramatic activity in a nation will be -found to have followed close upon a great manifestation of national -energy—Greek tragedy, for instance, after the Persian War, Calderon and -de Vega after the Spanish conquests in the New World, Shakespeare after -the Armada, the French romantic drama after the Napoleonic campaigns. -He might have added that the war of 1870 was followed by the best work -of Dumas fils, by the Théâtre Libre, by Ibsen and Björnson, Hauptmann -and Sudermann, and the Russo-Japanese War by the Moscow Art Theatre and -Tchekhov. - -I confess, then, my doubts about the soundness of this theory. Throughout -the past history of any nation wars have been of so constant occurrence -that it would be difficult not to find one preceding, by a fairly short -term, any particular outburst of dramatic activity you like to fix -upon. One is always _post_ the other; it is not necessarily _propter_. -And instances to the contrary will readily occur: periods of dramatic -activity that were not immediately preceded by, but rather synchronized -with, great manifestations of national energy; for instance, the period -of Corneille, Racine, and Molière. And sometimes, when you look for your -dramatic sequel to your national energizing, you only draw a blank. Did -any outburst of dramatic production follow the American Civil War? The -theory, in short, is “an easy one,” relying on lucky coincidence and -ignoring inconvenient exceptions. - -In any case, we ought to be able now, if ever, to put it to the “acid -test.” The leading nations of the world have just fought the biggest of -all their wars. Has the promised sequel followed? Is there any sign -at home or abroad of a fresh outburst of dramatic energy? In Germany -they seem to be merely “carrying on,” or tending to be a little more -pornographic than usual. In Vienna they are still translating Mr. Shaw. -No new dramatic masterpiece is reported from Italy, D’Annunzio being -“otherwise engaged,” Mr. Boffin. Paris is still producing its favourite -little “spicinesses” or, for the high brows, translating Strindberg. -(Outside the theatre the effect of the war on Paris seems not merely -negative but stupefying. They have achieved Dadaism and, so I read in -a recent _Literary Supplement_, a distaste for the works of M. Anatole -France!) In America the drama is in no better case than before the war. - -And what about London? An absolutely unprecedented dearth of not merely -good but of actable plays. People will give you other causes, mainly -economic, for the theatrical “slump.” They will tell you, truly enough, -that playgoers have less money to spend, and that the cheaper “cinema” -is diverting more and more money from the theatre. And yet, whenever the -managers produce anything really worth seeing there is no lack of people -to see it. - -There is nothing, then, to discourage the aspiring dramatist. Only he -won’t aspire! Or his aspiration is not backed by talent! It seems as -though the war, instead of stimulating dramatic energy, had repressed and -chilled it. What on earth (if I may use a colloquialism condemned by Dr. -Johnson) would poor M. Brunetière have said if he had lived to see his -pet theory thus falsified? Probably he would have invented a new one. He -would have said that wars mustn’t be _too_ big to fit into a law devised -only for usual sizes. Also he might have said, wait and see. The war -is only just over; give your young dramatists a little breathing time. -Shakespeare’s plays didn’t immediately follow the Armada. The French -Romantic Drama didn’t begin till a good dozen years after Waterloo. - -Well, we can’t afford to wait. While we playgoers are waiting for -good plays, our young men are all frittering away their talent in -minor poetry, which war seems to bring as relentlessly in its train as -shell-shock. But the victims of both maladies ought by now to be on -the high-road to recovery, and it is time that the young minor poets -turned their attention to something useful, _e.g._, the reintroduction -of the British drama. They have a capital opportunity, since most of -our old stalwarts seem to have left the field. Sir Arthur Pinero gives -us nothing. Mr. Arthur Henry Jones gives us nothing. Mr. Maugham is, -I am told, far away in Borneo, so now is the chance for the young -aspirants; the world is all before them where to choose. Of course it is -understood that they will drop their verse. That used to be the natural -form for plays over two centuries ago. It may come into fashion again, -you never can tell, but, quite clearly, the time is not yet. I have -heard people ask, “What are the chances for a revival of poetic drama?” -They really mean verse-drama, but the answer is, that the essence of -poetry is not verse, which is merely ornament, but the expression of -a certain spiritual state, a certain _état d’âme_, and that there is -always room for poetic plays. _Dear Brutus_ contained much of the poetic -essence; so does _Mary Rose_. But their language is prose, and our -young aspirants may be recommended to write in prose, for which their -previous verse-exercises will have been a useful preparation. Only let -them hurry up! Let their hearts swell with the proud hope of creating -that magnificent affair, which demands capital letters, the Drama of the -Future. Mr. Bergson told us at Oxford that when an interviewer invited -him to forecast the drama of the future he answered, “If I could do that -I’d write it.” So we can only wonder what it will be like. “Sir,” said -Dr. Johnson to Boswell who was “wondering,” “you _may_ wonder.” - - - - -DISRAELI AND THE PLAY - - -We have all been reading Mr. Buckle’s concluding volumes, and when we -have recovered from the fascination of the great man and the splendid -historical pageant they present to us, we dip into them again in search -of trifles agreeable to our own individual taste. And I shall make no -apology for turning for a moment from Disraeli in robes of ceremony, the -friend of Sovereigns, the hero of Congresses, the great statesman and -great Parliament man, to Disraeli the playgoer. That dazzling figure is -not readily thought of as a unit in the common playhouse crowd. Yet it -is with a feeling of relief from the imposing spectacle of great mundane -affairs that you find Disraeli, after receiving in the afternoon the -“awful news” of the Russian ultimatum to Turkey (October, 1876), going -in the evening with his Stafford House hosts to see _Peril_ at the -Haymarket, and pleased with the acting of Mrs. Kendal. The play, he tells -his correspondent, Lady Bradford, is— - -“An adaptation from the French _Nos Intimes_—not over-moral, but fairly -transmogrified from the original, and cleverly acted in the chief part—a -woman whom, I doubt not, you, an _habituée_ of the drama, know very -well, but quite new to me. Now she is married, but she was a sister -of Robertson, the playwright. She had evidently studied in the French -school. The whole was good and the theatre was ventilated; so I did not -feel exhausted, and was rather amused, and shd. rather have enjoyed -myself had not the bad news thrown its dark shadow over one’s haunted -consciousness....” - -Mrs. Kendal’s training was, I fancy, entirely English, but her acting -was on a level with the best of “the French school.” Disraeli was an old -admirer of French acting, as we know from “Coningsby,” and I think it is -pretty clear from the same source that he particularly liked Déjazet. For -he had Déjazet in mind, I guess, in the member of Villebecque’s troop of -French comedians engaged for the delectation of Lord Monmouth, “a lady -of maturer years who performed the heroines, gay and graceful as May.” -This was the lady, it will be remembered, who saved the situation when -Mlle. Flora broke down. “The failure of Flora had given fresh animation -to her perpetual liveliness. She seemed the very soul of elegant frolic. -In the last scene she figured in male attire; and in air, fashion, -and youth beat Villebecque out of the field. She looked younger than -Coningsby when he went up to his grandpapa.” This is Déjazet to the life. -The whole episode of the French players in “Coningsby” shows Disraeli -as not only an experienced playgoer but a connoisseur of the theatre. -His description of the company is deliciously knowing—from the young -lady who played old woman’s parts, “nothing could be more garrulous and -venerable,” and the old man who “was rather hard, but handy; could take -anything either in the high serious or the low droll,” to the sentimental -lover who “was rather too much bewigged, and spoke too much to the -audience, a fault rare with the French; but this hero had a vague idea -that he was ultimately destined to run off with a princess.” - -In “Tancred” there is another, and an entirely charming, glimpse of -French strolling players or strollers who played in French, the Baroni -family—“Baroni; that is, the son of Aaron; the name of old clothesmen in -London, and of Caliphs in Baghdad.” There is no more engaging incident -in the romantic career of Sidonia than his encounter with this family -in a little Flanders town. They played in a barn, to which Sidonia had -taken care that all the little boys should be admitted free, and Mlle. -Josephine advanced warmly cheered by the spectators, “who thought they -were going to have some more tumbling.” It was Racine’s “Andromaque,” -however, that she presented, and “it seemed to Sidonia that he had never -listened to a voice more rich and passionate, to an elocution more -complete; he gazed with admiration on her lightning glance and all the -tumult of her noble brow.” Sidonia played fairy godmother to the whole -family, and “Mlle. Josephine is at this moment [1849] the glory of the -French stage; without any question the most admirable tragic actress -since Clairon, and inferior not even to her.” If for Josephine we read -Rachel, we shall not be far wrong. - -Anyhow, it is evident that, when Disraeli thought Mrs. Kendal must have -studied in the French school, he was paying her the highest compliment -at his disposal. It is disappointing that we have no criticism from -Disraeli of Sarah Bernhardt. Matthew Arnold said that Sarah left off -where Rachel began. Disraeli says nothing, which is perhaps significant, -for he did see Sarah. He was first asked to see her play at a party at -Lord Dudley’s, but declined, as he “could not forgo country air.” A -few weeks later, however, he was at the Wiltons’, where “the principal -saloon, turned into a charming theatre, received the world to witness -the heroine of the hour, Sarah Bernhardt.” And that is all. A playgoer -of seventy-five is hardly disposed to take up with new favourites—which -accounts, perhaps, for Disraeli’s verdict on Irving. “I liked the -_Corsican Brothers_ as a melodrama,” he writes to Lady Bradford -(November, 1880), “and never saw anything put cleverer on the stage. -Irving whom I saw for the first time, is third-rate, and never will -improve, but good eno’ for the part he played, tho’ he continually -reminded me of Lord Dudley....” Why “though”? - -On another popular favourite he was even harder. Writing again to -Lady Bradford, he says:—“Except at Wycombe Fair, in my youth, I have -never seen anything so bad as _Pinafore_. It was not even a burlesque, -a sort of provincial _Black-eyed Susan_. Princess Mary’s face spoke -volumes of disgust and disappointment, but who cd. have told her to -go there?” Staying later at Hatfield, however, he found all the Cecil -youngsters singing the _Pinafore_ music. A few years earlier he tells -Lady Bradford a story he had just heard from a friend of a visit paid -by a distinguished Opposition party to _The Heir at Law_ at the old -Haymarket. “Into one of the stalls came Ld. Granville; then in a little -time, Gladstone; then, at last, Harty-Tarty! Gladstone laughed very -much at the performance; H.-T. never even smiled. 3 conspirators....” -Another remarkable trio figures in another story. Disraeli had been to -the Aquarium to see a famous ape and the lady who used to be shot out -of a cannon. “Chaffed” (if the word is not improper) about this by the -Queen at the Royal dinner table, Disraeli said, “There were three sights, -madam; Zazel, Pongo, and myself.” - -It will be seen that there are few records of Disraeli’s playgoing or -show-going in his old age. Gladstone, we know, was to the last a frequent -playgoer—and, I believe, an enthusiastic admirer of Irving. Disraeli, I -take it, had become rather the book-lover than the playgoer. The humblest -of us may share that taste with the great man, and even take refuge -in his illustrious example for the habit, denounced by the austere, of -reading over solitary meals. Mr. Buckle tells us that “over his solitary -and simple dinner he would read one of his favourite authors, mostly -classics of either Latin, Italian Renaissance, or English eighteenth -century literature, pausing for ten minutes between each course.” That -passage will endear Disraeli to many of us, simple, home-keeping people, -unacquainted with Courts and Parliaments, who feel, perhaps, a little -bewildered amid the processional “drums and tramplings” and the gorgeous -triumphs of his public career. - - - - -HENRY JAMES AND THE THEATRE - - -Are not the friends of Henry James inclined to be a little too solemn -when they write about him, perhaps feeling that they must rise to the -occasion and put on their best style, as though he had his eye on them -and would be “down” on any lapses? An admirable reviewer of the Letters -in the _Literary Supplement_ seemed, indeed, so overcome by his subject -as to have fallen into one of Henry James’s least amiable mannerisms—his -introduction of elaborate “figures,” relentlessly worked out and at last -lagging superfluous. And the editor of the Letters, admirably, too, as -he has done his work, is just a little bleak, isn’t he?—wearing the -grave face of the historian and mindful never to become familiar. “Thank -Heaven!” one seems to hear these writers saying to themselves; “even _he_ -could never have called this vulgar.” Such is the posthumous influence -of the fastidious “master”! I daresay I am captious. One is never quite -satisfied with what one sees in print about people one loved. One always -thinks—it is, at any rate, a pleasing illusion—that one has one’s own key -to that particular cipher, and to see the thing not merely given away -but authoritatively expounded in print is rather a nuisance. Look at the -number of fair ladies to whom Henry James wrote letters rich in intimate -charm (oh! and, as he would have said, of a decorum!)—perhaps each of -them thought she had the best corner of his heart. The most immaculate of -women, young and old, matrons and maidens, _will_ sentimentalize their -men friends in this way. How could Henry James have escaped? Well, if any -one of these ladies had edited the Letters or reviewed them, wouldn’t -each of the others have said: “No, that isn’t _my_ Henry James—_she_ -never understood him, poor dear”? I apologize for this flippant way of -putting it to the two refined writers I began by mentioning. But, as the -lady says in _The Spoils of Poynton_, “I’m quite coarse, thank God!” - -Henry James, unfortunately for his theatrical ambitions, never was. You -must not only be coarse in grain, but tough in hide, for success in the -theatre. Everybody knows that Henry James achieved only failure there, -either crushing failure amid hootings and yells, as with _Guy Domville_, -or that very significant failure which is called a success of “esteem,” -as with his stage versions of _The American_ and _Covering End_. But not -everybody knows how he positively yearned for the big popular success, -and for that biggest, loudest, most brazen-trumpeted of successes, -success in the theatre. He talks in his letters as though he actually -needed the money, but it was really not so. He looked round the world -and found it teeming with “best sellers,” idols of the multitude, who -by any standards of his simply couldn’t “write,” didn’t artistically -“exist.” And the most pathetic thing in his letters is their evidence -that he began, aye! and went on, with the illusion that he, such as he -was, the absolute artist, might some day become a “best seller.” Even so -late as the days of his Collected Edition it came as a shock to him that -the great public wouldn’t buy. - -It is evident that he had good hopes, beforehand, of _Guy Domville_. And -yet he hated the actual process of production. The rehearsal, he says, -is “as amazing as anything can be, for a man of taste and sensibility, -in the odious process of practical dramatic production. I may have -been meant for the Drama—God knows!—but I certainly wasn’t meant for -the Theatre.” And when dire failure came, it wasn’t, he says, from any -defect of technique. “I have worked like a horse—far harder than any -one will ever know—over the whole stiff mystery of ‘technique’—I have -run it to earth, and I don’t in the least hesitate to say that, for -the comparatively poor and meagre, the piteously simplified purposes -of the English stage, I have made it absolutely my own, put it into my -pocket.” No, the fault must be in his choice of subject. “The question -of realizing how different is the attitude of the theatre-goer toward -the quality of things which might be a story in a book from his attitude -toward the quality of thing that is given to him as a story in a play -is another matter altogether. _That_ difficulty is portentous, for any -writer who doesn’t approach it naïvely, as only a very limited and -simple-minded writer can. One has to _make_ oneself so limited and simple -to conceive a subject, see a subject, simply enough, and that, in a -nutshell, is where I have stumbled.” “And yet,” he adds, pathetically -enough (writing to his brother), “if you were to have seen my play!” He -knew he had done good work, in his own way, and the plain fact that his -way was a way which the gross theatre public would not understand or -sympathize with was a terrible blow to him. - -The process of turning himself into a simple-minded writer—that is, of -making a sow’s ear out of a silk purse, was, of course, impossible. -One doesn’t want to wallow in the obvious. But doesn’t it leap at the -eyes that an artist who seeks to abandon his own temperament and point -of view for another’s will forfeit all chance of that spontaneous -joy without which there is no artistic creation? Fortunately, this -theatrical malady of Henry James’s (though he had one or two recurrent -twinges of it) never became chronic. The history of his real work is a -history not of self-renunciation, but of self-development, of abounding, -as the French say, in his own sense. As to the theatrical technique -which he had put into his pocket he certainly kept it there. Like most -laboriously acquired, alien techniques it was too technical, too -“architectooralooral”—as any one can see who dips into his two forgotten -volumes of “Theatricals.” His own proper technique was a very different -thing, an entirely individual thing, and no reader of his books can have -failed to notice how he gradually perfected it as he went along. It -reached its highest point, to my thinking, in _The Ambassadors_, surely -the greatest of his books (though over this question the fierce tribe of -Jacobites will fight to their last gasp), when everything, absolutely -everything, is shown as seen through the eyes of Strether. To see a thing -so “done” as he would have said, an artistic difficulty so triumphantly -mastered, is among the rarest and most exquisite pleasures of life. That -was Henry James’s function, to give us rare and exquisite pleasures, of a -quality never to be had in the modern theatre. He was no theatrical man, -but he could, when he chose, be the most delicate of dramatic critics. -Read what he says in these Letters about Rostand’s _L’Aiglon_ (“the -man really has talent like an attack of small-pox”), about Bernstein’s -_Le Secret_ as a “case,” about Ibsen, “bottomlessly bourgeois ... and -yet of his art he’s a master—and I feel in him, to the pitch of almost -intolerable boredom, the presence and the insistence of life.” - - - - -THEATRICAL AMORISM - - -“The stage is more beholding to love than the life of man. For as to the -stage, love is ever matter of comedies, and now and then of tragedies; -but in life, it doth much mischief; sometimes like a siren; sometimes -like a fury.” It is one of the few things the general reader is able to -quote from Bacon, who goes on to make some pointed remarks about love in -life, but drops all reference to love on the stage, which he would hardly -have done had he been Shakespeare. - -But the converse question, how far love is “beholding” to the stage—what -treatment it has received there, what justice the stage has done to it—is -certainly not without interest. Life is not long enough to deal with -the whole question, ranging through the ages, but it may be worth while -to consider for a moment what our contemporary English stage is doing -with the theme. Are our playwrights addressing themselves to it with -sincerity, with veracity, with real insight? Or are they just “muddling -through” with it, repeating familiar commonplaces about it, not troubling -themselves “to see the thing as it really is”? These questions have -occurred to me in thinking over Mr. Arnold Bennett’s _Sacred and Profane -Love_. Thinking it over! interrupts the ingenuous reader; but have you -not already reviewed it? So it may be well to explain that one “notices” -a play and then thinks it over. True, one’s “notice”—the virtually -instantaneous record of one’s first impressions—sometimes wears a -specious appearance of thought. But that is one of the wicked deceptions -of journalism, mainly designed to appease eager people of the sort who -rush up to you the moment the curtain is down on the First Act to ask: -“Well, what do you think of it?” In reality, as the wily reader knows, it -is at best only thought in the making, a casting about for thought. Not -until you have read it yourself next morning can you begin (if you ever -do begin) to think. So, as I say, I have been thinking over Mr. Bennett’s -_Sacred and Profane Love_. - -It is not what used to be called a “well-made” play. Its main interest -is not cumulative, but is suspended for a whole act and, at its most -critical point, relegated to an inter-act. In Act I. the young Carlotta -gives herself to Diaz. In Act II. (seven years later) Diaz has dropped -clean out. Carlotta, now a famous novelist, is in love with somebody -else and shows herself strong enough to renounce her love. Act III. -resumes the Carlotta-Diaz story. He has become an abject morphinomaniac; -she heroically devotes herself, body and soul, to the terrible task of -reclaiming him. _Between_ Acts III. and IV. (fourteen months) this -terrible task is accomplished. We have to take it on trust, a rather -“large order.” Act IV. ends the Carlotta-Diaz story in marriage. -Obviously it is not a well-told story. It has a long digression, and the -spectator’s attention is misled; it assumes a miracle behind the scenes, -and the spectator’s credulity is over-taxed. Act II. is a play within a -play; how Carlotta nearly ran away with her publisher. In Act IV. you -cannot accept the alleged recovery of the morphinomaniac, you expect -him to “break out” again at any moment. Of course, the story being what -it is, there was no help for it. Years of rising to fame as a novelist, -months of struggling with a drug victim, cannot be shown on the stage. -Only, writers of well-made plays do not choose such stories. - -But is this treating the play fairly? Is it just a story, the story of -Carlotta and Diaz? Suppose we look at it in another way, suppose we -consider it as a study of modern love, or, more particularly, of the -modern woman in love. Then the play at once looks much more shipshape. -It is the _éducation sentimentale_ of Carlotta. The second act ceases -to be episodical; it is one of the stages in Carlotta’s “love-life” -(as Ibsen’s Ella Rentheim calls it). The miracle of Diaz’s reclamation -between the acts ceases to worry us; it only prepares another stage in -Carlotta’s love-life. And, from this point of view, I think Mr. Bennett -has achieved something much better than the construction of a well-made -play. He has given us, in his downright matter-of-fact way, a close -study of modern love in the case of a woman made for love, living for -it, able to dominate it and to turn it to heroic purpose. She starts her -career of love by “giving herself” to a man who is almost a stranger. I -suppose this is considered a “bold” scene. But it is, evidently, there -from no cheap purpose of “audacity,” it is no calculated fling at the -proprieties. Mr. Bennett—it is his way—indifferently depicts human nature -as he sees it, and the girl’s “fall” is natural enough. In a _milieu_ of -prosaic provincialism (if one may venture so to qualify the Five Towns) -she is thrown into contact with a romantic figure from the great world, a -famous pianist who has just enraptured her with his music, the embodiment -of all her artistic ideals. She is of an amorous temperament (and since -Mr. Bennett is undertaking a study of love, it would be no use choosing -an ascetic heroine). The inevitable happens. When next seen, she has not -seen or heard of the man for years since their one meeting. They have -been years of strenuous labour, and she is a successful novelist. But she -has not parted with her temperament, and she falls in love with, so to -speak, the nearest man. He seems a poor creature for so superior a woman -to choose—but such a choice is one of the commonplaces of life. When -she realizes the misery she is causing to the man’s wife she promptly -renounces him. (The wife has a little past love-history of her own—Mr. -Bennett neglects no facet of his subject.) Then Carlotta hears of -Diaz and his morphinomania, conceives forthwith her heroic project of -rescuing him, takes up her lot with him again, and pulls him through. -When he is himself again, he reveals the egoism of the absolute artist. -Carlotta must not accompany him to the concert, because she would make -him nervous. She obeys, and is left in an agony of suspense at home. When -the concert has ended in triumph, he must be off (without his wife) to an -influential patron’s party. She acquiesces again, not without tears. The -men she loves are not worthy of her; but she must love them, she was made -for love. There is talk of marriage at the end. It seems an anti-climax. - -I find that I have been discussing Mr. Bennett’s play instead of the -general question into which I proposed to inquire—the treatment of love -by our dramatists of to-day. It looks, I fear, like the familiar device -of a reviewer for running away from his subject—“unfortunately, our space -will not permit, &c.”—always very useful when the subject is getting -ticklish. But the fact that I have had to dwell on Mr. Bennett’s case -rather shows how rare that case is with us. The general treatment of -love on our stage is, it seems to me, inadequate. Either it is a mere -_ficelle_, an expedient for a plot, or it is apt to be conventional, -second-hand, unobserved. We want fresh, patient, and fearless studies of -it on our stage. I am not asking for calculated “audacity” or salacity -(there has never been any dearth of that), but for veracity. Though the -subject is the oldest in the world, it is always becoming new. There are -subtleties, fine shades, in our modern love that cannot have been known -to the Victorians; yet most of our stage-love to-day remains placidly -Victorian. Was it Rochefoucauld or Chamfort who spoke of the many people -who would never fall in love if they hadn’t heard it talked about? But -think how we of to-day have all heard it talked about, what books we have -read about it! The old passion has put on a new consciousness, and calls -for a new stage-treatment. Where is our Donnay or our Porto-Riche? They, -perhaps, pursue their inquiries a little farther than would suit our -British delicacy; but our playwrights might at least take a leaf out of -their book in the matter of veracity, instead of mechanically repeating -the old commonplaces. - - - - -H. B. IRVING - - -There is a commonplace about the evanescent glory of actors that will -hardly bear close scrutiny. It is said that, as they live more intensely -than other men, enjoying their reward on the spot, so they die more -completely, and leave behind nothing but a name. Even so, are they worse -off than the famous authors whom nobody ever reads? Or than the famous -painters whose works have disappeared? Which is the more live figure -for us to-day, John Kemble, who played in the _Iron Chest_, or William -Godwin, who wrote the original story? Is Zeuxis or Apelles anything more -than a name? It is said that whereas other artists survive in their work, -the actor’s dies with him. But we make of every work of art a palimpsest, -and it is for us what we ourselves have written over its original text—so -that the artist only lives vicariously, through our own life—while the -dead actor’s work stands inviolate, out of our reach, a final thing. Lamb -says of Dodd’s Aguecheek, “a part of his forehead would catch a little -intelligence, and be a long time in communicating it to the remainder.” -Nothing can alter that forehead now; but if Dodd could have left it -behind him, we should be all agog to revise the verdict. So Mrs. Siddons -was famous for her graceful manner of dismissing the guests at Macbeth’s -banquet. Nothing can impair that grace now; could it have been handed -down, we should be having two opinions about it. Dead actors, then, live -again in the pages that commemorate them, and they live more securely -than the artists whose works survive. They are no longer the sport of -opinion. - -But this is only casuistry, the vain effort to seek consolation for -the death of a friend. I am not speaking of a boon companion, but -of something much better, of that ideal, disinterested friend which -every actor is for us on the stage, giving us his mind and heart and -temperament and physical being, immolating his very self for us, and at -the end (I can see Henry Irving the elder standing before the curtain as -he uttered the words) our “obliged, respectful, loving servant.” This is -pure friendship, purer than any private intimacy, with its inevitable -contacts and reserves of different egoisms. Why does my mind go back to -the elder Irving? Because I am thinking of his son Harry, who was so -like him (too like him, it was a perpetual handicap), and never more -like him than in that pride which does not ape humility but feels it—the -pride of the artist in his art and the humility of the devotee in the -temple of art. Indeed, I think Harry Irving had an almost superstitious -reverence for his profession. He had it perhaps not merely because he -was his father’s son, but also because he was his father’s son with -a difference, an academic difference; he was one of a little band of -Oxford men whose adoption of the stage was, in those days, a breach -with orthodox Oxford tradition. All that, I daresay, is altered now. -In an Oxford which has widened Magdalen Bridge and built itself new -Schools anything is possible. But in those days undergraduates were not -habitually qualifying for the stage; indeed, the old “Vic” in term-time -was out of bounds. The old “Vic” had only just disappeared when I went -up to see young Irving as Decius Brutus in _Julius Cæsar_, and H. B. was -still very much an undergraduate. Heavens! the pink and green sweets we -ate at supper not far from Tom Tower after the show—the sweets that only -undergraduates can eat! If I remember the sweets better than the Decius -Brutus, it will be indulgent to infer that Harry Irving’s _début_ was -not of the most remarkable. But his reverence for the histrionic art -was, even then. I teazed him (youthful critics have a crude appetite -for controversy) by starting an assault, entirely theoretical and -Pickwickian, on that reverential attitude; we beat over the ground from -Plato to Bossuet; and I think it took him some time to forgive me. - -In his earlier years on the stage he was a little stiff and -formal—characteristics which were not at all to his disadvantage in the -young prig of _The Princess and the Butterfly_ and the solemn young -man-about-town of _Letty_ (though the smart Bond Street suit and patent -leather shoes of the man-about-town were obviously a sore trial to a boy -who, from his earliest years, dressed after his father). I imagine his -Crichton (1902) was his first real success in London, and an admirable -Crichton it was, standing out, as the play demanded, with that vigour -and stamp of personal domination which he had inherited from his father. -His Hamlet, though his most important, was hardly his best part. It was -too cerebral. But is not Hamlet, some one will ask, the very prince -of cerebrals? Yes, but Hamlet has grace as well as thought, sweetness -as well as light. Harry Irving’s Hamlet (of 1905, he softened much in -the later revival) was a little didactic, almost donnish. He hardened -the hardness of Hamlet—particularly his hardness to women, Ophelia and -Gertrude, which we need not be sickly sentimentalists to dislike seeing -emphasized. In a word he was impressive rather than charming—was perhaps -almost harsh after the conspicuously charming Hamlet of Forbes-Robertson. -Nevertheless, if Harry Irving’s Hamlet was second to Forbes-Robertson’s, -it was a very good second. - -He had his father’s rather Mephistophelean humour—but I am annoyed to -find myself always harping on his father. It is a tiresome obsession. -None suffered from it more than the son himself, at once hero and martyr -of filial piety. He invited comparison, playing as many as possible of -his father’s old parts, all ragged and threadbare as they had become. -But he lacked the quality which originally saved them, the romantic -flamboyant _baroque_ quality of his father’s genius. Sir Henry impressed -himself upon his time by sheer force of individuality and by what Byron -calls “magnoperation.” He was a great manager as well as a great actor, -doing everything on a gigantic scale and in the grand style. He was a -splendid figure of romance, off as well as on the stage. It was hopeless -to provoke comparison with such a being as this. Though the son showed -the family likeness he was naturally a reasonable man, a scholar, a man -of discursive analytic mind rather than of the instinctive perfervid -histrionic temperament. It was always a pleasure to swop ideas with him, -to talk to him about the principles of his art, the great criminals of -history, or the latest murder trial he had been attending at the Old -Bailey; but I suspect (I never tried) conversation with his father, in -Boswell’s phrase, a “tremendous companion,” must have been a rather -overwhelming experience.... And, after all, the wonderful thing is that -the son stood the comparison so well, that he was not utterly crushed -by it—that the successor of so exorbitant an artist could maintain -any orbit of his own. That is a curious corner of our contemporary -society the corner of the second generation, where the son mentions “my -father” quickly, with a slight drop of the voice, out of a courteous -disinclination to let filial respect become a bore to third parties. -There is an academician of the second generation in Pailleron’s play who -is always alluding to _mon illustre père_, and as the ill-natured say -_joue du cadavre_. In our little English corner there is never any such -lapse from good taste, Harry Irving was greatly loved there; and will be -sadly missed. - - - - -THE PUPPETS - - -At the corner of a Bloomsbury square I found my path blocked by a little -crowd of children who were watching a puppet show of an unusual kind. -The usual kind, of course, is _Punch and Judy_, which has become a -degenerate thing, with its puppets grasped in the operator’s hand; these -puppets were wired, in the grand manner of the art, and had a horse and -cart, no less, for their transport. The show, though lamentably poor in -itself—the puppets merely danced solemnly round and round without any -attempt at dramatic action—was rich in suggestion. Do we not all keep a -warm corner of our hearts for the puppets, if only for their venerable -antiquity and their choice literary associations? Why, in the grave -pages of the _Literary Supplement_ learned archæologists have lately -been corresponding about the Elizabethan “motions,” and Sir William -Ridgeway has traced the puppets back to the Syracuse of Xenophon’s day, -and told us how that author in his “Symposium” makes a famous Syracusan -puppet player say that he esteems fools above other men because they are -those who go to see his puppets (νευρόσπαστα). My own recollections -connect Xenophon with parasangs rather than puppets, but I am glad to -be made aware of this honourable pedigree, though I strongly resent the -Syracusan’s remark about the amateurs of puppets. I share the taste of -Partridge, who “loved a puppet show of all the pastimes upon earth,” -and I sympathize with the showman in “Tom Jones” who could tolerate all -religions save that of the Presbyterians, “because they were enemies to -puppet shows.” And so I lingered with the children at the corner of the -Bloomsbury square. - -Puppets, someone has said, have this advantage over actors: they are made -for what they do, their nature conforms exactly to their destiny. I have -seen them in Italy performing romantic drama with a dash and a _panache_ -that no English actor in my recollection (save, perhaps, the late Mr. -Lewis Waller) could rival. Actors, being men as well as actors, and -therefore condemned to effort in acting, if only the effort of keeping -down their consciousness of their real, total self, cannot attain to this -clear-cut definiteness and purity of performance. But the wire-puller -must be a true artist, his finger-tips responsive to every emotional -thrill of the character and every _nuance_ of the drama; indeed, the -ideal wire-puller is the poet himself, expressing himself through the -motions of his puppets and declaiming his own words for them. - -It was with this thought in my mind that I ventured, when Mr. Hardy first -published _The Dynasts_, to suggest that the perfect performance of that -work would be as a puppet show, with Mr. Hardy reading out his own blank -verse. I pointed out the suggestive reference to puppets in the text. One -of the Spirits describes the human protagonists as “mere marionettes,” -and elsewhere you read:— - - Forgetting the Prime Mover of the gear - As puppet-watchers him who moves the strings. - -Further, at the very core of Mr. Hardy’s drama is the idea that these -Napoleons and Pitts and Nelsons are puppets of the Immanent Will. If -ever there was a case for raising a puppet show to the highest literary -dignity, this was one. - -But it was all in vain. Either Mr. Hardy was too modest to declaim his -own verse in public, or else the actors pushed in, as they will wherever -they can, and laid hands on as much of his work as they could manage. And -so we had Mr. Granville Barker’s version early in the war and only the -other day the performance at Oxford, and I have nothing to say against -either, save that they were, and could only be, extracts, episodes, -fragments, instead of the great epic-drama in its panoramic entirety. -A puppet show could embrace the whole, and one voice declaiming the -poem would to be sure not give the necessary unity of impression—that -singleness must be first of all in the work itself—but would incidentally -emphasize it. - -The puppet presentation would, however, do much more than this. It would -clarify, simplify, attenuate the medium through which the poem reaches -the audience. The poet and his public would be in close contact. It is, -of course, for many minds, especially for those peculiarly susceptible -to poetry, a perpetual grievance against the actors that these living, -bustling, solid people get between them and the poet and substitute fact, -realism, flesh-and-blood for what these minds prefer to embody only in -their imagination. There is the notorious instance of Charles Lamb, with -his objection to seeing Shakespeare’s tragedies acted. He complained that -the gay and witty Richard III. was inevitably materialized and vulgarized -by the actor. Lamb, as we all know, was capricious, and indeed made a -virtue of caprice, but what do you say to so serious and weighty a critic -as Professor Raleigh? Talking about the Shakespearean boy-actors of -women, he commits himself to this:—“It may be doubted whether Shakespeare -has not suffered more than he has gained by the genius of later-day -actresses, who bring into the plays a realism and a robust emotion which -sometimes obscure the sheer poetic value of the author’s conception. The -boys were no doubt very highly trained, and amenable to instruction; so -that the parts of Rosalind and Desdemona may well have been rendered with -a clarity and simplicity which served as a transparent medium for the -author’s wit and pathos. Poetry, like religion, is outraged when it is -made a platform for the exhibition of their own talent and passions by -those who are its ministers. With the disappearance of the boy-players -the poetic drama died in England, and it has had no second life.” - -A little “steep,” is it not? Logically it is an objection to all acting -of poetic drama. Boy-players of girls are only a half-way house. The -transparent medium for the author’s wit and pathos would be still more -transparent if it were merely the medium of the printed page. Now this -much is certain. Shakespeare conceived his plays, whatever poetry or wit -or pathos he put into them, in terms of men and women (not boy-women). -The ideal performance of Shakespeare would be by the men and women who -grew in Shakespeare’s imagination. But they, unfortunately, do not exist -in flesh and blood, but only in that imagination, and, to bring them -on the stage, you have to employ ready-made men and women, who at the -very best can only be rough approximations to the imaginary figures. -In this sense it is not a paradox but a simple commonplace to say that -no one has ever seen Shakespeare’s Hamlet on the stage, or ever will -see. And the greater the “genius” of the actor, the more potent his -personality—though he will be the darling of the majority, thirsting for -realism, the immediate sense of life—the more will he get between the -poet and imaginative students like Lamb and Professor Raleigh, who want -their poetry inviolate. - -This seems like a digression, but is really to my purpose. -Flesh-and-blood actors we shall always have with us; they will take -good care of that themselves. But for the imaginative souls who are for -compromise, who are for half-way houses and look back fondly to the -boy-players, I would say: Why not try the puppets? These also present -a “transparent medium” for the author’s expression. And, further, the -purely “lyrical” passages in which Shakespeare abounds and which seem so -odd in the realism of the human actors (_e.g._, the Queen’s description -of Ophelia’s death) would gain immensely by being recited by the poet (or -wire-puller). A puppet-show _Hamlet_ might be an exquisite experiment in -that highest art whose secret is suggestion. - - - - -VICISSITUDES OF CLASSICS - - -Of Webster’s _Duchess of Malfi_, revived by the Phœnix Society, I said -that it was a live classic no longer, but a museum-classic, a curio -for connoisseurs. Its multiplication of violent deaths in the last act -(four men stabbed and one courtesan poisoned) could no longer be taken -seriously, and, in fact, provoked a titter in the audience. This sudden -change of tragic into comic effect was fatal to that unity of impression -without which not merely a tragedy but any work of art ceases to be an -organic whole. The change was less the fault of Webster than of the Time -Spirit. Apparently the early Jacobeans could accept a piled heap of -corpses at the end of a play without a smile, as “all werry capital.” -Violent death was not so exceptional a thing in their own experience as -it is in ours. They had more simplicity of mind than we have, a more -childlike docility in swallowing whole what the playwright offered them. -But Webster was not without fault. One assassination treads so hastily -upon the heels of the other, the slaughter is so wholesale. _Hamlet_ -closes with several violent deaths, yet Shakespeare managed to avoid this -pell-mell wholesale effect. - -But there is another element in Webster’s workmanship which, I think, has -helped to deprive the play of life. I mean his obtrusive ingenuity. I am -not referring to the ingenuity of the tortures practised upon the unhappy -Duchess—the severed hand thrust into hers, the wax figure purporting to -be her slain husband, and so forth. This fiendish ingenuity is proper -to the character of the tyrant Ferdinand, and its exercise does add a -grisly horror to the play. I mean the ingenuity of Webster himself, a -perverted, wasted ingenuity, in his play-construction. He seems to have -ransacked his fancy in devising scenic experiments. There is the “echo” -scene. It is theatrically ineffective. It gives you no tragic emotion, -but only a sense of amused interest in the author’s ingenuity, and you -say, “How quaint!” Then there is the little device for giving a touch -of irony to the Cardinal’s murder. He has warned the courtiers, for -purposes of his own, that if they hear him cry for help in the night -they are to take no notice; he will be only pretending. And so, when he -cries for help in real earnest, he is hoist with his own petard, and the -courtiers only cry, “Fie upon his counterfeiting.” Again the theatrical -effect is small; you are merely distracted from the tragic business in -hand by the author’s curious ingenuity. For any one interested in the -theatrical _cuisine_ these experiments, of course, have their piquancy. -Webster seems to have been perpetually seeking for “new thrills”—like the -Grand Guignol people in our own day. He had some lucky finds. The masque -of madmen, for instance, is a tremendous thrill, one of the biggest, -I daresay, in the history of tragedy. But there were experiments that -didn’t come off. - -At any rate they fail with us. Webster, no doubt, had his true -“posterity” (was it perchance contemporary with Pepys?), but we are -his post-posterity. In a sense every masterpiece is in advance of its -time. “The reason,” says Marcel Proust (“A l’ombre des jeunes filles en -fleurs”)— - -“The reason why a work of genius is admired with difficulty at once is -that the author is extraordinary, that few people resemble him. It is his -work itself that in fertilizing the rare minds capable of comprehending -it makes them grow and multiply. Beethoven’s quartets (XII., XIII., XIV., -and XV.) have taken fifty years to give birth and growth to the Beethoven -quartet public, thus realizing like every masterpiece a progress in the -society of minds, largely composed to-day of what was not to be found -when the masterpiece appeared, that is to say, of beings capable of -loving it. What we call posterity is the posterity of the work itself. -The work must create its own posterity.” - -Assuredly we of to-day can see more in _Hamlet_ than its first audience -could. But the curve of “posterity” is really a zig-zag. Each generation -selects from a classic what suits it. Few of the original colours are -“fast”; some fade, others grow more vivid and then fade in their turn. -The Jacobean playgoer was impressed by Webster’s heaped corpses, and -we titter. He probably revelled in the mad scene of the “lycanthropic” -Ferdinand, where we are bored. (The taste for mad scenes was long -lived; it lasted from the Elizabethans, on through Betterton’s time—see -Valentine in _Love for Love_—and Garrick’s time, as we know from -Boswell’s anecdote about _Irene_, down to the moment when Tilburina went -mad in white satin.) On the other hand, a scene which has possibly gained -in piquancy for us of to-day, the proud contemporaries of Mr. Shaw, is -that wherein the Duchess woos the coy Antonio and weds him out of hand. -When we chance upon a thing like this in a classic we are apt, fatuously -enough, to exclaim. “How modern!” - -No one is likely to make that exclamation over another classic of -momentary revival, _Le Malade Imaginaire_. There is not a vestige of -“modernity” in Molière’s play. It is absolutely primitive. Or rather -it seems, in all essentials, to stand outside time, to exhibit nothing -of any consequence that “dates.” It has suffered no such mishap as has -befallen Webster’s tragedy—a change of mental attitude in the audience -which has turned the author’s desired effect upside down. At no point at -which Molière made a bid for our laughter are we provoked, contrariwise, -to frown. You cannot, by the way, say this about all Molière. Much, -_e.g._, of the fun in _George Dandin_ strikes a modern audience as merely -cruel. Both in Alceste and Tartuffe there has been a certain alteration -of “values” in the progress of the centuries. But _Le Malade Imaginaire_ -is untouched. We can enjoy it, I imagine, with precisely the same -delight as its first audience felt. Some items of it, to be sure, were -actual facts for them which are only history for us; the subservience -of children to parents, for instance, and (though Mr. Shaw will not -agree) the pedantic humbug of the faculty. But the point is, that the -things laughed at, though they may have ceased to exist in fact, are as -ridiculous as ever. And note that our laughter is not a whit affected by -childish absurdities in the plot. Argan’s little girl shams dead and he -immediately assumes she is dead. Argan shams dead and neither his wife -nor his elder daughter for a moment questions the reality of his death. -His own serving-wench puts on a doctor’s gown and he is at once deceived -by the disguise. These little things do not matter in the least. We are -willing to go all lengths in make-believe so long as we get our laughter. - -Here, then, is a classic which seems to be outside the general rule. -It has not had to make, in M. Proust’s phrase, its own posterity. It -has escaped those vicissitudes of appreciation which classics are apt -to suffer from changes in the general condition of the public mind.... -But stay! If it has always been greeted with the same abundance of -laughter, has the quality of that laughter been invariable? Clearly not, -for Molière is at pains to apologize in his play for seeming to laugh -at the faculty, whereas, he says, he has only in view “le ridicule de -la médecine.” Between half-resentful, half-fearful laughter at a Purgon -or Diafoirus who may be at your bedside next week and light-hearted -laughter at figures that have become merely fantastic pantaloons there is -considerable difference. And so we re-establish our general rule. - - - - -PERVERTED REPUTATIONS - - -Sir Henry Irving used to tell how he and Toole had gone together to -Stratford, and fallen into talk with one of its inhabitants about his -great townsman. After many cross-questions and crooked answers, they -arrived at the fact that the man knew that Shakespeare had “written for -summat.” “For what?” they enquired. “Well,” replied the man, “I do think -he wrote for the Bible.” - -This story illustrates a general law which one might, perhaps, if one -were inclined to pseudo-scientific categories, call the law of perverted -reputations. I am thinking more particularly of literary reputations, -which are those I happen chiefly to care about. And literary reputations -probably get perverted more frequently than others, for the simple -reason that literature always has been and (despite the cheap manuals, -Board schools, and the modern improvements) still is an unfathomable -mystery to the outer busy world. But, to get perverted, the reputations -must be big enough to have reached the ears of that outer world. What -happens, thereafter, seems to be something like this. The man in the -back street understands vaguely that so-and-so is esteemed a great man. -Temperamentally and culturally incapable of appreciating the works of -literary art, for which so-and-so is esteemed great, the back-streeter -is driven to account for his greatness to himself on grounds suitable -to his own comprehension, which grounds in the nature of the case have -nothing to do with the fine art of literature. The general tendency is to -place these grounds in the region of the marvellous. For the capacity for -wonder is as universal as the capacity for literature is strictly limited. - -Thus you have the notorious instance of Virgil figuring to the majority -of men in the middle ages not as a poet but as a magician. Appreciation -of his poetry was for the “happy few”; by the rest his reputation was -too great to be ignored, so they gave it a twist to accommodate it to -the nature of their own imaginations. In more recent times, indeed in -our own day, there is the equally notorious instance of Shakespeare. The -Stratford rustic knew nothing of Shakespeare’s plays, but did know (1) -that there was a great man called Shakespeare, and (2) that there was -a great book called the Bible. He concluded that Shakespeare must have -written for the Bible. But I am thinking of a very different perversion -of Shakespeare’s reputation. I am thinking of the strange people, -exponents of the back-street mind, who, being incapable of appreciating -Shakespeare’s poetry and dramatic genius—having in fact no taste for -literature as such—have assigned his greatness to something compatible -with their own prosaic pedestrian taste and turned him into a contriver -of cryptograms. Again you see the old appetite for wonder reappearing. -The imputed reputation, as in Virgil’s case, is for something _abscons_, -as Rabelais would have said, something occult. - -It is the old story. Superstition comes easier to the human mind than -artistic appreciation. But superstition has played an odd freak in the -case of Shakespeare. It is actually found side by side with artistic -appreciation, of which it presents itself as the superlative, or -ecstatic, degree. There is, for instance, an Oxford professor to whom -the world is indebted for the most delicate, the most sympathetic, as -well as the most scholarly appreciation of Shakespeare in existence. Yet -this professor is so affronted by the flesh-and-blood domination of the -actresses who play Shakespeare’s heroines, the dangerous competition of -their personal charm with the glamour of the text, that he has committed -himself to the startling proposition that poetic drama perished with -Shakespeare’s boy actors! Jealousy for Shakespeare’s individual supremacy -in artistic creation, which must “brook no rival near the throne,” -has turned the professor into a misogynist. This I venture to call -Shakespearian superstition. And there is another Oxford professor (oh, -home of lost causes and forsaken beliefs!) who assures us that we can -unravel all Shakespearian problems by a careful study of the text alone. -Don’t trouble your minds about the actual facts in view of which the -text had been written and in which it was to be spoken. Don’t ask where -Shakespeare’s theatres were and what the audiences were like and what -kind of shows they were used to and continued to expect. Don’t bother -about the shape of the stage or its position in regard to the public. -Stick to the text, and nothing but the text, and all shall be made plain -unto you. It is this same professor who occasionally treats Shakespeare’s -imaginary characters as though they were real persons, with independent -biographies of their own. He obliges us with conjectural fragments of -their biographies. “Doubtless in happier days he (Hamlet) was a close -and constant observer of men and manners.” “All his life he had believed -in her (Gertrude), we may be sure, as such a son would.” Shakespearian -superstition again, you see, not merely alongside but actually growing -out of artistic appreciation. - -Literary critics, as a rule, have suffered less than so-called literary -“creators” from perverted reputations. The reason is plain. The man in -the back street has never heard of criticism. But what, it will be asked, -about the strange case of Aristotle? Well, I submit that in his case the -perversion arose from the second cause I have indicated—not from the -ignorance of the multitude but from the superstitious veneration of the -few. Who was it who began the game by calling Aristotle “the master of -those who know”? A poet who was also a scholar. Who declared Aristotle’s -authority in philosophy to equal St. Paul’s in theology? Roger Bacon -(they say; I have not myself asked for this author at Mudie’s or _The -Times_ Book Club). Who said there could be no possible contradiction -between the Poetics and Holy Writ? Dacier, an eminent Hellenist. Who -declared the rules of Aristotle to have the same certainty for him as the -axioms of Euclid? Lessing, an esteemed “highbrow.” The gradual process, -then, by which the real Aristotle, pure thinker, critic investigating and -co-ordinating the facts of the actual drama of his time, was perverted -into the spurious Aristotle, Mumbo Jumbo of criticism, mysteriarch, -depositary of the Tables of the Law, was the same process that we have -seen at work in the case of Shakespeare—enthusiastic appreciation -toppling over into superstition. - -But none of us can afford to put on airs about it. _Mutato nomine de te._ -For, after all, what are these various cases but extreme instances of the -“personal equation” that enters into every, even the sanest opinion? Can -any one of us do anything else towards appreciating a work of art than -remake it within himself? So, if we are to avoid these absurd extremes, -let us look to ourselves, do our best to get ourselves into harmony with -the artist, and “clear our minds of cant.” - - - - -THE SECRET OF GREEK ART - - -Mathematics may be great fun. Even simple arithmetic is not without its -comic side, as when it enables you to find, with a little management, -the Number of the Beast in the name of any one you dislike. Then there -is “the low cunning of algebra.” It became low cunning indeed when Euler -drove (so the anecdotist relates) Diderot out of Russia with a sham -algebraical formula. “Monsieur,” said Euler gravely, “_(a + bⁿ)/n = x, -donc Dieu existe; répondez_.” Diderot, no algebraist, could not answer, -and left. - -But geometry furnishes the best sport. Here is a learned American -archæologist, Mr. Jay Hambidge, lecturing to that august body the -Hellenic Society and revealing to them his discovery that the secret -of classic Greek art (of the best period) is a matter of two magic -rectangles. I understand that the learned gentleman himself did not make -this extreme claim about the “secret” of “Art,” but it was at any rate -so described in the report on which my remarks are based. Mr. Hambidge -appears to have devoted years of labour and ingenuity to his researches. -The result is in any case of curious interest. But how that result can -be said to be “the secret of Greek art revealed” I wholly fail to see. - -Let us look first at his rectangles. His first is 2 × √5. It is said that -these figures represent the ratio of a man’s height to the full span of -his outstretched fingers. But what man? Of what race and age? Well, let -us say an average Greek of the best period, and pass on. Mr. Hambidge has -found this rectangle over and over again in the design of the Parthenon. -“Closely akin” to it, says the report, is another fundamental rectangle, -of which the two dimensions are in the ratio of Leonardo’s famous “golden -section.” That ratio is obtained by dividing a straight line so that its -greater is to its lesser part as the whole is to the greater. Let us give -a mathematical meaning to the “closely akin.” Calling the lesser part 1 -and the greater _x_, then— - - _x_/1 = (_x_ + 1)/_x_ or _x_² - _x_ - 1 = 0 - -which gives you - - _x_ = (√5 + 1)/2. - -The square roots will not trouble you when you come to constructing your -rectangles, for the diagonal of the first is √(5 + 4), or 3. If AB is -your side 2, draw a perpendicular to it through B, and with A as centre -describe the arc of a circle of radius 3; the point of intersection will -give C, the other end of the diagonal. The second rectangle maintains AB, -and simply prolongs BC by half of AB or 1. Just as the dimensions of -the first rectangle are related to those of (selected) man, and to the -plan of the Parthenon, so those of the second are related, it seems, to -the arrangement of seeds in the sunflower and to the plan of some of the -Pyramids. Sir Theodore Cook writes to _The Times_ to say that both the -sunflower and the Pyramid discoveries are by no means new. - -The fact is the theory of “beautiful” rectangles is not new. The classic -exponent of it is Fechner, who essayed to base it on actual experiment. -He placed a number of rectangular cards of various dimensions before his -friends, and asked them to select the one they thought most beautiful. -Apparently the “golden section” rectangle got most votes. But “most of -the persons began by saying that it all depended on the application to -be made of the figure, and on being told to disregard this, showed much -hesitation in choosing.” (Bosanquet: “History of Æsthetic,” p. 382.) If -they had been Greeks of the best period, they would have all gone with -one accord for the “golden section” rectangle. - -Nor have the geometers of beauty restricted their favours to the -rectangle. Some have favoured the circle, some the square, others the -ellipse. And what about Hogarth’s “line of beauty”? I last saw it -affectionately alluded to in the advertisement of a corset manufacturer. -So, evidently, Hogarth’s idea has not been wasted. - -One sympathizes with Fechner’s friends who said it all depended upon the -application to be made of the figure. The “art” in a picture is generally -to be looked for inside the frame. The Parthenon may have been planned -on the √5/2 rectangle, but you cannot evolve the Parthenon itself out of -that vulgar fraction. Fechner proceeded on the assumption that art is a -physical fact and that its “secret” could be wrung out of it, as in any -other physical inquiry, by observation and experiment, by induction from -a sufficient number of facts. But when he came to have a theory of it he -found, like anybody else, that introspection was the only way. - -And whatever rectangles Mr. Hambidge may discover in Greek works of -art, he will not thereby have revealed the secret of Greek art. For -rectangles are physical facts (when they are not mere abstractions), -and art is not a physical fact, but a spiritual activity. It is in the -mind of the artist, it is his vision, the expression of his intuition, -and beauty is only another name for perfect expression. That, at any -rate, is the famous “intuition-expression” theory of Benedetto Croce, -which at present holds the field. It is a theory which, of course, -presents many difficulties to the popular mind—what æsthetic theory does -not?—but it covers the ground, as none other does, and comprehends all -arts, painting, poetry, music, sculpture, and the rest, in one. Its main -difficulty is its distinction between the æsthetic fact, the artist’s -expression, and the physical fact, the externalization of the artist’s -expression, the so-called “work” of art. Dr. Bosanquet has objected -that this seems to leave out of account the influence on the artist’s -expression of his material, his medium, but Croce, I think, has not -overlooked that objection (“Estetica,” Ch. XIII., end), though many of -us would be glad if he could devote some future paper in the _Critica_ -to meeting it fairly and squarely. Anyhow, æsthetics is not a branch -of physics, and the “secret” of art is not to be “revealed” by a whole -Euclidful of rectangles. - -But it is, of course, an interesting fact that certain Greeks, and before -them certain Egyptians, took certain rectangles as the basis of their -designs—rectangles which are also related to the average proportions of -the human body and to certain botanical types. If Mr. Hambidge—or his -predecessors, of whom Sir Theodore Cook speaks—have established this they -have certainly put their fingers on an engaging convention. Who would -have thought that the “golden section” that very ugly-looking (√5 + 1)/2 -could have had so much in it? The builder of the Great Pyramid of Ghizeh -knew all about it in 4700 B.C. and the Greeks of the age of Pericles, and -then Leonardo da Vinci toyed with it—“_que de choses dans un menuet!_” It -is really rather cavalier of Croce to dismiss this golden section along -with Michael Angelo’s serpentine lines of beauty as the astrology of -Æsthetic. - - - - -A POINT OF CROCE’S - - -Adverting to Mr. Jay Hambidge’s rectangles of beauty I had occasion to -cite Croce and his distinction between the æsthetic fact of expression -and the practical fact of externalization, to which distinction, I -said, Dr. Bosanquet had objected that it ignored the influence upon the -artist of his medium. Dr. Bosanquet has courteously sent me a copy of -a communication, “Croce’s Æsthetic,” which he has made to the British -Academy, and which deals not only with this point, but with his general -objections to the Crocean philosophy of art. It is not all objection, -far from it; much of it is highly laudatory, and all of it is manifestly -written in a spirit of candour and simple desire to arrive at the truth. -But I have neither the space nor the competence to review the whole -pamphlet, and I will confine myself to the particular point with which -I began. While suggesting, however, some criticisms of Dr. Bosanquet’s -contentions, I admit the suspicion that I may resemble one of those -disputants who, as Renan once said, at the bottom of their minds are a -little of the opinion of the other side. That, indeed, was why I said -that many of us would be glad to hear further on the point from Croce -himself. But with Dr. Bosanquet’s pamphlet before me I cannot afford to -“wait and see.” I must say, with all diffidence, what I can. - -Dr. Bosanquet describes the Crocean view quite fairly. “The ‘work of -art,’ then, picture, statue, musical performance, printed or spoken -poem, is called so only by a metaphor. It belongs to the practical -(economic) and not to the æsthetic phase of the spirit, and consists -merely of expedients adopted by the artist as a practical man, to -ensure preservation and a permanent possibility of reproduction for -his imaginative intuition. The art and beauty lie primarily in his -imagination, and secondarily in the imagination of those to whom his -own may communicate its experience. The picture and the music are by -themselves neither art nor beauty nor intuition-expression.” - -But when Dr. Bosanquet goes on to make his inferences, I suggest that -he infers too much. “Thus,” he says, “all embodiment in special kinds -of physical objects by help of special media and special processes is -wholly foreign to the nature of art and beauty.... There is nothing to be -learned from the practical means by help of which intuitions of beauty -receive permanence and communicability.” “Wholly foreign” and “nothing -to be learned” are, I think, too strong. Though the practical means are -distinct from art, they are part of the artist’s experience. The artist -is not working _in vacuo_. He is a certain man, with a certain nature -and experience, at a certain moment of time. His joy, say, in handling -and modelling clay (I take this example from an old lecture of Dr. -Bosanquet’s) will be one of the factors in his experience. In that sense -it will not be “wholly foreign” to his art, and he will have “learned” -something from it. It is not itself the art-impulse, the expressive -activity, but it is, what Croce calls it, a _point d’appui_ for a new one. - -For let us hear what Croce himself says on this point (“Estetica,” Ch. -XIII.). “To the explanation of physical beauty as a mere aid for the -reproduction of internal beauty, or expression, it might be objected, -that the artist creates his expressions in the act of painting or -carving, writing or composing; and that therefore physical beauty, -instead of following, sometimes precedes æsthetic beauty. This would be -a very superficial way of understanding the procedure of the artist, -who, in reality, makes no stroke of the brush without having first seen -it in his imagination; and, if he has not yet seen it, will make it, not -to externalize his expression (which at that moment does not exist), -but as it were on trial and to have a mere _point d’appui_ for further -meditation and internal concentration. The physical _point d’appui_ is -not physical beauty, instrument of reproduction, but a means that might -be called _pedagogic_, like retiring to solitude or the many other -expedients, often queer enough, adopted by artists and men of science -and varying according to their various idiosyncrasies.” Can we not -put it more generally and say that the artist’s historic situation is -changing at every moment and his experience with his medium is part of -that situation (just as is the date of his birth, his country, or the -state of his digestion), or in other words, one of the influences that -make him what he is and not some one else? But to admit that, it seems -to me, is not at all to deny the independence of his spiritual activity -in expression any more than the freedom of the will is denied by the -admission that will must always be exercised in a definite historical -situation. - -What Dr. Bosanquet cannot abide is Croce’s great principle that in -æsthetic philosophy there are no arts but only art. He says this “offers -to destroy our medium of intercourse through the body and through natural -objects.” Why “destroy”? Surely it is not a case of destruction but of -removal; removal from the philosophy of art to that of practice. Croce is -not quite so foolish as to offer to destroy things indestructible; he is -only trying to put them in their place. - -“The truth is, surely, that different inclinations of the spirit have -affinities with different qualities and actions of body—meaning by body -that which a sane philosophy accepts as concretely and completely actual -in the world of sense-perception. The imagination of the particular -artist is - - like the dyer’s hand, - Subdued to what it works in, - -and its intuition and expression assume a special type in accordance -with the medium it delights in, and necessarily develop certain -capacities and acknowledge, however tacitly, certain limitations.” Who -denies anything so obvious? Certainly not Croce. What he denies, I -take it, is that these considerations, however valuable in their right -place, are proper to a philosophy of art. They are classifications and -generalizations, he would say, and philosophy deals not with _generalia_ -but with universals. To say that art is one is not to say that Raphael -and Mozart are one. There are no duplicates in human life and no two -artists have the same activity of intuition-expression. You may classify -them in all sorts of ways; those who express themselves in paint, those -who express themselves in sounds, and so forth; or sub-classify them -into landscapists, portraitists, etc., etc.; or sub-sub-classify them -into “school” of Constable, “school” of Reynolds, etc., etc. But you are -only getting further and further away from anything like a philosophy of -art, and will have achieved at best a manual or history of technique. -In a philosophic theory Dr. Bosanquet’s “affinities of the spirit” are -a will-o’-the-wisp. Thereupon he says, crushingly, “if you insist on -neglecting these affinities of the spirit, your theory remains abstract, -and has no illuminating power.” Well, Croce’s theory is certainly “up -there,” it inhabits the cold air of pure ideas; it will not be of the -least practical use at the Academy Schools or the Royal College of -Music; but when a philosopher like Dr. Bosanquet finds no illumination -in a theory which unifies the arts, gives a comprehensible definition of -beauty and, incidentally, constructs, to say the least of it, a plausible -“cycle of reality,” I can but respectfully wonder. - - - - -WILLIAM HAZLITT - - -I was, perhaps rather naïvely, surprised the other day to hear an actor -asking for Hazlitt’s “View of the English Stage.” Actors in general, -whether correctly or incorrectly I cannot say, are reputed to be not -enthusiastically given to reading. On the face of it, the thing seems -likely enough. Their business is to be men of action and talk and the -busy world—not sedentary contemplative, cloistered students. Your -bookworm is as a rule a shy, retiring solitary; the very opposite of your -actor who must not only boldly show himself but take a pride in being -stared at. Logically, then, I ought not to have been as shocked as I was -when the late Henry Neville some years ago roundly declared to me that an -actor “should never read.” Yet the thought of a life without literature -seemed so appalling! It is possible, however, to be a reader, and a -voracious reader, yet not to read Hazlitt’s stage criticisms. The epoch -is gone. Kean is long since dead. Our theatrical interests to-day are -widely different from those of our ancestors a century ago. And Hazlitt’s -criticisms have not the loose, discursive, impressionistic, personal, -intimate charm of his other essays, his “Table Talk,” his “Round Table,” -or his “Plain Speaker.” They simply show him in the “dry light” of the -specialist, the closet-student turned playgoer, but these give a warm, -coloured, speaking likeness of the whole man. I was surprised, then, to -hear my friend the actor asking for Hazlitt’s stage criticisms. I venture -to inquire what, particularly, he wanted them for. “Oh,” he said, “I like -to read about Kean.” - -And certainly if you want to read about Kean, Hazlitt is your man. It has -been said, over and over again, that it was good luck for both actor and -critic that Hazlitt had just begun his theatrical work on the _Morning -Chronicle_ when Kean made his first appearance as Shylock at Drury -Lane. Hazlitt helped to make Kean’s reputation and Kean’s acting was an -invaluable stimulant to Hazlitt’s critical faculties. It is said, by the -way, that Kean was originally recommended to Hazlitt’s notice by his -editor, Perry. Things of this sort may have happened in that weird time -of a century ago, but the age of miracles is passed. Editors of daily -newspapers in our time are not on the look-out for unrevealed histrionic -genius. They have other fish to fry. But Perry seems to have been a -most interfering editor. He plagued his critic with his own critical -opinions. Hazlitt’s first “notice” in the _Chronicle_ was about Miss -Stephens as Polly in _The Beggar’s Opera_. “When I got back, after the -play” (note that he had meditated in advance his “next day’s criticism, -trying to do all the justice I could to so interesting a subject. I -was not a little proud of it by anticipation”—happy Hazlitt!) “Perry -called out, with his cordial, grating voice, ‘Well, how did she do?’ and -on my speaking in high terms, answered that ‘he had been to dine with -his friend the Duke, that some conversation had passed on the subject, -he was afraid it was not the thing, it was not the true _sostenuto_ -style; but as I had written the article’ (holding my peroration on _The -Beggar’s Opera_ carelessly in his hand), ‘it might pass.’... I had -the satisfaction the next day to meet Miss Stephens coming out of the -Editor’s room, who had been to thank him for his very flattering account -of her.” That “carelessly” is a delicious touch, which will come home to -every scribbler. But Perry and his friend the Duke and that glimpse of a -petticoat whisking out of the editor’s room! What a queer, delightful, -vanished newspaper-world! There were, however, even in those days, -editors who did not interfere. Hazlitt was, for a brief period, dramatic -critic of _The Times_ (his most notable contribution was his notice of -Kemble’s retirement in _Coriolanus_, June 25th, 1817), and was evidently -well treated, for in his preface to the “View” (1818) he advises “any one -who has an ambition to write, and to write _his best_ in the periodical -Press, to get, if he can, a position in _The Times_ newspaper, the editor -of which is a man of business and not a man of letters. He may write -there as long and as good articles as he can, without being turned out -for it.” One can only account for Hazlitt’s singular ideal of an editor -as Johnson accounted for an obscure passage in Pope, “Depend upon it, -Sir, he wished to vex somebody.” Hazlitt only wanted to be disagreeable -to Perry. - -Nevertheless, the _Chronicle_ had had the best of Hazlitt’s stage -criticisms, his papers on Kean. Kean’s acting, as I have said, was -invaluable to Hazlitt as a stimulus. It stimulated him to a sort of -rivalry in Shakespearian interpretation, the actor fairly setting his -own conception of the part against the actor’s rendering of it, giving -him magnificent praise when the two agreed, and often finding carefully -pondered reasons for disagreement. Hazlitt might have said of Kean what -Johnson said of Burke: “This fellow calls forth all my powers.” The -result is twofold. You get vivid descriptions of Kean’s acting, his -voice, his figure, his gestures, his perpetual passionateness, in season -and out of season (misrepresenting—_e.g._, Shakespeare’s Richard II., -as Hazlitt said, as a character of passion instead of as a character of -pathos). And at the same time you get the “psychology” (an inevitable -_cliché_, cast since Hazlitt’s day) of the chief Shakespearian tragic -characters, carefully “documented” by the text and elaborated and -coloured by Hazlitt’s sympathetic vision. You see the same process at -work in the criticisms of Kemble and Mrs. Siddons and Macready, but -(remember the great Sarah had had her day before Hazlitt began to write) -with a milder stimulant there was a milder response. In any case it was -a gallery of portraits—a series of full-length figures partly from life -and partly from the Shakespearean text. There was little background or -atmosphere. - -That is what makes Hazlitt’s criticism so unlike any modern sort. He -wrote in an age of great histrionics, great interpretative art, but no -drama, no creative art. His elaborate studies of dead-and-gone players -have (except as illustrating Shakespeare) often a merely antiquarian -interest. It is a curious detail that Kean’s Richard III. in early -performances “stood with his hands stretched out, after his sword was -taken from him,” and later “actually fought with his doubled fists like -some helpless infant.” So it is a curious detail that Napoleon I. wore -a green coat and clasped his hands behind his back. But compare this -dwelling on the _minutiæ_ of an actor’s business or, to take a fairer -example, compare Hazlitt’s analysis of the character of Iago (as a test -of Kean’s presentation)—one of his acutest things—with the range and -variety and philosophic depth of a criticism by Jules Lemaître. You -are in a different world. Instead of the niggling details of how this -man raised his arm at a given moment or delivered a classic speech in -a certain way you get a criticism of life, all life, _quicquid agunt -homines_. It is interesting, mildly interesting, to know that Kean’s -Richard was (for Hazlitt) too grave and his Iago too gay, but after all -we cannot be perpetually contemplating these particular personages of -Shakespeare. We need fresh ideas, fresh creations, new views of society, -anything for a change, so long as it is a thing “to break our minds -upon,” We have no “great” Shakespearean actors now, but even if we had, -should we care to devote to them the minute, elaborate attention paid -by Hazlitt? One thinks of that time, a hundred years ago, of the great -tragedy kings and queens as rather a stuffy world. Playgoing must have -been a formidable enterprise ... but yet, you never can tell. There were -frolicsome compensations. You might come back from the play to the office -to learn your editor had been dining with a duke. And with luck next -morning you might find a pretty actress at his door. - - - - -TALK AT THE MARTELLO TOWER - - -Our boatman with blue eyes and red cheeks is not more skilful with the -oar than any of his fellows or more ready to give you change out of a -shilling when he has rowed you across the harbour, though the notice -board says the fare is twopence. But the ladies love primary colours, -and we had to have him. We all three had our novels, and the blue eyes -glanced at them, especially the yellow-back, with disfavour. He is a -Swedenborgian—our little port, like most, is rich in out-of-the-way -religions—and presumably regards all modern literature as on the wrong -tack. It was not until we had parted with him at the Martello tower that -we dared open our books. - -Selina had grabbed Patty’s, the yellow-back, but she soon laid it down, -and made a face. “My dear Patty,” she said wearily, “how _can_ you go on -reading Gyp? Don’t you see that the silly woman doesn’t even know how to -tell her own silly stories?” - -Patty slightly flushed. She knew Gyp was a countess and -great-granddaughter of Mirabeau-Tonneau, and felt it was almost -Bolshevist manners to call so well-born a woman silly. Nothing could have -been more frigid than her “What on earth do you mean, Selina?” - -“I mean,” said Selina, “that the poor woman is dreadfully _vieux jeu_. -I’m not thinking of her social puppets, her vicious clubmen, her languid -swells, her anti-Semite Hebrews, her fashionable ladies who are no better -than they should be though, goodness knows, these are old-fashioned -enough. She began making them before I was born.” (Selina is no chicken, -but it was horrid of Patty to raise her eyebrows.) “What I mean is, that -she is at the old worn-out game of playing the omniscient author. Here -she is telling you not only what Josette said and did when La Réole -attacked her, but what La Réole said and did when Josette had left -him, and so on. She ‘goes behind’ everybody, tells you what is inside -everybody’s head. Why can’t she take her point of view, and stick to it? -Wasn’t her obvious point of view Josette’s? Then she should have told -us nothing about the other people but what Josette could know or divine -about them.” - -“Ah, Selina,” I interrupted, “your ‘goes behind’ gives you away. You’ve -been reading Henry James’s letters.” - -“Like everybody else,” she snapped. - -“Why, to be sure, oh Jacobite Selina, but one may read them without -taking their æsthetics for law and gospel. I know that the dear man -lectured Mrs. Humphry Ward about the ‘point of view,’ when she was -writing ‘Elinor,’ and got, I fancy, rather a tart answer for his pains. -But you are more intransigent than the master. For he admitted that -the point of view was all according to circumstances, and that some -circumstances—for instance, a big canvas—made ‘omniscience’ inevitable. -What about Balzac and Tolstoy? Both took the omniscient line, and, as -novelists, are not exactly to be sneezed at.” - -“Yes, but Gyp’s isn’t a big canvas,” said Selina, “and it seems to me -_n’en déplaise à votre seigneurie_, that this precious story of hers -called aloud for Josette’s point of view, and nothing but Josette’s. She -is the one decent woman in the book, according to Gyp’s queer standards -of decency” (Patty sniffed), “and the whole point, so far as I can make -out, is the contrast of her decent mind with the highly indecent people -round her. She is as innocent as Maisie, but a Maisie grown up and -married. What a chance for another ‘What Maisie knew’!” - -“I only wish _I_ knew what you two are talking about,” pouted Patty. - -“That is not necessary, dear child,” I said, in my best avuncular manner. -“You are a Maisie yourself—a Maisie who reads French novels. But, Selina, -dear, look at your own Henry James’s own practice. He didn’t always -choose his point of view and stick to it. He chose two in ‘The Golden -Bowl,’ and three in ‘The Wings of the Dove,’ and I’m hanged if I know -whether he took several, or none at all, in ‘The Awkward Age.’” - -“Well,” rejoined Selina, “and isn’t that just why those books don’t quite -come off? Don’t you feel that ‘The Golden Bowl’ is not one book but two, -and that ‘The Wings’ is almost as kaleidoscopic” (Patty gasped) “as ‘The -Ring and the Book’? I mentioned ‘Maisie,’ but after all that was a _tour -de force_, it seemed to have been done for a wager. If you challenge me -to give you real perfection, why, take ‘The Ambassadors’ and ‘The Spoils -of Poynton.’ Was ever the point of view held more tight? Everything seen -through Strether’s eyes, everything through Fleda’s!” - -“Oh, I grant you the success of the method there, but, dear Selina” (I -had lit my pipe and felt equal to out-arguing a non-smoker in the long -run), “let us distinguish.” (Patty strolled away with her Gyp while we -distinguished.) “The method of Henry James was good for Henry James. -What was the ruling motive of his people? Curiosity about one another’s -minds. Now, if he had just told us their minds, straightway, by ‘getting -behind’ each of them in turn, in the ‘omniscient’ style, there would -have been no play of curiosity, no chance for it even to begin, the cat -would have been out of the bag. By putting his point of view inside one -of his people and steadily keeping it fixed there, he turns all the other -people into mere appearances—just as other people are for each one of us -in real life. We have to guess and to infer what is in their minds, we -make mistakes and correct them; sometimes they purposely mislead us. This -is rather a nuisance, perhaps, in the real world of action, where our -curiosity must have a ‘business end’ to it; but it is (for those who like -it, as you and I do, Selina) immense fun in the world of fiction.” - -“Now,” interjected Selina, “you are talking! That is precisely my case.” - -“Stop a minute, Selina. I said the method was good for the writer whose -temperament it suited. But so are other methods for other temperaments. -You may tell your story all in letters, if you are a Richardson, or -with perpetual digressions and statements that you are telling a story, -if you are a Fielding or a Thackeray, or autobiographically, if your -autobiography is a ‘Copperfield’ or a ‘Kidnapped.’ Every author, I -suggest, is a law to himself. And I see no reason why we should bar -‘omniscience,’ as you apparently want to. Why forbid the novelist the -historian’s privilege? Why rule out the novel which is a history of -imaginary facts?” - -“I can’t quite see Gyp as a historian,” said Selina. - -“No more can I, thank goodness,” said Patty. - -And so we were rowed back to the jetty, and the blue eyes didn’t blink -over half-a-crown under the very notice board. - - - - -AGAIN AT THE MARTELLO TOWER - - -Now that regattas are over and oysters have come in again, our little -port has returned to its normal or W. W. Jacobs demeanour. The bathers -on the sand-spit have struck their tents. The Salvation Army band is -practising its winter repertory. When our blue-eyed boatman rowed us over -to the Martello tower again the other day, he almost looked as though -he expected little more than his legal fare. Selina, who has the gift -of management, suggested that Patty should try it on with him, on the -ground, first, that women always do these things better than men, and, -second, that Patty was blue-eyes’ favourite. I acquiesced, and Patty -borrowed half-a-crown of me, so as to be prepared when the time came. - -Meanwhile Selina began to read us extracts from Professor Henri Bergson -on “Laughter.” Selina is a serious person without, so far as I have ever -discovered, a grain of humour in her composition. These are just the -people who read theories of laughter. It is a mystery to them, and they -desire to have it explained. “A laughable expression of the face,” began -Selina, “is one that will make us think of something rigid and, so to -speak, coagulated, in the wonted mobility of the face. What we shall see -will be an ingrained twitching or a fixed grimace. One would say that -the person’s whole moral life has crystallized into this particular cast -of features.” - -“I wonder whether Mr. George Robey’s whole moral life has,” dropped -Patty, innocently. - -“And who, pray,” said Selina, with her heavy eyebrows making semi-circles -of indignant surprise, “is Mr. George Robey?” - -I sat silent. I had just brought my niece back from a short but -variegated stay in town. I knew, but I would not tell. - -“Why, Selina, dear,” answered Patty, “you are the very image of him with -your eyebrows rounded like that. He is always glaring at the audience -that way.” - -“_Will_ you, Patty,” said Selina, now thoroughly roused, “be good enough -to tell me who he _is_?” - -“Well, he’s an actor, who makes the very faces your Bergson describes. -Uncle took me to see him in a” (catching my warning eye)—“in a sort of -historical play. He was Louis XV., at Versailles, you know.” - -“H’m,” said Selina, “it’s rather a doubtful period; and the very best -historical plays do make such a hash of history. Was it in blank verse? -Blank verse will do much to mitigate the worst period.” - -“N-no,” answered Patty, “I don’t think it was in blank verse. I didn’t -notice; did you, Uncle?” - -I tried to prevaricate. “Well, you never know about blank verse on the -stage nowadays, nearly all the actors turn it into prose. Mr. Robey may -have been speaking blank verse, as though it were prose. The best artists -cannot escape the fashion of the moment, you know.” - -“But what did he do?” insisted Selina, “What was the action of the play?” - -Patty considered. “I don’t remember his doing anything, Selina, dear, but -chuck the ladies of the Court under the chin. Oh, yes, and he made eyes -at them affectionately.” - -“A pretty sort of historical play, on my word!” exclaimed Selina. - -“Oh, it wasn’t _all_ historical, Selina, dear,” said Patty, sweetly. “A -lot of it was thoroughly modern, and Mr. Robey wore a frock coat, and -such a funny little bowler hat, and another time he was a street musician -in Venice with a stuffed monkey pinned to his coat-tails.” - -Selina looked at me. There was a silent pause that would have made -anybody else feel uncomfortable, but I was equal to the occasion. I -snatched Selina’s book out of her hand, and said, cheerfully, “You see, -Selina, it’s all explained here. Wonderful fellow, Bergson. ‘Something -mechanical encrusted upon the living,’ that’s the secret of the comic. -Depend upon it, he had seen George Robey and the stuffed monkey. And if -Bergson, who’s a tremendous swell, member of the institute, and all that, -why not Patty and I?” - -“And where,” asked Selina, with a rueful glance at the Bergson book, -as though she began to distrust theories of the comic, “where was this -precious performance?” - -“At the Alhambra,” answered Patty, simply. - -“The Alhambra! I remember Chateaubriand once visited it,” said Selina, -who is nothing if not literary, “but I didn’t know it was the haunt of -philosophers.” - -I looked as though it was, but Patty tactlessly broke in, “Oh, I wish -you two wouldn’t talk about philosophers. Can’t one laugh at Mr. Robey -without having him explained by Bergson? Anyhow, I don’t believe he can -explain Mr. Nelson Keys.” - -“Another of your historical actors?” inquired Selina with some bitterness. - -“Yes, Selina, dear, and much more historical than Mr. Robey. He played -Beau Brummell and they were all there, Fox and Sheridan and the Prince of -Wales, you know, all out of your favourite Creevey, and they said ‘egad’ -and ‘la’ and ‘monstrous fine,’ and bowed and congee’d like anything—oh, -it was awfully historical.” - -Selina, a great reader of memoirs, was a little mollified. “Come,” she -said, “this is better—though the Regency is another dangerous period. I’m -glad, however, that Londoners seem to be looking to the theatre for a -little historical instruction.” - -“Yes, Selina,” I said, feeling that it would be dangerous to let Patty -speak just at that moment, “and there is a certain type of contemporary -play, called _revue_, which recognizes that demand and seldom, if -ever, fails to cater for it. In _revues_ I have renewed acquaintance -with the heroes of classical antiquity, with prominent crusaders, with -Queen Elizabeth, with the Grand Monarque—a whole course of history, in -fact. Let Bergson explain that, if he can. And, what is more wonderful -still, our _revue_ artists, whose talent is usually devoted to provoking -laughter, seem willingly to forgo it for the honour of appearing as an -historical personage. Mr. Robey and Mr. Keys, I should tell you, are -both professional laughter-provokers, indeed are the heads of their -profession, yet one is content to posture as Louis Quinze and the other -as Beau Brummell without any real chance of being funny. So the past ever -exerts its prestige over us. So the muse of history still weaves her -spell.” - -“Which was the muse of history, Patty, dear?” said Selina, whose -equanimity was now happily restored. - -“Oh, bother, I forget,” said Patty, “and, anyhow, I don’t think she has -as much to do with _revues_ as uncle pretends. Give me the real muse of -_revue_ who inspired Mr. Keys with his German waiter and his Spanish -mandolinist and his Japanese juggler and——” - -“This,” I said, to put an end to Patty’s indiscreet prattle, “must be the -muse of geography.” - -Patty gave me no change out of my half-crown. The boatman said he didn’t -happen to have any. So much for Selina’s management! - - - - -THE SILENT STAGE - - -The spoken drama and the silent stage. I came across this dichotomy in -_The Times_ the other day, not without a pang, for it was a day too late. -It is not a true dichotomy. It does not distinguish accurately between -the story told by living actors to our faces and the story told by -successive photographs of such actors. For the “silent stage” would cover -pantomime, a form of drama, and a very ancient form, acted by living -actors. It is not true, but it is for practical uses true enough. In life -we have to make the best of rough approximations. I would have used this -one gratefully had it occurred to me in my moment of need. But it did not. - -Let me explain. One of our more notable comedians (I purposely put it -thus vaguely, partly out of discretion, partly with a bid for that -interest which the mystery of anonymity is apt to confer upon an -otherwise matter-of-fact narrative, as George Borrow well knew)—one of -our most notable comedians, then, had asked me to accompany him to a -“cinema” rehearsal wherein he was cast for the principal part. I eagerly -accepted, because the art of the “cinema” is becoming so important in -our daily life that one really ought to learn something about it, -and, moreover, because the _cuisine_ of any art (see the Diary of the -De Goncourts _passim_) is a fascinating thing in itself. Our rehearsal -was to be miles away, in the far East of London, and the mere journey -was a geographical adventure. The scene was a disused factory, and a -disused factory has something of the romantic melancholy of a disaffected -cathedral—not the romance of ruins, but the romance of a fabric still -standing and valid, but converted to alien uses. - -Our first question on arrival was, were we late? This question seems to -be a common form of politeness with notable comedians, and is probably -designed to take the wind out of the sails of possible criticism. No, we -were not late—though everybody seemed to be suspiciously ready and, one -feared, waiting. They were a crowd of ladies and gentlemen in elaborate -evening dress, all with faces painted a rich _café au lait_ or else -salmon-colour, and very odd such a crowd looked against the whitewashed -walls and bare beams of the disused factory. The scenery looked even -more odd. It presented the middle fragments of everything without any -edges. There was a vast baronial hall, decorated with suits of armour and -the heaviest furniture, but without either ceiling or walls. There was -a staircase hung, so to speak, in the air, leading to a doorway, which -was just the framework of a door, standing alone, let into nothing. It -seemed uncanny, until you remembered the simple fact that the camera -can cover just as much, or as little, of a scene as it chooses. Great -glaring “cinema” lights—I had not seen them since the Beckett-Carpentier -flight—cast an unearthly pallor upon the few unpainted faces. The crowd -of painted ladies and gentlemen hung about, waiting for their scene with -what seemed to me astonishing patience. But patience, I suspect, is a -necessary virtue at all rehearsals, whether “spoken” or “silent.” - -And that distinction brings me to the producer. It was for him that I -should have liked to have thought of it. For he fell to talking to me -about his art, the art of production, and of cinematography in general, -and I found myself forced to make some comparisons with what I had, up -to that moment, always thought of as the “regular” stage. But evidently, -as Jeffery said of Wordsworth’s poem, this would never do. The producer -might have thought I was reflecting upon his art, about which he was -so enthusiastic, as something “irregular.” At last, after deplorable -hesitation, I found my phrase—the “other” stage. Dreadfully tame, I -admit, but safe; it hurt nobody. Even now, however, I have an uneasy -feeling that the producer was not quite satisfied with it. I ought -perhaps to have accompanied it with a shrug, some sign of apology for so -much as recognizing the existence of “other” stages of anything else, in -short, than what was, at that moment and on that spot, _the_ stage, the -“silent” stage, the stage of moving pictures. It was like speaking of -Frith’s “Derby Day” in the presence of a Cubist. Artistic enthusiasts -must be allowed their little exclusions. - -If the producer was an enthusiast, there was certainly a method in his -enthusiasm. His table was covered with elaborate geometrical drawings, -which, I was told, were first sketches for successive scenes. On pegs -hung little schedules of the artists required for each scene, and of -the scenes wherein each of the principals was concerned. Innumerable -photographs, of course—photographs of scenes actually represented on -the “film,” and of others not represented, experiments for the actual, -final thing. For it is to be remembered that the producer of a “film” is -relatively more important than the producer of a “spoken drama.” He is -always part, and sometimes whole, author of the play. He has to conceive -the successive phases of the action in detail, and to conceive them in -terms of photography. Even with some one else’s play as a datum he has, -I take it, to invent a good deal. For while the “spoken drama” can only -show selected, critical moments of life, the “silent stage” aims at -continuity and gives you the intervening moments. On the one stage, when -a lady makes an afternoon call, you see her hostess’s drawing-room, and -she walks in; on the other stage you see her starting from home, jumping -into her Rolls-Royce, dashing through the crowded streets, knocking at -the front door, being relieved of her cloak by the flunkey, mounting the -stairs to the drawing-room, etc., etc. Indeed, this mania for continuity -is a besetting sin of the “silent stage”; it leads to sheer irrelevance -and the ruin of all proportion. My enthusiastic producer, it is only fair -to say, was far too good an artist to approve it. - -“At the first whistle, get ready,” shouted the producer, “at the second, -slow waltz, please.” And then the baronial hall was filled by the crowd -of exemplary patience and they danced with unaffected enjoyment, these -gay people, just as though no camera were directed on them. The heroine -appeared (she was the daughter of the house, and this was her first -ball—indicated by a stray curl down her back), and her ravishing pink -gown, evidently a choice product of the West-end, looked strange in -a disused East-end factory. Of course she had adopted the inexorable -“cinema” convention of a “Cupid’s bow” mouth. Here is the youngest of -the arts already fast breeding its own conventions. Surely the variety -of female lips might be recognized! Women’s own mouths are generally -prettier, and certainly more suitable to their faces, than some rigidly -fixed type. It would be ungallant to say that the leading lady’s “Cupid’s -bow” did not become her, but the shape of her own mouth, I venture to -suggest, would have been better still. And where was my friend the -notable comedian all this time? Rigging himself out in evening clerical -dress for the ball (he was the vicar of the parish), and evidently -regarding his momentary deviation into “film” work (for the benefit of a -theatrical charity) as great fun. Will the heroes of the “silent stage,” -I wonder, ever deviate into “spoken drama”? It would be startling to hear -Charlie Chaplin speak. - - - - -THE MOVIES - - -All is dark and an excellent orchestra is playing a Beethoven symphony. -The attendant flashes you to your seat with her torch, you tumble over -a subaltern, and murmur to yourself, with Musset’s Fantasio, “Quelles -solitudes que tous ces corps humains!” For that is the first odd thing -that strikes you about the movies; the psychology of the audience is not -collective, but individual. You are not aware of your neighbour, who is -shrouded from your gaze, and you take your pleasure alone. Thus you are -rid of the “contagion of the crowd,” the claims of human sympathy, the -imitative impulse, and thrown in upon yourself, a hermit at the mercy of -the hallucinations that beset the solitary. You never applaud, for that -is a collective action. What with the soothing flow of the music, the -darkness, and the fact that your eye is fixed on one bright spot, you -are in the ideal condition for hypnotism. But the suspected presence of -others, vague shadows hovering near you, give your mood the last touch of -the uncanny. You are a prisoner in Plato’s cave or in some crepuscular -solitude of Maeterlinck. Anything might happen. - -According to the programme what happens is called _The Prodigal Wife_. -Her husband is a doctor and she pines for gaiety while he is busy at -the hospital. It is her birthday and he has forgotten to bring her her -favourite roses, which are in fact offered to her by another gentleman -with more leisure and a better memory. Our own grievance against the -husband, perhaps capricious, is his appalling straw hat—but then we -equally dislike the lovers tail-coat, so matters are even, and the lady’s -preference of No. 2 to No. 1 seems merely arbitrary. Anyhow, she goes -off with No. 2 in a motor-car, “all out,” leaving the usual explanatory -letter behind her, which is thrown on the screen for all of us to gloat -over. - -Here let me say that this profuse exhibition on the screen of all the -correspondence in the case, letters, telegrams, copies of verses, last -wills and testaments, the whole _dossier_, strikes me as a mistake. It -under-values the intelligence of the audience, which is quite capable -of guessing what people are likely to write in the given circumstances -without being put to the indelicacy of reading it. As it is, you no -sooner see some one handling a scrap of paper than you know you are going -to have the wretched scrawl thrust under your nose. As if we didn’t know -all about these things! As if it wouldn’t be pleasanter to leave the -actual text to conjecture! I remember in _Rebellious Susan_ there is a -packet of compromising letters shown to interested parties, whose vague -comments, “Well, after _that_,” etc., sufficiently enlighten us without -anything further. But now, when Lady Macbeth reads her lord’s letter, up -it goes on the screen, blots and all. This is an abuse of the film, which -finds it easier to exhibit a letter than to explain why it came to be -written. As things are, the lady seems to have eloped in a hurry without -sufficient grounds. No. 2 presents his roses, and, hey presto! the car -is round the corner. No. 1 takes it very nobly, hugs his abandoned babe -to his bosom, and pulls long faces (obligingly brought nearer the camera -to show the furrows). The mother’s sin shall ever be hidden from the -innocent child, and to see the innocent child innocently asking, “Where’s -muvver?” and being answered with sad headshakes from the bereaved parent -(now bang against the camera) is to bathe in sentimental photography up -to the neck. - -Thereafter the innocent child grows like (and actually inside) a rosebud -till, as the petals fall off, she is revealed as a buxom young woman—the -familiar photographic trick of showing one thing _through_ another being -here turned to something like poetic advantage. But then the film again -bolts with the theme. There is running water and a boat, things which -no film can resist. Away go the girl and her sweetheart on a river -excursion, loosening the painter, jumping in, shoving off, performing, -in short, every antic which in photography can be compassed with a -stream and a boat. We have forgotten all about the prodigal wife. But -here she is again, her hair in grey _bandeaux_ and her lips, as the -relentless camera shows you at short range, rouged with a hard outline. -She has returned to her old home as the family nurse. For there is now -another innocent babe, the doctor’s grandchild, to wax and wane with -the advancing and receding camera, and to have its little “nightie” -blown realistically by the usual wind as it stands on the stair-head. -The doctor himself is as busy as ever, making wonderful pharmacological -discoveries (newspaper extracts exhibited on the screen) in a laboratory -blouse and dictating the results (notes shown on the screen) to an -enterprising reporter. - -And here there is another “rushed” elopement. “The art of drama,” -said Dumas, “is the art of preparations.” But nothing has prepared us -(save, perhaps, heredity) for the sudden freak of the prodigal wife’s -daughter in running away with a lover so vague that you see only his -hat (another hideous straw—_il ne manquait que ca_!) and the glow of -his cigarette-end. Family nurse to the rescue! Tender expostulations, -reminders about the innocent babe, and nick-of-time salvation of the -“intending” runaway. Ultimate meeting of nurse and doctor; he is all -forgiveness, but prodigal wives are not to be forgiven like that. No, she -must go out into the snow, and you see her walking down the long path, -dwindling, dwindling, from a full-sized nurse into a Euclidean point. - -To sum up. The camera would do better if it would learn self-denial and -observe the law of artistic economy, keep its people consistently in one -plane and out of boats and motor cars, _soigner_ its crises a little -more, and avoid publishing correspondence. And it should slacken its pace -a bit. You may take the Heraclitean philosophy—πάντα χωρεῖ—a little too -literally. The movies would be all the more moving for moving slower. - -For the real fun of rapid motion, appropriately used, give me _Mutt -and Jeff_. Mutt, buried in the sand, with a head like an egg, prompts -an ostrich to lay another egg, from which emerges a brood of little -ostriches. Jeff goes out to shoot them, but his shots glance off in -harmless wreaths of smoke. When Mutt and Jeff exchange ideas you see them -actually travelling like an electric spark along the wire, from brain to -brain. The ostrich hoists Mutt out of the sand by the breeches. Collapse -of Jeff. It suggests a drawing by Caran d’Ache in epileptic jerks. The -natural history pictures, too, the deer and the birds, strike one as -admirable examples of what animated photography can do for us in the -way of instruction as well as amusement.... And the orchestra has been -playing all this time, Beethoven and Mozart, a “separate ecstasy.” And -again I stumble over the subaltern, and wonder to find people moving so -slowly in Piccadilly Circus. - - - - -TIME AND THE FILM - - -There was a gentleman in Molière, frequently mentioned since and now -for my need to be unblushingly mentioned again, who said to another -gentleman, about never mind what, that _le temps ne fait rien à -l’affaire_. But Molière belonged to that effete art the “spoken -drama,” which we learn, from America, has sunk to be used mainly as -an advertisement of the play which is subsequently to be filmed out -of it. He wrote in the dark or pre-film ages, and could not know what -an all-important part _le temps_ was to play in _l’affaire_ of the -film. Among its innumerable and magnificent activities the film is an -instructor of youth, and it seems, from a letter which the Rev. Dr. -Lyttelton has written to _The Times_, it instructs at a pace which -is a little too quick for the soaring human boy. “Elephants,” the -reverend Doctor pathetically complains, “are shown scuttling about like -antelopes,” and so the poor boy mixes up antelopes and elephants and gets -his zoology all wrong. I should myself have innocently supposed that this -magical acceleration of pace is one of the great charms of the film for -the boy. It not only provides him with half-a-dozen pictures in the time -it would have taken him to read one of them in print (to say nothing of -his being saved the trouble of reading, learning the alphabet, and other -pedagogic nuisances altogether), but it offers him something much more -exciting and romantic than his ordinary experience. He knows that at the -Zoo elephants move slowly, but here on the film they are taught, in the -American phrase, to “step lively,” and are shown scuttling about like -antelopes. A world wherein the ponderous and slow elephant is suddenly -endowed by the magician’s wand with the lightness and rapidity of the -antelope—what enhancement for boys, aye, and for grown-ups too! - -Indeed, it seems to me that the greatest achievement of the film is its -triumph over time. Some amateurs may find its chief charm in the perfect -“Cupid’s bow” of its heroines’ mouths; others in the remarkable English -prose of its explanatory accompaniments; others, again, in its exquisite -humour of protagonists smothered in flour or soap-lather or flattened -under runaway motor-cars. I admit the irresistible fascination of these -delights and can quite understand how they come to be preferred to the -high-class opera company which has been introduced at the Capitol, New -York, to entertain “between pictures.” But I still think the prime merit -of the film—the real reason for which last year more than enough picture -films to encircle the earth at the Equator left the United States of -America for foreign countries—lies in its ability to play as it will -with time. The mere acceleration of pace (which is the ordinary game it -plays)—the fierce galloping of horses across prairies, the miraculous -speed of motor-cars, elephants scuttling about like antelopes—gives a -sharp sense of exhilaration, of victory over sluggish nature. And even -here there is an educational result that ought to console Dr. Lyttelton. -The rate of plant growth is multiplied thousands of times so that we are -enabled actually to see the plants growing, expanding from bud to flower -under our eyes. But there is also the retardation of pace, which is even -more wonderful. A diver is shown plunging into the water and swimming at -a rate which allows the minutest movement of the smallest muscle to be -clearly seen. This is an entirely beautiful thing; but I should suppose -that the film, by its power of exhibiting movements naturally too quick -for the eye at whatever slower rate is desired, must have extraordinary -use for scientific investigations. This, at any rate, is a better use for -the film than that sometimes claimed for it in the field of morality. -I look with suspicion on those films, as I do on those “spoken” plays, -that propose to do us good by exhibiting the details of this or that -“social evil.” Some philanthropic societies, I believe, have introduced -such pictures in all good faith. But many of their producers are, like -the others, merely out to make money, and in every case I imagine their -patrons to be drawn to them not by any moral impulse, but by a prurient -curiosity—the desire to have a peep into the forbidden. - -But to return to the question of time. It has its importance, too, in -the “spoken drama,” but it ceases to be a question of visible pace. You -cannot make real men and women scuttle about like antelopes. You can only -play tricks with the clock. The act-drop is invaluable for getting your -imaginary time outstripping your real time:— - - jumping o’er times, - Turning the accomplishment of many years - Into an hour-glass. - -In a moment it bridges over for you the gap between youth and age, as -in _Sweethearts_. But there is another way of playing tricks with the -clock, by making it stand still for some of your personages, while it -ticks regularly for the rest. A. E. W. Mason, in one of his stories, gave -an extra quarter of an hour now and then to one of the characters—that -is to say, the clock stopped for them during that period, but not for -him—and while _outside_ time, so to speak, he could do all sorts of -things (if I remember rightly he committed a murder) without risk of -detection. But the great magician of this kind is Barrie. The heroine -of his _Truth about the Russian Dancers_ had a sudden desire for an -infant, and within a half-hour was delivered of one; a remarkably rapid -case of _parthenogenesis_. The infant was carried out and returned the -next moment a child of ten. “He grows apace,” said somebody. These -were cases of the clock galloping. With the heroine of _Mary Rose_ on -the island it stands still, so that she returns twenty-five years later -to her family precisely the same girl as she left them. We all know -what pathetic effects Barrie gets out of this trick with the clock. -But he has, of course, to assume supernatural intervention to warrant -them. And there you have the contrast with the film. In the “spoken -drama,” poor, decrepit old thing, they appeal to that silly faculty, -the human imagination; whereas the film has only to turn some wheels -quicker or slower and it is all done for you, under your nose, without -any imagination at all. Elephants are scuttling about like antelopes -and divers plunging into the water at a snail’s pace. No wonder that, -according to our New York advices, “film magnates have made so much -money that they have been able to buy chains of theatres throughout the -country,” and that “everybody talks films in the United States.” - - - - -FUTURIST DANCING - - -That amazing propagandist, Signor Marinetti, of Milan, who favours me -from time to time with his manifestos, now sends “La Danse Futuriste.” -I confess that I have not a ha’porth of Futurism in my composition. -I am what Signor Marinetti would himself call a Passéiste, a mere -Pastist. Hence I have generally failed to discover any meaning in these -manifestos, and have thrown them into the waste-paper basket. But as -the present one happens to arrive at the same time as another Futurist -tract—Signor Ardengo Soffici’s “Estetica Futurista”—I have read the two -together, to see if one throws any light on the other. It is right to -say that “the” Soffici (to adopt an Italianism) disclaims any connexion -with “the” Marinetti, explaining that he puts forward a doctrine, whereas -official Futurism has no doctrine, but only manifestos. It couldn’t have, -he rather unkindly adds, seeing that its very nature is “anticultural and -instinctolatrous.” (Rather jolly, don’t you think, the rich and varied -vocabulary of these Italian gentlemen?) Nevertheless, I have ventured -to study one document by the light of the other; and, if the result is -only to make darkness visible, it is a certain gain, after all, to get -anything visible in such a matter. - -And first for the Marinetti. His manifesto begins by taking an historical -survey of dancing through the ages. The earliest dances, he points out, -reflected the terror of humanity at the unknown and the incomprehensible -in the Cosmos. Thus round dances were rhythmical pantomimes reproducing -the rotatory movement of the stars. The gestures of the Catholic -priest in the celebration of Mass imitate these early dances and -contain the same astronomical symbol—a statement calculated to provoke -devout Catholics to fury. (I should like to hear the learned author of -“The Golden Bough” on the anthropological side of it.) Then came the -lascivious dances of the East, and their modern Parisian counterpart—or -sham imitation. For this he gives a quasi-mathematical formula in the -familiar Futurist style. “Parisian red pepper + buckler + lance + ecstasy -before idols signifying nothing + nothing + undulation of Montmartre hips -= erotic Pastist anachronism for tourists.” Golly, what a formula! - -Before the war Paris went crazy over dances from South America: the -Argentine _tango_, the Chilean _zamacueca_, the Brazilian _maxixe_, the -Paraguayan _santafé_. Compliments to Diaghileff, Nijinsky (“the pure -geometry” of dancing), and Isadora Duncan, “whose art has many points -of contact with impressionism in painting, just as Nijinsky’s has -with the forms and masses of Cézanne.” Under the influence of Cubist -experiments, and particularly under the influence of Picasso, dancing -became an autonomous art. It was no longer subject to music, but took -its place. Kind words for Dalcroze; but “we Futurists prefer Loie Fuller -and the nigger cake-walk (utilization of electric light and machinery).” -Machinery’s the thing! “We must have gestures imitating the movements -of motors, pay assiduous court to wings, wheels, pistons, prepare the -fusion of man and machine, and so arrive at the metallism of Futurist -dancing. Music is fundamentally nostalgic, and on that account rarely -of any use in Futurist dancing. Noise, caused by friction and shock of -solid bodies, liquids, or high-pressure gases, has become one of the -most dynamic elements of Futurist poesy. Noise is the language of the -new human-mechanical life.” So Futurist dancing will be accompanied by -“organized noises” and the orchestra of “noise-makers” invented by Luigi -Russolo. Finally, Futurist dancing will be:— - - Inharmonious—Ungraceful—Asymmetrical—Dynamic—_Motlibriste_. - -All this, of course, is as plain as a pikestaff. The Futurist aim is -simply to run counter to tradition, to go by rule of contrary, to say -No when everybody for centuries has been saying Yes, and Yes when -everybody has been saying No. But when it comes to putting this principle -into practice we see at once there are limitations. Thus, take the -Marinetti’s first example, the “Aviation” dance. The dancer will dance on -a big map (which would have pleased the late Lord Salisbury). She must -be a continual palpitation of azure veils. On her breast she will wear -a (celluloid) screw, and for her hat a model monoplane. She will dance -before a succession of screens, bearing the announcements 800 metres, -500 metres, etc. She will leap over a heap of green stuffs (indicating a -mountain). “Organized noises” will imitate rain and wind and continual -interruptions of the electric light will simulate lightning, while the -dancer will jump through hoops of pink paper (sunset) and blue paper -(night). And so forth. - -Was there ever such a lame and impotent conclusion? The new dancing, -so pompously announced, proves to be nothing but the crude symbolism -to be seen already in every Christmas pantomime—nay, in every village -entertainment or “vicar’s treat.” And we never guessed, when our aunts -took us to see the good old fun, that we were witnessing something -dynamic and _motlibriste!_ - -I turn to the Soffici. He finds the philosophy of Futurism in the clown, -because the clown’s supreme wisdom is to run counter to common sense. -“The universe has no meaning outside the fireworks of phenomena—say the -tricks and acts and jokes of the clown. Your problems, your systems, are -absurd, dear sirs; all’s one and nothing counts save the sport of the -imagination. Let us away with our ergotism, with the lure of reason, let -us abandon ourselves entirely to the frenzy of innovations that provoke -wonder.” It is this emancipation, adds the Soffici, this artificial -creation of a lyric reality independent of the _nexus_ of natural -manifestations and appearances, this gay symbolism, that our æsthetic -puts forward as the aim for the new artist. - -Well, we have seen how gay was the symbolism devised by the Marinetti. -And how inadequate, how poor in invention. Dancing that has to be eked -out by labelled screens and paper hoops and pyramids of stuffs! That is -what we get from the new artist. The old artists had a different way; -when they had to symbolize, they did it by _dancing_, without extraneous -aid. When Karsavina symbolized golf, she required no “property” but -a golf-ball. All the rest was the light fantastic toe. When Genée -symbolized Cinderella’s kitchen drudgery, she just seized a broom and -danced, divinely, with it. But that was before the Marinetti made his -grand discovery that music is too nostalgic for dancing purposes and -that the one thing needful is organized noise—as organized by Luigi -Russolo.... No, it is no use trying; I remain an incorrigible Pastist. - - - - -HROSWITHA - - -Writing about Hroswitha’s _Callimachus_, as performed by the Art Theatre, -I touched upon the unintentionally comic aspect of a tenth-century -miracle play to a twentieth-century audience. Naturally this is not an -aspect of the matter which recommends itself to a lady who is about to -publish a translation of Hroswitha’s plays with a preface by a cardinal, -and in a published letter she protests that the fun which the Art Theatre -got out of _Callimachus_ was not justified by the text. Let me hasten -to acquit the Art Theatre of the misdemeanour attributed to it by Miss -Christopher St. John. There was nothing intentionally funny in its -performance. The players acted their parts with all possible simplicity -and sincerity. The smiling was all on our side of the footlights. But I -said that the smile was “reverent,” because of the sacred nature of the -subject-matter. - -This opens up the question of the frame of mind in which we moderns ought -to approach works of “early” art. The first effort of a critic—we must -all be agreed about that—should be to put himself, imaginatively, in the -artist’s place. He has to try to think himself back into the time, the -place, the circumstances of the work, and into the artist’s temperament, -intentions, and means of execution. We look at the Madonna of Cimabue -in the church of Santa Maria Novella, and our first impulse is to find -her ungainly, uncouth, without spiritual significance. It is only by -thinking ourselves back among the Florentines of the thirteenth century -that we can understand and appreciate Cimabue’s appeal. But consider how -difficult—or, rather, impossible—that thinking-back process is. Consider -what we have to unlearn. We have to make ourselves as though we had -never seen the Sistine Madonna of Raphael; much more than that, we have -mentally to wipe out six centuries of human history. Manifestly it cannot -be done; we can never see the Cimabue picture as Cimabue himself saw it -or as his Florentine contemporaries saw it. We have to try; but what we -shall at best succeed in attaining is a palimpsest, the superimposition -of new artistic interpretation on the old. And when we say that classics -are immortal, we only mean that they are capable of yielding a perpetual -series of fresh palimpsests, of being perpetually “hatched again and -hatched different.” We cannot see Dante’s _Commedia_ as Dante or Dante’s -first readers saw it. For us its politics are dead and its theology -grotesque; it lives for us now by its spirituality, its majesty, and the -beauty of its form. But with works that are not classics, works that -are not susceptible of a perpetual rebirth, the case is even harder. -They are inscriptions that we can no longer decipher; we cannot think -ourselves, for a moment, back in the mind of the author. They have become -for us curios. - -And that is what Hroswitha’s _Callimachus_ has become: a curio. How can -we put ourselves back in the mind of a nun in the Convent of Gandersheim -in the age of Otho the Great? I say “we.” For nuns perhaps (having, I -assume, a mentality nearer the tenth century than the rest of us) may -take a fair shot at it. So, too, may cardinals, whose august mentality I -do not presume to fathom. But it is certain that common worldly men, mere -average playgoers, cannot do it. - -But, it will be objected, are we not, or most of us, still Christians? -Are we not still capable of understanding prayers, miracles, saintliness, -raising from the dead, “conversion,” and all the other subject-matter -of _Callimachus_? To be sure we are; hence my “reverent” smile. If -Christianity were dead (or, as in Swift’s ironical pamphlet, abolished by -Act of Parliament) _Callimachus_ would be simply meaningless for us, a -nothing, mere mummery. It is not the matter of the play that provokes our -smile; but its form. The “fun,” says Miss St. John, is “not justified by -the text.” She is thinking of the matter, abounding in piety and tending -to edification; but in point of fact the language, the “text”—at any -rate in theatrical representation (far be it from me to prejudice her -forthcoming book)—has its comic side. Callimachus’s abrupt declaration -of his passion to Drusiana and the terms of her rejection of him are -both, to a modern audience, irresistibly comic. They are not meaningless, -but they are delightfully impossible: they are love-making as imagined -by a nun, the very person who _ex hypothesi_ knows nothing about it. You -have, in fact, precisely the same delicious absurdity, proceeding from -an imagination necessarily uninstructed by experience, as you get in -Miss Daisy Ashford’s book. (Several critics have made this comparison. -I am really chagrined not to have thought of it myself. But it should -show Miss St. John that I am, at any rate, not the only one who found -_Callimachus_ comic.) - -Further, and quite apart from the exquisite naïveties of its text, -the form of the play is so childlike and bland as to be really funny. -The players, when not engaged in the action, stand motionless in a -semi-circle. Changes of scene are indicated by two performers crossing -the stage in opposite directions—a genuine cricket “over.” Characters -are understood to be stricken with death when they composedly lie -down on their backs. Others trot in pairs round Drusiana’s prostrate -form and you understand they are journeying to her tomb. All this, of -course, is merely primitive “convention.” Could we put ourselves back -into Hroswitha’s time, it would pass unnoticed. In our own time, with a -different set of “conventions,” that make some attempt at imitation of -reality, we naturally laugh at these old conventions. We laugh, but we -are interested; our curiosity is being catered for, we like to see what -the old conventions were. The curio, in short, is amusing in the fullest -sense of the term. - -And it leaves us with a desire to know more about Hroswitha, the “white -rose” of the tenth century (if that be really the meaning of her name). -Perhaps the Cardinal’s preface will tell us more. One remark occurs. -It seems a little significant that a nun should have written all her -plays on the one theme of chastity. It must have been an obsession with -her, this virtue to which, as Renan said, nature attaches so little -importance. And, in hunting her theme, this nun does not scruple to -pursue it to the strangest places. She even puts courtesans upon the -stage and houses of ill-fame. How on earth did the good lady imagine -these unconventual topics? The question suggests some puzzles about -the psychology of nuns. But one only has to see _Callimachus_ to know -that Hroswitha must have been as pure as snow, or as a white rose, as -innocently ignorant, in fact, of what she was writing about as Miss Daisy -Ashford when she described an elopement. - - - - -PAGELLO - - -Long before _Madame Sand_ was produced at the Duke of York’s Theatre more -had been written all the world over about the trip of George Sand and -Alfred de Musset to Venice in 1833-4 than about the decline and fall of -the Roman Empire or the campaigns of the Great War. A heavy fine should -be imposed on any one who needlessly adds a drop of ink to the vast mass -of controversy that has raged round that subject, and I promise to leave -the main story, which must be known to every adult man and woman in the -two hemispheres, severely alone. But there is a subordinate actor in -the story, to whom injustice, I think, has been done on all hands, and -whose case it would be an act of the merest decency to reconsider. I mean -Pietro Pagello. - -His case was prejudiced from the first by the dissemination of an -atrocious libel. When a patient alleges scandalous behaviour between -doctor and nurse, it is well to be sure of the witness’s mental -condition. Now Musset was suffering, not, as Pagello politely put it, -from typhoid fever, but from _delirium tremens_. This would at once -disqualify him as an eye-witness. But the fact is Musset himself never -made the allegation; the story was spread about by brother Paul, a -terrible liar. Pagello had been called in first to attend not Alfred, but -George herself, for severe headache. Half a century later he remembered -that her lips were thick and ugly, and her teeth discoloured by the -cigarettes she was perpetually smoking; but she charmed him by her -wonderful eyes: _per gli occhi stupendi_. After they had both nursed -Alfred to convalescence the _occhi stupendi_ made short work with the -young doctor. In the common phrase, George threw herself at him. People -who don’t study the facts talk of the new arrangement as though it were -a betrayal; but observe that it was of the highest convenience not only -to George, but to Alfred. It enabled the poet to get away alone to -Paris with an easier conscience; it provided George, compelled to stay -on in Venice to complete her tale of “copy,” with a protector. But we -are in 1834, with romanticism at its most ecstatic and “sublime.” So -the convenience of the situation is draped in phrases and bedewed with -tears. Alfred shed them with enthusiasm, while Pagello swore to him -to look after the happiness of George. “Il nostro amore per Alfredo” -was Pagello’s delightful way of putting it. A singular trio! Evidently -poor Pagello was George’s slave. What was a poor young Venetian medical -gentleman to do? A foreign lady with _occhi stupendi_ (and a habit of -writing eight or nine hours a day on end) handed over to him, with -tears of enthusiasm, by a grateful patient! Anyhow, Pagello showed his -sense by removing the lady to cheaper lodgings. When Venice grew a -little too hot he escorted her on a trip to Tirol, taking her on the way -(such were the pleasing manners of the time) to see his father! He was -a little short with me, says the son, but he received her with _cortesi -ospitalita_, and the pair discussed French literature. Mr. Max Beerbohm -should draw the picture. - -It has been the fashion to dismiss Pagello as a mere nincompoop. But -if he had been that, a George Sand would not have cared a rap for him, -and he would have been terrified by George. As it was, when she asked -him to take her back to Paris he “chucked” his practice and cheerfully -parted with his pictures and plate to provide funds for the journey. He -was, at any rate, a disinterested lover; but the truth seems to be he -was not passionate enough for George. “Pagello is an angel of virtue,” -she writes to Musset, “he is so full of sensibility and so good ... -he surrounds me with care and attention.... For the first time in my -life I love without passion.... Well, for my part, I feel the need to -suffer for some one. Oh! why couldn’t I live between the two of you and -make you happy without belonging to either?” But by the time she had -reached Paris she was already thinking of belonging to Alfred again, and -“door-stepped” Pagello. Her Parisian set, of course, made fun of him. -The poor gentleman’s situation was, indeed, sufficiently awkward. But it -is not true, as it is the fashion to say, that he was “sent straight -back.” George, who had retreated to Nohant, invited him there, but he had -the good sense to decline. She was afraid he might be in want of money, -and wrote to a friend, “he will never take it from a woman, even as a -loan.” She, at any rate, knew he was a gentleman. But the Italians, with -all their romantic traditions, are a practical people. Finding himself -adrift in Paris, Pagello remembered his profession, and stayed on as -long as he could to study surgery, with such substantial result that he -subsequently became one of the chief surgeons in Italy, and gained a -special reputation, it is said, in lithotomy. Thus may a fantastic love -adventure be turned to good account. - -I take my facts about Pagello from Mme. Wladimir Karénine’s “George Sand” -(1899-1912), the one authentic and exhaustive work on the subject. He -died, over 90 years of age, after the first two of her three volumes were -published, and what one likes most of all about him is that, till very -near the end of his life, he kept his mouth tight shut about the great -adventure of his youth. A mere nincompoop could not have done that. In -1881 the Italian Press happened to be reviving the story of the Venetian -amour, and they succeeded in getting from Pagello a few of George’s -letters and some modest, manly reminiscences. He had no piquant scandals -to disclose, and merely showed, quite unconsciously, that he was far the -most decent of the strange three involved in the Venetian adventure. - -As for the Pagello of the new play, the American dramatist has made him -just a tame, hopelessly bewildered donkey. He is provided with a fierce -Italian sweetheart, to bring him back safe, if scolded, from Paris to -Italy. He lives freely on other people’s money, George’s—when it isn’t -Alfred’s. After all, it doesn’t matter, for all the people of the play -are mere travesties of the originals, turned (in the published book -of the play, though not at the Duke of York’s) into modern American -citizens. Buloz talks of “boosting” his subscriptions. Alfred says George -is “like a noisy old clock that won’t stop ticking.” Oh dear! - - - - -STENDHAL - - -In reviewing the performance by the New Shakespeare Company of _King -Henry V._ I was reminded by one of Henry’s lines at Agincourt, - - We few, we happy few, we band of brothers, - -to speak, it may have seemed a trifle incongruously, of Stendhal. But -it was Stendhal who said, “je n’écris que pour les _happy few_.” No -quotation could have been more appropriate. Stendhal’s readers have -always been few, but they have been enthusiastic. In his lifetime he -was hardly read at all, though Balzac gave him a magnificent “puff”—so -magnificent that even Stendhal himself was taken aback by it and infused -a little irony into his thanks. He supposed himself to be ahead of his -time, and in 1840 said he would be understood somewhere about 1880. It -was rather a good shot, for somewhere about that date there came into -being the fierce tribe of Stendhalians, who founded the “Stendhal Club” -and included in their number no less a man than M. Paul Bourget. But the -vicissitudes of literary reputations are as uncertain as anything in -this world, and M. Bourget wondered what would be thought of Stendhal in -another forty years—namely, in 1920. Well, 1920 has arrived, as the years -have the habit of doing with abominable rapidity, and any one who likes -can seek for an answer to M. Bourget’s question. I will hazard a guess. -I doubt if in the interval there has been very much change in Stendhal’s -position. Now, as in 1880, Stendhal is read, and immoderately loved, by -the “happy few,” and ignored or detested by the rest. But, in enjoying -him, the happy few contrive to take him a little less seriously than did -the Stendhal Club. That process goes on with even greater reputations. -Croce, we are told, takes Dante more lightly than has been the habit -of Italian critics in the last half-century. We English are gradually -learning to discuss Shakespeare as a human being. And here, pat to the -occasion, is a paper on Stendhal in the _Revue de Paris_ by M. Anatole -France, which handles its subject with the easy Anatolian grace we all -know and does, perhaps, at the same time indicate what the readers of -1920 think of Stendhal, though none of them would express their thought -of him with the same charm. - -It would probably occur to none of them, for instance, as it does to -Anatole France, to begin an appreciation of Stendhal with the statement -that he “had a leg.” Modern costume has abolished this advantage, -but Stendhal lived, at any rate for the greater part of his life, in -the knee-breeches period, when calves were on exhibition. Unluckily, -Stendhal’s calves do not appear in the portrait prefixed to the -Correspondence, but only the head, which is rather quaintly ugly. -Quaint ugliness in men is not displeasing to women (or where would most -of us be?), but what ne’er won fair lady is faint heart, and Stendhal -was timid. Thus, as a young man Stendhal is said to have loved Mlle. -Victorine Monnier for five years before he spoke to her. He was not sure -that even then she knew who he was. And this was the man who wrote a -treatise “De l’Amour” (a delightful book to skim through, nevertheless), -and preaches that every woman can be captured by direct assault! I -remember once talking to the wife of a popular novelist, a great -enthusiast for love, about her husband’s variety and virtuosity on this -subject. She replied without enthusiasm: “Yes, in his books.” On the same -point, M. France reports a capital _sub rosâ_ saying of Renan’s:—“Les -Européens font preuve d’une déplorable indécision en tout ce qui concerne -la conjonction des sexes.” - -As might have been expected from a writer for the “happy few,” Stendhal -did not suffer fools gladly. A man must have the social, the gregarious -spirit for that, and Stendhal lived much to himself. That being so, he -could not hope to escape boredom. An incurable _ennui_ lurks behind many -of his pages; his enemies would say _in_ them. He even got bored with -Italy, as so many others of a century ago, who began as enthusiastic -lovers, got bored. Byron went to Greece—and Shelley took to yachting with -the fatal result we know—because each was bored with Italy. But Stendhal -in his later years had to put up with it at Civita Vecchia—which, for -a “littery gent” must have been a deadly dull place in 1840, and would -not, I imagine, be very lively even now. Indeed, his existence (after -his early experiences with the Grand Army) seems to have been quiet, -solitary, and slow. Perhaps that is why his books, his MSS., his letters, -are so full of mysterious disguises, initials, pseudonyms, codes, -erasures, as though he were being watched by censors and hunted by spies. -It was a way of creating for himself an imaginary atmosphere of adventure. - -M. France has some good things to say about Stendhal’s style. M. Bourget -calls his prose algebraic, which is rather hard. But there are many ways -of writing, says M. France, and one can succeed at it perfectly without -any art, just as one can be a great writer without correctness, as Henri -IV. was in his letters and Saint-Simon in his memoirs. No one would read -“Le Rouge et le Noir” or “La Chartreuse de Parme,” as the Duchess in a -Pinero play said she read her French novel, for the style. Anatole France -commits himself to a very definite statement. No Frenchman, he says, in -Stendhal’s time wrote well, the French language was altogether lost, and -every author at the beginning of the nineteenth century wrote ill, with -the sole exception of Paul Louis Courier. “The disaster to the language, -begun in the youth of Mirabeau, increased under the Revolution, despite -those giants of the tribune, Vergniaud, Saint-Just, Robespierre, compared -with whom our orators of to-day seem noisy children, despite Camille -Desmoulins, author of the last well-written pamphlet France was to read; -the evil was aggravated under the Empire and the Restoration; it became -a frightful thing in the works of Thiers and of Guizot.” This, from the -greatest living master of French, is not without its interest. No one -could say the same thing of our English prose in the same period—a period -that gave us, to take a few instances at random, Cowper’s letters and -Byron’s, and the Essays of Elia. - -Stendhal, then, was not remarkable for style. But one gathers that, in -the rare occurrence of congenial society, he was a good talker. One -would give something to have been a third in the box at La Scala when -Stendhal, a young officer of Napoleon, met an old, lanky, melancholy -general of artillery—no other than Choderlos de Laclos, author, before -the Revolution, of “Les Liaisons Dangereuses.” Stendhal, as a child, had -known the original of Laclos’s infamous Mme. de Merteuil, an original who -appears to have been even worse than the copy. Some years later George -Sand, on her way to Italy with Musset, met Stendhal on a Rhone steamer, -and he told her a story which, she said, shocked her. She does not repeat -it. One would really rather like to hear a story which could shock George -Sand. - - - - -JULES LEMAÎTRE - - -It was in the first week of August, 1914. The crowd on the seafront was -outwardly as gay as ever, only buying up the evening papers with a little -more eagerness than usual to read the exciting news from Belgium. We had -not had time to realize what war meant. Some one held out a paper to me -and said, quite casually, “I see Lemaître’s dead.” This event seemed -to me for the moment bigger than the war itself. At any rate it came -more intimately home to me. The world in an uproar, nations toppling to -ruin, millions of men in arms—these are only vague mental pictures. They -disquiet the imagination, but are not to be realized by it. The death -of your favourite author, the spiritual companion and solace of half a -lifetime, is of an infinitely sharper reality, and you feel it as though -it were a physical pang. - -Lemaître died where, whenever he could, he had lived, at Tavers in the -Loiret, the heart of France. He was always writing about Tavers, though -he never named it by its name. In describing the far-off cruises of Loti -and the indefatigable touristry of Bourget he says:—“There is somewhere -a big orchard that goes down to a brook edged with willows and poplars. -It is for me the most beautiful landscape in the world, for I love -it, and it knows me.” To understand Lemaître you must keep that little -_vignette_ affectionately in your mind, as he did. M. Henry Bordeaux, -in his charming little monograph “Jules Lemaître,” rightly insists upon -Lemaître’s passionate love for his native countryside. But you never -can tell; his insistence seems only to have bored a recent reviewer of -the book. “The insistence on Lemaître’s patriotism and on his being -‘l’homme de sa terre’ is a little wearying; of course he was ‘l’homme de -sa terre,’ but he was many other things, or we should never have heard -of him.” As who should say, of course Cyrano had a nose, but he had many -other things, or we should never have heard of him. But Cyrano’s nose was -a conspicuous feature, and, if we are not told of it, we shall not fully -understand Cyrano. So with Lemaître’s love of his countryside by the -Loire. - -It made him, to begin with, an incorrigible stay-at-home. In this, as -in so many other things, he was a typical Frenchman. We English, born -roamers as we are, take for granted the educative influence of travel. -Places and people, we know by elementary experience, are only to be -realized by being seen on the spot. Lemaître thought otherwise. Why, he -asked, need I go to England? I can get all England out of Dickens and -George Eliot and my friend Bourget’s “Impressions de Voyage.” And then he -drew a picture of England, as he confidently believed it to be, that is -about as “like it” as, say, the average untravelled Englishman’s notion -of Tavers. He was never tired of quoting a passage of the “Imitation” -about the variety of changing sky and scene. But a cloistered monk is not -exactly an authority on this subject. - -Again, the fact that Lemaître was “l’homme de sa terre” is of vital -literary importance; it affected not only the spirit, but the actual -direction of his criticism. It inclined him to ignore or to misapprehend -those features in a foreign author that precisely marked how he also, -in his turn, was the man of his countryside, and that very different -from the banks of the Loire. Some of his comments on Shakespeare, for -instance, are of a Gallicism almost Voltairean. And it fostered illusions -like that which possessed him about the “Northern literatures”—Ibsen, -Hauptmann, Strindberg, and so forth—that they were mere belated imitators -of the French romantics. The fact that Lemaître was essentially a man of -his province involved the fact that his criticism now and then was also -provincial. - -Indeed, his very provincialism heightened his enjoyment of Paris and -sharpened his sense of Parisianism. Things which the born Parisian takes -for granted were delightful novelties for him, challenging observation -and analysis. “Il est,” said Degas, “toujours bien content d’être à -Paris.” He was “bien content” because he was “the young man from the -country,” the man from Tavers. The phenomenon is familiar all the world -over. - -Further, the fact that Lemaître remained “l’homme de sa terre,” still -getting his clothes from the village tailor, never so much at home as -among the farmers, country schoolmasters, and peasants he had known -from his infancy, gives a quite peculiar savour to his remarks on “le -monde”—the great fashionable scene, which he describes and analyses, to -be sure, as a philosopher, but as a philosopher who is, consciously and -indeed defiantly, an “outsider.” - -These are all integral parts of Lemaître’s critical individuality. -Without them he would have been another man altogether—a point so -obvious to all lovers of Lemaître that it would never have occurred to -me to mention it, had it not been for our reviewer’s weariness of being -reminded that he was “l’homme de sa terre.” Evidently the reviewer -cannot forgive Lemaître for his treatment of the “décadents” and the -“symbolistes,” and other cranks. “Think of the people Lemaître missed.” -The people include, it seems, Moréas, Laforgue, Samain, and Rimbaud. -Well, after thinking of these people, many of us will be resigned to -“missing” them with Lemaître. - -It is odd that the reviewer, while hunting for objections to Lemaître’s -criticism, as criticism, should have “missed” the really valid one—that -it is often not so much critical as “high fantastical.” Lemaître was -apt to be carried away by his imagination, and to run through a varied -assortment of comparisons, associations, and parallels that coloured -rather than cleared the issue. The rigorist Croce has, in passing, -laid his finger upon this. He quotes Lemaître on Corneille. Polyeucte, -says the critic, recalls at once “St. Paul, Huss, Calvin, and Prince -Kropotkine,” and awakes “the same curiosity as a Russian Nihilist, of the -kind to be seen in Paris in bygone years, in some _brasserie_ ... of whom -the whisper went round that at St. Petersburg he had killed a general or -a prefect of police.” Croce dismisses this sort of thing as _ricami di -fantasia_, and certainly, from the point of view of strict criticism, it -is a weakness of Lemaître’s. - -After all, however (as the counsel in “Pickwick” pleaded about something -else), it is an amiable weakness; it makes him such incomparably good -reading! Heaven forbid that I should reopen the old stupid, stale -controversy about “impressionist” and “judicial” criticism; but it is -obvious that the one sort does explicitly acknowledge and glory in -what is implicit in the other—the individual temperament and talent of -the critic himself. If the “impressionist” who gives free play to his -temperament is apt sometimes to get out of bounds—to be substituting -_ricami di fantasia_ for strict analysis—he may be all the more -stimulating to the reader. He may be giving the reader not scrupulous -criticism, but something better. It all depends, of course, on the -temperament and the talent. Lemaître’s _ricami di fantasia_ are part, if -not the best part, of his charm. - - - - -JANE AUSTEN - - -The amusing parlour-game of Jane Austen topography is always being -played somewhere. A few years ago there was a correspondence in the -_Literary Supplement_ about the precise position of Emma’s Highbury on -the map. Some Austenites voted for Esher, others for Cobham, others -again for Bookham. There has been another correspondence about Mansfield -Park. Lady Vaux of Harrowden “identifies” it with Easton Neston, near -Towcester. Sir Francis Darwin and the Master of Downing are for Easton -in Huntingdonshire. People have consulted Paterson’s Roads about it. Mr. -Mackinnon, K.C., points out that it must have been about four miles north -of Northampton. But I like him best when he says, “I do not suppose any -actual park was in Jane Austen’s mind.” _Brigadier, vous avez raison!_ -I do not suppose any actual place was in Jane Austen’s mind when she -assigned her personages a home or a lodging. You might as well try to fix -the number of the house in Gracechurch Street where Elizabeth’s uncle -lived. Are we not shown the “real” Old Curiosity Shop? And the “real” -Bleak House? And Juliet’s tomb at Verona? And the exact point of the -Cobb where Louisa Musgrove fell? - -It is easy to see why Jane Austen lends herself more readily than most -writers to this topographical game. She was very fond of topographical -_colour_, giving not only real place-names to the neighbourhood of the -fictitious homes, but exact distances in miles. It was so many miles -from Highbury to Kingston market-place, and so many to Box Hill. Yet she -was always vague about the exact spot from which these distances were -calculated. For there her imagination had its home, it was her private -Paradise of Dainty Devices; she wanted a free hand there, unhampered by -maps, road books, and other intrusions from the actual world. In fact, -she did with real places just what Scott, say, did with historical -people, kept them to surround the imaginary centre of the tale. You -can “identify” Charles Edward, but not Waverley. You can “identify” -Nottingham, but not Mansfield Park. - -It is a mercy that Jane Austen never describes houses—never describes -them, I mean, with the minute (and tedious) particularity of a Balzac—or -the topographical game would have been supplemented by an architectural -one, and we should have had the “real” Mansfield Park pointed out to us -from its description, like Hawthorne’s House of the Seven Gables. Indeed, -she never, in the modern sense, describes anything, never indulges in -description for its own sake. She never even expatiated on the beauties -of nature, taking them for granted and, indeed, on at least one famous -occasion—when strawberries were being picked while the apple trees were -still in bloom at Donwell Abbey—rather mixing them up. Her descriptions -always had a practical purpose. If it rained in Bath, it was in order -that Anne might, or might not, meet Captain Wentworth. We know that Sir -Thomas’s “own dear room” at Mansfield Park was next to the billiard-room, -because the novelist wanted us to know how he came plump upon the ranting -Mr. Yates. But that detail, thank goodness, won’t enable us to “identify” -Mansfield Park. - -Doesn’t it argue a rather matter-of-fact frame of mind—I say it with -all respect to the correspondents of the _Literary Supplement_—this -persistent tendency to “identify” the imaginary with the actual, the -geographical, the historical? There is a notable instance of it in the -Letters of Henry James. The novelist had described in “The Bostonians” -a certain veteran philanthropist, “Miss Birdseye.” Forthwith all Boston -identified the imaginary Miss Birdseye with a real Miss Peabody. “I am -quite appalled,” writes Henry James to his brother William, “by your note -in which you assault me on the subject of my having painted a ‘portrait -from life’ of Miss Peabody! I was in some measure prepared for it by -Lowell’s (as I found the other day) taking it for granted that she had -been my model, and an allusion to the same effect in a note from aunt -Kate. Still, I didn’t expect the charge to come from you. I hold that I -have done nothing to deserve it.... Miss Birdseye was conceived entirely -from my moral consciousness, like every other person I have ever drawn.” -It is odd that a man like William James, a professed student of the -human mind and its workings, should have made such a mistake. I remember -a saying attributed, years ago, to Jowett about the two brothers: one, -he remarked, was a writer of fiction and the other a psychologist, and -the fiction was all psychology and the psychology all fiction. Anyhow, -I think if any one had written to Jane Austen to tax her with Highbury -being Esher or Mansfield Park Easton Neston, she would have been able to -reply that they were conceived entirely from her moral consciousness. -And I fancy she would have smiled at her little trick of giving the -exact mileage from her imaginary centre to real places having “sold” so -many worthy people. Very likely she would have brought the topographical -game into the Hartfield family circle, as a suitable alternative for Mr. -Elton’s enigmas, charades, conundrums, and polite puzzles, or for Mr. -Woodhouse’s “Kitty, a fair but frozen maid,” which made him think of -poor Isabella—who was very near being christened Catherine, after her -grandmamma. - -The truth, surely, is that this place-hunting, this seeking to “identify” -the imaginary with the actual map-marked spot, is only a part of the -larger misconception of imaginative work—the misconception which leads -to a perpetual search for the “originals” of an author’s personages, -especially when these personages have a full, vivid life of their -own. Jane Austen has often been compared to Shakespeare, ever since -Macaulay set the fashion. Well, it is naturally upon Shakespeare that -this misconception has wreaked its worst. Commentators have gravely -presented us with the “original” of Falstaff, of Sir Toby Belch, of -Dogberry—nay, of Iago. Surely, the only “originals” of these people were -Shakespeare himself? What were they but certain Shakespearean moods, -humours, intimate experiences, temptations felt, but resisted, impulses -controlled in actual life but allowed free play in imaginative reverie? -No one that I know of has been foolish enough to charge Jane Austen with -“copying” any of her characters from actual individuals, but, if you are -in quest of “identifications,” is it not possible to “identify” many of -them, the women at any rate—for, of course, her women bear the stamp -of authentic reality much more plainly than her men—is it not possible -to identify them with sides, tendencies, moods of Jane Austen herself? -Here, I know, I am at variance with a distinguished authority, from whom -it is always rash to differ. Professor Raleigh says:—“Sympathy with her -characters she frequently has, identity never. Not in the high-spirited -Elizabeth Bennet, not in that sturdy young patrician Emma, not even in -Anne Elliot of ‘Persuasion,’ is the real Jane Austen to be found. She -stands for ever aloof.” Pass, for Emma and Elizabeth! But the “even” in -the case of Anne gives me courage. We are not, of course, talking of -identity in regard to external circumstances. Jane Austen was not the -daughter of a Somersetshire baronet and did not marry a captain in the -navy. But that Jane only “sympathized” with the heart and mind of Anne -Elliot is to my thinking absurdly short of the truth. That the adventures -of Anne’s soul, her heart-beatings, misgivings and intimate reassurances -about Wentworth’s feeling for her had been Jane Austen’s own is to me as -certain as though we had the confession under her own hand and seal. The -woman who drew Anne’s timid, doubting, wondering love must have been in -love herself and in that way. One short sentence settles that for me. -The consciousness of love disposes Anne “to pity every one, as being -less happy than herself.” What lover does not know that secret feeling? -And if he had never loved, would he have guessed it by “sympathy”? (You -will find, by the way, the very same secret divulged by Balzac in one -of his love-letters to Mme. Hanska—among the feelings she inspires him -with is “I know not what disdain in contemplating other men.”) In the -face of this, what need to go ransacking Jane Austen’s Letters or Memoir -for evidence that she had a love affair? No, it is because there is most -of Jane Austen’s spiritual “identity” in Anne that “Persuasion” is the -sweetest, tenderest, and truest of her books. I apologize for having -wandered from Mansfield Park and Easton Neston and the other engaging -futilities of the parlour game. - - - - -T. W. ROBERTSON - - -Fifty years ago to-morrow (February 3rd, 1871) died Thomas William -Robertson, a great reformer of the English drama in his day, but now, -like so many other reformers, little more than a name. His plays have -ceased to hold the stage. Very few of them still allow themselves to be -read. To-day their matter seems, for the most part, poor, thin, trivial, -and their form somewhat naïve. “Robertsonian” has become for the present -generation a meaningless epithet, and “teacup and saucer school” an -empty gibe. Even within a few years of Robertson’s death George Meredith -could only say of him: “In a review of our modern comedies, those of the -late Mr. Robertson would deserve honourable mention.” As the old tag -says, times change and we in them. Robertson is now a “back number.” His -comedies are not classics, for classics are live things; they are merely -historical documents. Yet you have only to turn to such a record as “The -Bancrofts’ Recollections” to see how live these comedies once were, how -stimulating to their time, how enthusiastically they were hailed as a new -birth, a new portent, a new art. Indeed, for my part, when I read the -glowing eulogies of John Oxenford and Tom Taylor and the other critics -of that time I am filled with something like dismay. All that warm (and -rather wordy—it was the way of the ’sixties) appreciation gone dead and -cold! I wonder how many of our own judgments will stand the test of fifty -years. Br—r—r! - -Well, to understand Robertson’s success, we have to think ourselves back -into his time. We have to ignore what followed him and to see what he -displaced. Up to his date the theatre, under the great French influence -of the ’thirties, still remained romantic. But that influence was -wearing out. A new influence was making itself felt in France, through -the dialectics of Dumas _fils_ and Augier’s commonsense, though the new -influence still bore trace of the old romanticism, as we can see at -least to-day. _La Dame aux Camélias_, so romantic to-day, was greeted in -1855 as a masterpiece of realism! And it _was_ comparatively realistic, -realistic for its time. But the English theatre, a second-hand theatre, -still stuck to the old French romantic tradition. It lived largely on -adaptations from Scribe. Robertson himself adapted a Scribe play (and not -a bad one), _Bataille de Dames_. He had, however, come under the newer, -the realistic, or romantico-realistic influence. He adapted Augier’s -_L’Aventurière_. Tom Stylus’s pipe in the ballroom (in _Society_) had -previously been dropped by Giboyer in _Les Effrontés_. I cannot help -thinking that the new French reaction had a good deal to do with the -Robertsonian reaction, certainly as much as the influence of Thackeray to -which Sir Arthur Pinero traces it. - -But I must let Sir Arthur speak for himself. In a letter in which he has -been so good as to remind me of to-morrow’s date he says:— - -“I look upon Robertson as a genius. Not that he wrote anything very -profound, or anything very witty, but because, at a time when the -English stage had sunk to even a lower ebb than it is usually credited -with reaching; when the theatres stank of stale gas and orange-peel and -the higher drama was represented mainly by adaptations from Scribe by -Leicester Buckingham; he had the vision to see that a new public could -be created, and an old and jaded one refreshed, by invoking for dramatic -purposes the spirit, and using some part of the method, of Thackeray.” - -This is admirable, and I only wish our dramatists would more often be -tempted into the region of dramatic criticism. All the same I confess -that (after going through all Robertson’s plays) it seems to me to -overrate the Thackerayan influence. There is a little sentimental -cynicism in Robertson and there is much in Thackeray. There is a tipsy -old reprobate in _Pendennis_ and there is another in _Caste_. Tom Stylus -helped to found a newspaper and so did George Warrington. Esther D’Alroy -tried vainly to buckle on her husband’s sword-belt when he was ordered on -service, and Amelia Osborne hovered helplessly about her husband with -his red sash on the eve of Waterloo. But such matters as these are common -property, _communia_, and the artist’s business, which Horace said was -so difficult, is _proprie communia dicere_, to give them an individual -turn. Drunkenness apart I don’t think Eccles is a bit like Costigan. As -to the Thackerayan spirit, would that Robertson had “invoked” it! His -plays might then be classics still, as Thackeray is, instead of merely -documents. - -If we are to connect Robertson with some typical Victorian novelist, I -would myself, with all deference to Sir Arthur, suggest Trollope. His -young women, his Naomi Tighes and Bellas, his Polly and Esther Eccles, -strike me as eminently Trollopean. There are traces of Mrs. Proudie in -both Mrs. Sutcliffe and Lady Ptarmigant. But, probably, these also are -only instances of _communia_. Probably the young ladies (and, for all I -know, the old ones, too) were real types of the ’sixties, as we see them -in Leech’s drawings. Bless their sweet baby-faces and their simple hearts -and their pork-pie hats! - -The Robertsonian way is often spoken of as a “return to nature.” It is, -in fact, a common eulogy of most reactions in art. “Don Quixote” was a -return to nature, compared with the romances of chivalry, and “Tom Jones” -was a return to nature, compared with “Don Quixote.” The world gradually -changes its point of view and sees the facts of life in a new light. -Artists change with the rest of the world, and give expression to the -new vision. They are hailed as reformers until the next reformation; -they seem to have returned to nature, until the world’s view of “nature” -again changes. I think, as I have said, that Robertson’s work is to be -related to the general anti-romantic reaction that started in France in -mid-nineteenth century. But all reactions keep something of what they -react against, and Robertson’s reaction retains a good deal of romance. -_School_ is as romantic as the German Cinderella-story, on which it was -founded. The central situation of _Caste_—the return home of the husband -given up for dead—is essentially romantic, not a jot less romantic than -in _La joie fait peur_. The scenes at the “Owl’s Roost” in _Society_, -applauded for their daring realism, are realistic presentations of the -last stronghold of the romantic Murger tradition, literary “Bohemia.” -Robertson’s dialogue was often the high-flown lingo of the old romance. -(In dialogue we have “returned to nature” several times over since -his day.) But more often it was not. He astonished and delighted his -contemporaries by making many of his people speak in the theatre as they -spoke out of it. He invented sentimental situations that were charming -then and would be charming now—love-passages in London squares and over -milk-jugs in the moonlight. He had been an actor and a stage manager -and knew how to make the very most of stage resources. Take the scene -of George’s return in _Caste_. There is a cry of “milkaow” and a knock -at the door. “Come in,” cries Polly to the milkman—and in walks with -the milk-can one risen from the dead! This thrilling _coup de théâtre_ -is followed, however, by something much better, the pathetic scenes of -Polly’s hysterical joy and her tender artifice in breaking the news to -Esther. I confess that I cannot read these scenes without tears. There -was a quality of freshness and delicate simplicity in Robertson’s work at -its best that was a true “return to nature.” No need, is there? to speak -of the luck his work had in finding such interpreters as the Bancrofts -and their company or of the luck the actors had in finding the work to -interpret—the Bancrofts themselves have already told that tale. But it -all happened half a century ago and I suppose we are not to expect a -future Robertson revival. The past is past. Life is perpetual change. The -more reason for not neglecting occasions of pious commemoration. Let us, -then, give a friendly thought to “Tom” Robertson to-morrow. - - - - -VERSATILITY - - -Now that the _Literary Supplement_ costs 6_d._, one feels entitled to -examine one’s relation to it with a certain sense of solemnity. But I -well know what mine is, before examination. Even when it cost 3_d._, my -relation to it was always one of weekly disconcertment. It revealed to me -so many things I didn’t know and never should know, yet known presumably -to some other reader. Now omniscience is derided as a “foible,” but why -should one be ashamed to confess it as an ideal? Frankly, I envy the -man who was so various that he seemed to be not one but all mankind’s -epitome. He must have got more fun out of life than your profound -specialist. It is to give this various reader this variety of fun that (I -surmise, but the editor will know for certain) the _Supplement_ exists. -But for me, imperfectly various, it means something bordering on despair. -I suppose other readers are more sensible, and just take what suits -them, leaving the rest. But I simply hate leaving anything. Take the ten -columns modestly headed “New Books and Reprints.” What a world of unknown -topics and alien ideas and unfathomable theories about everything this -simple title covers! Is there any reader whose intellectual equipment -includes at once the biography of Absalom Watkin, of Manchester, the -Indian Trade Inquiry Reports on Hides and Skins, an elementary knowledge -of the Bengali language, and the particular philosophy of mysticism -entertained by Mr. Watkin (not Absalom, but another)? Mine doesn’t—and -there’s the pang, for each and all these subjects, simply because they -are there, staring me in the face, the face of an absolutely blank mind -about them, excite my intellectual curiosity. I should like to know all -about ergatocracy—merely on the strength of its alluring name—and the -true story, from the Franciscan point of view, of the Franciscans and -the Protestant Revolution in England, and Lord Grey’s reminiscences of -intercourse with Mr. Roosevelt, and the history of the Assyrian “millet” -in the great war, and what is meant by the “Free Catholic” tendency in -the Nonconformist Churches. Yet it is fairly certain that I shall have -to do without any knowledge of most, if not all, of these matters which -presumably engage the enlightened interest of some other readers. - -That is why I say the _Supplement_ disconcerts me every week. It makes -me feel ignorant and, what is worse, lonely, cut off from so many human -sympathies, cold to enthusiasms that are agitating other breasts, -isolated in a crowd who, for all I know, may be banding themselves -against me with the secret password “ergatocracy,” an uninitiated -stranger among the friends of Mr. Absalom Watkin of Manchester. Indeed, -unlike “the master of this college,” I am so far from feeling that “what -I don’t know isn’t knowledge” as to find it the one sort of knowledge I -itch to possess and suppose myself to have lost a golden opportunity in -missing. There are strong men about, I am aware, who say they don’t care. -They profess themselves content with knowing a few things thoroughly, -with their own little set of enthusiasms, and repeat proverbs about jacks -of all trades. I respect these sturdy men, but all the time my heart -goes out to the other kind, the men of versatility, the men whose aim -is to understand everything, to sympathize with every human emotion, to -leave no corner of experience unexplored. And some such aim as this is -indispensable for the critic, whose business is primarily to understand. -To understand what he criticizes he has to begin by putting himself in -its author’s place and standing at his point of view—to take on, in -short, in turn, innumerable other personalities, temperaments, and tastes -than his own. Other men may, but a critic must, be versatile. He must -have the faculty of lending himself, with profusion, to other minds and -other experiences—lending himself, but not giving, reserving the right of -resuming his own individuality and of applying his own standards. - -That resumption of self is easy enough. The true difficulty is in -surrendering it, even for a while. One finds the task particularly hard, -I think, in lending oneself to tastes one has outgrown. Remember your -schoolboy enthusiasm over Macaulay’s style. You have lost that long ago, -and are now, perhaps, a little ashamed of it. Yet you must recapture -it, if only for a moment; that is to say, you must try to reflect in -yourself the joy that Macaulay felt in writing as he did, if you are -sitting down to try to criticize him adequately. This is difficult, this -momentary renunciation of your present taste in favour of the taste you -have outgrown. Remember your schoolboy attitude to Scott; how you read -feverishly for the story and nothing but the story, and simply skipped -the long prefaces and introductions and copious historical notes? To-day -your taste has matured, and you see the prefaces and notes as a welcome -setting for the story, as completing for you the picture of the author’s -mind in the act of composition. But you will have to go back to your -discarded taste and think only of the story if you are recommending Scott -to your youngsters. - -This difficulty is perpetually confronting one in the theatre. I confess, -I find the theatre almost as disconcerting as the _Literary Supplement_ -for an analogous, though not identical, reason. In that case you have the -bewildering spectacle of things unknown; in this, of tastes outgrown. -One afternoon I saw a little play translated from the French, limpid in -expression, simplicity itself in form, spare almost to austerity in its -use of theatrical means. Not a word, not a situation, was emphasized. -This or that point was neatly, briefly indicated, offered just as a -germ which might be safely left to your own intelligence to develop. -The action was pure acted irony, but not an ironical word was uttered. -This, of course, is the sort of play that refreshes the jaded critic, -and he has to resist the temptation to over-praise it. The next evening -I saw a play diligently crammed with everything that the other had -carefully left out—emphasis, repetition, six words where one would have -sufficed, “dramatic” situations and suspenses, the gentle humours of -life concentrated into eccentricities of stage “character.” There is a -numerous, and entirely respectable, public with a taste in this stage; it -likes dots on its _i_’s, things thrust under its nose, so that it can see -them, and repeated over and over again, so that it can understand them. -That is a taste which the jaded critic cannot but have outgrown. Yet the -play was good, sound work of its kind, and the critic’s first duty was -to force himself back into his outgrown taste and see the play with the -spirit with which the author wrote it and its proper public received it. -I say his first duty; it was open to him afterwards to recover his own -personality and make his distinctions. But this first duty was hard. -It is an ever-recurring trial of critical conscience. “These are our -troubles, Mr. Wesley,” as the peevish gentleman said when the footman put -too much coal on the fire. - - - - -WOMEN’S JOURNALS - - -Who was the wit who, to the usual misquotation from Buffon, _le style -c’est l’homme_, rejoined _mais ce n’est pas la femme_? The statement -has perhaps as much truth as is required from a witticism; it is half -true. Woman, unlike man, does not express all of herself. She has her -reticences, her euphemisms, and her asterisks. She will on no account -name all things by their names. It is one of the childish weaknesses -of men, she holds, to practise veracity to excess. Like children, they -cannot help blurting out the truth. But she, from diligent experiments -on her own person, has learnt that truth looks all the better for -having its nose powdered and its cheeks discreetly rouged. Readers of -George Sand’s “Histoire de ma Vie” are often baffled in tracing the -fine distinction between the woman and the make-up. Therein the work -is typical, illustrating as it does the general desire of women in -literature to look pretty—to look pretty in their mirror, for themselves, -for their own pleasure. Not, as is sometimes erroneously asserted, to -look pretty in the eyes of men or of a particular man. So one is amused -but scarcely convinced by Heine’s well-known remark that every woman who -writes has one eye on her paper and the other on some man—except the -Countess Hahn-Hahn, who had only one eye. Evidently the generalization -was invented just to spite the countess. Mme. de Sévigné’s letters to -her daughter are far better than those to Bussy-Rabutin. George Eliot -may have had one eye on Lewes when she did her best to spoil her novels -by scientific pedantry—which was sheer waste (let alone the damage to -the novels), as Lewes was, by all accounts, the ugliest man in London. -But on what man had Jane Austen an eye? One might ask the question about -our thousands of women novelists to-day, and at once see the refutation -of Heine in simple arithmetic; there would not be enough men to go -round. There is clearly no rule. Heine may have been thinking of George -Sand, already mentioned, whose eye—her “glad eye,” I fear it must be -called—revolved as she wrote upon a round dozen of men in turn. - -But there is one department of women’s literature wherein the element -of doubt altogether vanishes. I mean the journals they publish, or get -published, for themselves. They cannot write here with their eye on some -man. Indeed, men, nice men (“nice” in the strict sense, approved in a -certain talk between Catherine Morland and Henry Tilney), are rather -chary of even approaching such journals. They exhibit advertisements -of “undies,” corsets, and other things that used to be called feminine -mysteries, but are now entitled perhaps to the rank of notorieties which -make one instinctively stammer, “Oh, I beg your pardon,” and beat a -hasty retreat. So, it will at once be said, do all newspapers nowadays, -and that is true. Yet, somehow, one feels more indiscreet in lighting -upon them in the women’s journals than in the others. For one thing, -they seem to be more dainty and alluring by reason of more artistic -execution and glazed paper, so that they may satisfy the critical -eye of their proper wearers. And, for another, there is a difference -between the high-road of the newspaper, whereon a man willy-nilly must -travel, and the by-path of the women’s journal, where he is at best a -privileged intruder. If you ask, “Goosey, goosey, gander, whither shall I -wander?” there is a distinct difference between answering, “Upstairs and -downstairs,” and “in my lady’s chamber.” - -All this, of course, as the judicious will have perceived, really means -that I am as interested as, I suppose, are most of my fellow-men in -all these curiously dainty and elegant ingenuities of women’s apparel, -and that I am only pretending to be shocked. (After all, in his -pursuit of veracity, even a man may occasionally powder his nose.) The -advertisers, bless them, know all about that. They know that the natural -man shares the naïve admiration which Pepys once expressed on seeing -Lady Castlemaine’s wonderful _lingerie_ and laces hanging out to dry -on a clothes-line in Whitehall. But the natural man generally finds it -convenient to be more reticent about it than Pepys. - -The first number of the _Woman’s Supplement_, which has prompted these -reflections, suggests another: the perpetual wonder and delight of men -at the success with which women accommodate facts to their ideals. -We saw them, just now, doing this with their literature; we saw them -determined that, at all costs, this shall be pleasing and themselves -the most pleasing things in it; we saw the notable success of George -Sand in accommodating her historical to her ideal self. But they are as -successful with nature as with history. Just now, for example, sloping -shoulders are manifestly the ideal—sloping shoulders with the obviously -appropriate balloon sleeves, as in Mr. Bernard Lintott’s lady, or else -with no sleeves at all, as in M. Jean Doumergue’s. And part of the same -ideal is that the “figure” shall be anything but “full.” Now are women’s -shoulders naturally more sloping or their figures less full than they -used to be? These are puzzling questions, but not beyond conjecture, and, -for my part, I guess that the answer is No. Yet our women have easily -triumphed over nature and slope their shoulders with the uniformity of a -regiment sloping arms, while every woman with a full figure has quietly -become a _fausse maigre_. - -While I am about it, let me echo the usual male protest. As the -_Supplement_ shows, women have not yet persuaded themselves to abandon -their detestable high heels. The consequence is that there threatens to -be no longer any such thing as a graceful gait. _Incessu patuit dea_ -will soon have become an incomprehensible allusion. And that hideous -square patch which too often peeps above the back of the shoe? I suppose -it is just a practical device to strengthen the stocking in a part of -stress; but I hardly think really “nice” women can abide it. On the -whole, however, I subscribe cheerfully to the current opinion that -woman’s dress was never so charming as it is at present. That is probably -an illusion. The mysterious laws that regulate fashion mercifully -regulate also the capacity for enjoying it. And it is a mercy, too, that -the beauty of woman can triumph even over “old-fashioned” things. To our -modern eyes the fashions of the ’70’s and ’80’s were far from beautiful -in themselves—bunchy, humpy, without “line.” Yet, when they were playing -_Peter Ibbetson_, one saw some fair women in them—and was at once -reconciled, able in fact to see them with the eye of their period. - - - - -PRACTICAL LITERATURE - - -“Pray, Sir,” a leader-writer is said to have asked Delane, “how do you -say ‘good fellow’ in print?” and to have been answered, “Sir, you should -not say it at all.” There are thousands of ambitious young people to-day -who want to know how you say good fellow, or awful snipe, or old bean, -or whatever, in print, and that is why there are Schools of Journalism. -A paper of instructions from one of these excellent institutions has -lately fallen into my hands, and there seems no reason for withholding -it from publication. It appears to be in the nature of a preliminary -introduction to what a distinguished journalist has well called -“practical literature.” For Journalists, in Matthew Arnold’s quotation, -drive at practice, and to be practical you must begin by learning the -shibboleths—that is to say, the turns of phrase and modes of treatment -that long experience has approved and constant readers are accustomed to -expect. There is no mystery about it; they are much more simple than a -vain people supposeth. But it is all-important to get them right at the -outset—or, as is said in practical literature, from the word “go”—and -the advice the paper has to give about them is as follows:— - -_Descriptive Articles on Great Occasions._—The beginner will probably -find there is very little to describe. He must learn to invent. Street -crowds have a pestilent habit of not cheering at the appropriate moment; -your first business will be to make them. Celebrities flash by in closed -carriages, totally hidden by the police; you will ruthlessly expose them, -bowing to the storm of applause which sweeps across the multitude filling -the square and lining the classic steps of St. Martin-in-the-Fields. If -the Royal Family is present you will need especial tact. Find the golden -mean between the familiar and the abject. Be human, like Euripides. Above -all, the homely “note” is recommended. You cannot say too often that the -King “looked bronzed.” Thousands of pallid readers who go to Margate for -a week in order to come back looking bronzed will appreciate that. It is -loyal, it attests that robust health that we all desire for his Majesty, -and at the same time it is homely. “I, too, have been bronzed,” the -reader says, as the barber at Byron’s funeral said, “I, too, have been -unhappy.” Whatever is offered the Queen, a bouquet, a trowel, a sample -of the local product the Queen will “smilingly accept.” If she tastes -the men’s (or boy scouts’ or factory girls’) soup, she will “pronounce -it excellent.” Preserve a cheerful tone, especially with _contretemps_. -If Gold Stick in Waiting drops his gold stick, you will note that “the -Royal party were highly amused” and that “the little Princess laughed -heartily.” - -_Politics and International Affairs._—Here practical literature takes -a hint from the other sort. Be historical. Be reminded of the great -Westminster Election and the Duchess of Devonshire. Remember Speaker -Onslow. Compare whatever you dislike to the Rump. Magna Charta and Habeas -Corpus must now be allowed a rest, but you may still allude to Thermidor -and Brumaire, the Mountain and the Cordeliers Club. “Mr.” Pitt sounds -well. Open your leader with “Nothing in the annals of diplomacy since -the Treaty of Utrecht (or the Treaty of Vienna, or whatever other treaty -you can think of) has so disgraced,” &c. The second paragraph should -begin “Nor is that all.” Be slightly archaistic. Words like “caitiff” -and “poltroon” may be discreetly used. Books recommended for the course: -Gibbon, Junius, early volumes of Punch, Mahan’s “Sea Power,” and (for -quotations) R. L. Stevenson’s “Wrong Box.” - -_Foreign Correspondence._—Remember that the particular capital you -happen to be posted at is the real hub of your newspaper, and wonder -every morning “what those fellows at the London office can be about” to -print so much stuff about their silly local affairs. Practise political -divination from the minutest data. If some little actress at the Marigny, -or Belasco’s, makes you a _pied de nez_ you will say that “the Gallic -temper (or public opinion in the Eastern States) is showing signs of -dangerous exasperation.” If you find a junior Attaché lunching at the -golf club on Sunday, you will say “the political tension is now at any -rate momentarily relaxed.” If they charge you a few centimes or cents -more for your box of chocolates you will say “the population is now -groaning under famine prices, and State intervention cannot be much -longer delayed.” - -_Criticism of the Arts and the Theatre._—As criticism is not practical, -it hardly comes within the scope of instructions on practical literature. -But newspapers, after all, must be filled, and, if the advertisements -permit, room may be found even for criticism. Fortunately, it requires -little if any instruction. The office boy, if he is not proud, may be -turned on to it at a pinch. The charwomen, when they can be spared from -their more useful work, often prove neat hands at it. Ideas are to be -discouraged; a few catchwords are all that is necessary, with one decent -hat for Private Views and one ditto dress suit for First Nights. The -art critic will do well to find a new and unknown artist and track him -down from show to show, comparing him in turn to Tintoretto, the lesser -Umbrians, and the Giottos at Padua. (See Vasari _passim_, a repertory -of delightful names.) The theatrical critic will make it his chief -care to construct a striking sentence which the managers can quote, -without excessive garbling, in their advertisements. It can end with -“rapturously applauded,” with “rocked with laughter,” or with “for many -a night to come.” - -_N.B._—Personally conducted parties of students taken to the theatre to -see leading actresses “making great strides in their art” and “having -the ball at their feet” and to watch Mr. Collins “surpassing himself.” -They will afterwards be shown cases of type and instructed in the -thermometrical test of the temperature at which it becomes “cold print.” - -... The paper does not end here. In a special section on the language of -the poster, it offers a prize for any hitherto undiscovered application -of the word “amazing.” It goes on to give instructions to writers on -cricket, golf, and sport, with a stock selection of anecdotes about -“W.G.” and “E.M.,” and a plan to scale of the Dormy House and Mr. Harry -Tate’s moustache when he addresses the ball and the audience. But these -are awful mysteries which I dare not follow the paper in profaning. - - - - -NINETEENTH-CENTURY WOMAN - - -The serious research that some contemporary French students are devoting -to our English literature is one of the most valuable by-products of -the Entente. We have had of recent years remarkable French monographs -on Wordsworth, on Cowper, on Crabbe, on Hazlitt, which are fully as -authoritative as any of our native commentaries. And, turning over -the new volumes at a French bookseller’s the other day, I came across -another Gallic tribute of this kind, with a rather lengthy title, “La -Femme Anglaise au XIXᵉ siècle et son évolution d’après le roman anglais -contemporain,” by Mme. Léonie Villard. Mme. Villard seems to have read -all our modern English novels, from Richardson’s “Pamela” down to the -latest piece of propagandism of Mr. H. G. Wells. Of course mere literary -curiosity could never have carried any human being through all that; -Mme. Villard is an ardent “feminist,” and, like her sisters, capable of -miraculous physical endurance for the “cause.” A mere man may “devour -whole libraries,” but it takes a fair feminist to swallow the huge mass -of English fiction. - -Reading exclusively from a single point of view, Mme. Villard seems to -have sometimes sacrificed her critical sense to her principles. Thus, as -a type of the nineteenth-century “old maid,” so neglected, so ill-used by -society, she selects Miss Rachel Wardle! Dickens, generally “so pitiful -to the weak, so generous to the oppressed and the conquered,” had no -pity for her. But upon us it is incumbent to pity and understand and -find excuses for her. “At any rate, her desire to be loved and, above -all, to experience in other surroundings a freer and less humiliating -life should have nothing surprising for us.” Isn’t this rather a solemn -way of describing the lady’s amours with Mr. Tupman and Mr. Jingle? Is -it really the fault of society if an amorous old dame will be silly? And -is she not to be laughed at if she happen to fall into the category “old -maid”? Mrs. Bardell was amorous too. So was Mr. Tupman. Dickens laughs -at these also—but then they were not old maids, they didn’t illustrate a -“feminine case.” Then there was Mrs. Jellyby. She reminded some people of -Harriet Martineau. But Dickens had deformed the type (who was intelligent -and was not the mother of a family) so as to present the “new woman” in -the least favourable light. He “has fixed for half a century the type -of the intellectual or enfranchised woman, as conceived by those who -trust the judgment of others rather than their own direct observation.” -The question, surely, is not whether Mrs. Jellyby was unlike Harriet -Martineau, but whether in herself she was a sufficiently comic -personage. Most readers of Dickens find her so. What injustice is there -in this to the real “new woman,” whom, as Mme. Villard has shown, she -did _not_ resemble? As a matter of fact, when Dickens had a mind to draw -a real “strong-minded” woman he drew her most sympathetically. Is there -any of his women more delightful than Miss Trotwood? “To-day,” says Mme. -Villard, “she appears to us an unconscious feminist whose feminism misses -its mark, since it can find no field of action amid narrow, provincial, -routine surroundings.” Poor Miss Trotwood! - -We are to understand that it was the domination and the selfishness of -man that created the lamentable type of nineteenth-century “old maid.” -But who were unkindest to Miss Wardle? Her nieces, members of her own -sex. Who created the typical “old maid” and terrible bore, Miss Bates? -Another “old maid,” Jane Austen. The fact is, old maids like other -human beings have their foibles. Are these never to be put into a book? -Feminism seems to make its disciples terribly serious. Miss La Creevy -is Dickens’s example of the _femme artiste_. See, says Mme. Villard, -how types of “independent women” are caricatured! She cannot laugh at -Sairey Gamp and Betsy Prig, because they testify to the social contempt -attaching to the nursing profession at their date! Has it never occurred -to her that novels are sometimes written merely as novels and not as -_dossiers_ in a “case” for the “evolution” of woman? - -After all, however, there are plenty of serious novelists who do supply -good evidence—more particularly the quasi-propagandists like Mrs. -Gaskell (when she chose) and Mrs. Humphry Ward (sometimes), and (nearly -always) Mr. Galsworthy and Mr. Wells. Mme. Villard makes effective play -with these. She has no difficulty, for instance, in showing the immense -economic advance of the woman-worker during the last century, though even -here her eye seems too exclusively fixed on her own sex. True, women -were the chief victims of the old “factory” and “sweating” systems, but -the amelioration of their condition, if I am not mistaken, came only as -part of the general amelioration in the condition of “labour,” without -sex-distinction. - -It is when she comes to the sentimental side of her subject, the -relation of woman to man whether in marriage or “free love,” that Mme. -Villard finds her material a little too much for her. Naturally, for -our novelists and playwrights can never let the too fascinating subject -alone and seem to go on saying the same things about it over and over -again—_con variazioni_. You have, for example, Mrs. Gaskell, so far back -as 1850, dealing with the same theme as Mr. Stanley Houghton dealt with -in “Hindle Wakes” (1910)—the refusal of the seduced woman to accept -the regularization of her position by marriage. Then there are the -free-lovers “on principle,” who end by conceding marriage to social -prejudice—like Mr. Wells’s Ann Veronica. There must be English novels -where the “free lovers” maintain their principle triumphantly to the end, -though I haven’t read them; but I seem to remember several in the French -language. It is all very confusing. Perhaps—I only say perhaps—those are -wisest who leave “principle” in these matters to the heroes and heroines -of the novelists and are content to live ordinary lives in an ordinary -jog-trot way, without too much thinking about it. There is this comfort -for the old-fashioned commonplace people among us, at any rate, that -whatever “evolution” of woman there may have been in the nineteenth -century, she remains in all essentials very much what she used to be. -I can find it as easy to-day to be in love with Emma and Elizabeth and -Anne—I needn’t mention their surnames—who are more than a century old, -bless them, as with (not to compromise myself with any contemporary -English heroine) M. Barrès’s Bérénice, or with one of M. Marcel Proust’s -“Jeunes filles en Fleurs.” - - - - -PICKLES AND PICARDS - - -A writer in the _Nouvelle Revue Française_ drops a remark which it does -one good to read. He says that in the old French villages on the Picardy -front all that the English have taught the countryfolk in five years of -cohabitation is to eat pickles with their boiled beef. Very likely this -is a humorous perversion of the truth; but I should like to believe it. -Not from any personal interest in pickles, though that will seem odd, and -perhaps incredible, to my French friends, who seem to think that every -Englishman must be a pickle-eater—just as we English used to think every -Frenchman ate frogs. No doubt, however, this French generalization is -fairly accurate; we are a nation of pickle-eaters, and if any one asks -why, I guess the answer is cold beef. Anyhow, the idea has fascinated the -French mind. Among the English characteristics of which Jules Lemaître -once gave a list (from hearsay, which he thought, good, easy man, as -authentic evidence as coming to see England for himself) I remember he -mentions “Les _pickles_.” And it is the one English characteristic that -has infected the Picards! - -My reason for rejoicing is that they have not been infected by more -than one, that in spite of all temptations, etc., they remain -(pickles excepted) true Picards. There have been times (particularly -in mid-eighteenth century) when the French have shown a tendency to -Anglomania. Let us be glad that these are over. Probably the French -Revolution settled that point, as it settled so many others, by isolating -France for the time being, and making her the common enemy. More than -one of the Terrorists were Picards by race, but you may be sure they -never ate pickles. But cohabitation may bring about the same result as -isolation, in a different way. Our armies have lived for five years with -the French; both natives and visitors have had ample opportunities for -observing each other’s characteristics; and I like to think that both -have parted with the profound conviction that, on either side, these -are inimitable. Condiments, of course, excepted. They have adopted our -pickles, and we have taken their _sauce bigarade_, which is excellent -with wild duck. Condiments, by the way, include the linguistic sort. -We have seen the delight with which Lemaître wrote down that strange, -abrupt, tart English word “pickles” in his French text. So some of our -own scribblers wantonly and wickedly flavour their writings with an -occasional French phrase, because it seems to them to give a piquancy, -a zest. These apart, let us by all means admire one another’s qualities -without seeking to interchange them. Let us jealously preserve our own -characteristics, our own type, like the Picardy villagers. National -peculiarities are the perpetual joy of travel (except when one side wants -the window down and the other up), the _bouquet_ of literature, the salt -of life. - -Talking of travel, we have been having a correspondence in _The Times_ -on the lavatories and the closed windows on the P.L.M. I am not using -that railway myself just now, and I confess I like to see that here again -the French remain obstinately French. France is endeared to us, like -any other friend, by its weaknesses as well as its virtues; it would, -for many of us, not be the old friend that we know and love without its -occasional stuffiness and its occasional smells. Louis Veuillot once -wrote a book called “Les Odeurs de Paris.” We have all smelt them, and -should hardly recognize our Paris without them—though they must have -had more pungency, a more racy, romantic flavour in Balzac’s Paris, the -Paris of our dreams. Nowadays for the rich Balzacian smells you will -have to visit some of the provincial towns of his novels, and so your -pilgrimage will combine a literary with all factory interest. I know -of one old Burgundian town—I will not name it, for obvious reasons—not -mentioned, I fancy, by Balzac, quite untouched by time, with pepper-pot -towers, a river in a deep ravine, and well worth a literary pilgrimage -if only for its associations with Mme. de Sévigné and the Président de -Brosses, where you have the added delight of the richest medieval odours -powerfully assisted by a tannery—an unrivalled combination! Why do so -many Englishmen grumble at these things instead of appreciating them -æsthetically, as accompaniments of the French scene, as part of that -varied experience which we call “abroad”? Or why do they explain them -on the illiberal assumption of some inherent inferiority in the French -character? - -I find a typical specimen of this kind of explanation in Hazlitt’s -“Notes of a Journey through France and Italy,” made about a century ago, -when France was the very France (think of it!) that was being observed, -and about to be described, by Balzac. One would have thought that the -Londoner of 1824 (who must have been pretty well used to smells at home) -would have found some other explanation than the physiological and -psychological inferiority of the French. But hear him. “A Frenchman’s -senses and understanding are alike insensible to pain—he recognizes -(happily for himself) the existence only of that which adds to his -importance or his satisfaction. He is delighted with perfumes, but passes -over the most offensive smells and will not lift up his little finger to -remove a general nuisance, for it is none to him.” To which he appends -a note:—“One would think that a people so devoted to perfumes, who deal -in essences and scents, and have fifty different sorts of snuffs, would -be equally nice, and offended at the approach of every disagreeable -odour. Not so. They seem to have no sense of the disagreeable in smells -or tastes, as if their heads were stuffed with a cold, and hang over a -dunghill, as if it were a bed of roses, or swallow the most detestable -dishes with the greatest relish. The nerve of their sensibility is bound -up at the point of pain.... They make the best of everything (which is -a virtue)—and treat the worst with levity or complaisance (which is a -vice).” - -Well, well. When this was written French and English had not long ceased -to be at war, and Hazlitt was never a sweet-tempered man. But you can -still find the censorious Englishman who is ready decisively to mark -off French characteristics into “virtues” and “vices,” according to his -own English standard. There may, for all I know, be some Frenchman who -gives us tit for tat. This type of critic is tiresome enough; but there -is another that seems to me quite intolerable, the critic who detests -all national peculiarities as such, and would level down all humanity to -one monotonous level of sameness. As though uniformity were not already -the plague of the modern world! We men all wear the same hat (despite -the efforts of the _Daily Mail_), women all powder their noses in the -same way, and the “cinema palaces” all show the same films, with the -same “Mary” and the same “Dug.” For heaven’s sake, let us cling to our -national peculiarities! - -And that is why I welcome the intelligence that the Picards have taken -over nothing from us but our pickles, and that the French travellers on -the P.L.M. still insist on keeping the window up. Let our enthusiasts -for a uniform world ponder these facts. And it is a relief to think that -they can never unify national landscapes. The village green, the cottage -gardens, the chalk downs, the chines, the red coombs will always be -English. The long straight _route nationale_ and the skinny fowls that -are always straying across it, the poplar-bordered streams, the trim -vines ranked along the hill-side, the heavily-accoutred gendarme and the -fat farmer in the stiff indigo blouse hobnobbing at the _estaminet_, -these will always be French. Oh, but I would give something to see that -indigo blouse again, and have a morning chat with the farmer! “Hé! père -Martin, ça va toujours bien? Pas mal, m’sieu. Et la récolte? Dame! je ne -m’en plains pas ... à la votre, m’sieu!” They may take our pickles, if -they will, but let them remain themselves, our old French friends. - - - - -THE BUSINESS MAN - - -It is not easy for the slave of “copy,” sedentary and shy, to know that -triumphant figure of the active, bustling world, the business man. The -business man is too busy, and can only be seen in office hours, when the -scribe is correcting proofs or, perhaps, not yet up. Nevertheless, I once -nearly saw the Governor of the Bank of England. I hold the Governor to be -the archetype of the business man. In my green unknowing youth I used to -take the gentleman in cocked hat and picturesque robe at the Threadneedle -Street entrance for the Governor, but now know better. Well, I once -nearly saw the Governor. It was on the stage. Mr. Gerald du Maurier was -in the bank-parlour when a servant entered and said: “The Governor of the -Bank of England to call on you, sir.” “Show him in,” said Mr. du Maurier -with the easy _nonchalance_ of which only actors have the secret. It was -a tremendous moment. I seemed to hear harps in the air. And just then, -down came the curtain! It was felt, no doubt, that the Governor of the -Bank of England ought not to be made a motley to the view. But I was -inconsolable. I had been robbed of my one chance of seeing the supreme -business man. - -Of late, however, the veil that shrouds the business man from the -non-business eye has been partly lifted. The pictorial advertisement -people have got hold of him and give brief, tantalizing glimpses of his -daily life. Maeterlinck speaks of “l’auguste vie quotidienne” of Hamlet. -That only shows that Hamlet (it is indeed his prime characteristic) -was not a business man. For the business man’s daily life, if the -advertisements are to be trusted, is not so much august as alert, -strenuous, and, above all, devoted to the pleasures of the toilet. And -his toilet seems, for the most part, to centre in or near his chin. -Indeed, it is by his chin that you identify the business man. You know -what Pascal said of Cleopatra’s nose: how, if it had been an inch -shorter, the whole history of the world would have been different. Much -the same thing may be said about the business man’s chin. Had it been -receding or pointed or dimpled or double, there would have been no -business man and consequently no business. But things, as Bishop Butler -said, are what they are and their consequences will be what they will be. -The business man’s chin is prominent, square, firm, and (unless he deals -in rubber tires—the sole exception to the rule) smooth. It is as smooth -as Spedding’s forehead, celebrated by Thackeray and Edward Fitzgerald. It -is, indeed, like that forehead, a kind of landmark, a public monument. -Even the rich, velvety lather, which does not dry on the face and leaves -behind a feeling of complete comfort and well-grooming, cannot disguise -it. No wonder the business man is so particular about shaving it! It is a -kind of religious rite, an Early Matins, with him. - -Outside the bank-parlour, the mart and the exchange the business man -takes no risks, and at his toilet-table he prefers safety razors. Indeed, -he collects them. Sometimes he favours the sort that can be stropped in -a moment with one turn of the wrist; sometimes the sort that needs no -stropping at all. But, like all collectors, he is never so happy as when -handling, or rather caressing the objects of his collection. Mark how his -eyes dance with delight and his smile sweetens as the razor courses over -his chin. Evidently life at this moment is burning for him with a hard -gem-like flame. Call it not shaving! Say, rather, he is ministering to -the symbolic element in him, daintily smoothing the proud emblem of his -power—to which he will add the finishing touch of pearl-powder, whose -constant use produces a delicate bloom, tones up the complexion, and -protects the skin against the ravages of time. - -When the chin has been prepared for the business day he tries and -contrasts the several effects of it over a variety of collars. For the -business man collects collars, too. His chin protrudes with quiet but -firm insistence over some of them, nestles coyly in others, or it may -be emerges with ease from the sort designed to give ample throat room -and especially favoured by men who seek considerable freedom but at the -same time a collar of character and distinction. Nor has he any false -shame about being seen in his shirt-sleeves. In fact, he seems to be in -the habit, when half-dressed, of calling in his friends (evidently, from -their chins, fellow business men) to see how perfectly his shirt fits at -the neck and how its thoroughly shrunk material is none the worse for -repeated visits to the laundry. - -Once dressed—and I pass over his interviews with his tailor (he collects -overcoats), because that would lead us far and might land us, unawares, -among sportsmen, or airmen, or other non-business men—once dressed, he -is to be seen at his office. That does not mean that he is to be seen -at work. No, it is a somewhat sinister fact that the advertisements -hardly ever show the business man engaged in business. You may find -him at an enormous desk bristling with patent devices and honeycombed -with pigeon-holes, where he sees himself invested with perfect control -and rid of all petty routine anomalies, with a mind free to consider -questions of policy and the higher aspirations of his house. But not, -in blunt English, working, oh dear no! He is pleasantly gossiping with -another business man, who is lolling over the edge of the desk smoking a -cigarette. Now and then, it is true, you may get a glimpse of him at the -telephone. But then his tender smile gives him away. It is obviously no -business conversation but an appointment for lunch with his _fiancée_. - -Only one advertisement artist has ever “spotted” him at work. He -was addressing the board. The board all wore white waistcoats, the -same business chin, and the same dry smile as the orator, who with -clenched fist and flashing eye assured them of his conviction that -increased production results from the bond of mutual goodwill created -between employer and employee by the board’s system of life assurance. -Altogether, a very jolly party. But outside the world of business men -it wouldn’t be considered work. Really, for work it looks as though you -would have to go to the non-business man. Think of Balzac’s eighteen -hours a day! - -But the business man, I daresay, will reply, as they said to the -sonneteer in Molière, that “Le temps ne fait rien à l’affaire.” -Certainly, the business man’s time doesn’t—for you next find him, in -spick and span evening dress, at the dinner-table, beaming at the waiter -who has brought him his favourite sauce. The business man collects -sauces, but prefers the sauce that goes with everything. After dinner you -may see him, before a roaring fire, holding up his glass of port to the -light and telling another business man who the shipper is. Last scene -of all, a night-piece, you have a glimpse of him in his pyjamas merrily -discoursing with several other business men (in different patterns of the -same unshrinkable fabric) all sitting cross-legged and smoking enormous -cigars. This is the end of a perfect business day. And you conclude that -business men sleep in dormitories. - - THE END. - - THE WHITEFRIARS PRESS, LTD., LONDON AND TONBRIDGE. - -*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PASTICHE AND PREJUDICE *** - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will -be renamed. - -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the -United States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. 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