FOOTNOTES:
[176] A facsimile of this letter, from a collection of autographs in the possession of Mr. T. F. Dillon Croker, appeared in the above-named issue of the Autographic Mirror. The subject of the letter will be made clearer by the following passages from Mr. Ruskin's reminiscence of Mr. William Henry Harrison, published in the University Magazine of April, 1878, under the title of "My First Editor."—"1st February, 1878. In seven days more I shall be fifty-nine; which (practically) is all the same as sixty; but being asked by the wife of my dear old friend, W. H. Harrison, to say a few words of our old relations together, I find myself, in spite of all these years, a boy again—partly in the mere thought of, and renewed sympathy with, the cheerful heart of my old literary master, and partly in instinctive terror lest, wherever he is in celestial circles, he should catch me writing bad grammar, or putting wrong stops, and should set the table turning, or the like.... Not a book of mine, for good thirty years, but went, every word of it, under his careful eyes twice over—often also the last revises left to his tender mercy altogether on condition he wouldn't bother me any more."—The book to which the letter refers may be the "Stones of Venice," and the plate sent the third ("Noble and Ignoble Grotesque"), in the last volume of that work; and if this be so, the letter was probably written from Herne Hill about 1852-3.
[From the "Journal of Dramatic Reform," November, 1880.]
DRAMATIC REFORM.[177]
I.
My Dear Sir: Yes, I began writing something—a year ago, is it?—on your subject, but have lost it, and am now utterly too busy to touch so difficult and so important a subject. I shall come on it, some day, necessarily.
Meantime, the one thing I have to say mainly is that the idea of making money by a theatre, and making it educational at the same time, is utterly to be got out of people's heads. You don't make money out of a Ship of the Line, nor should you out of a Church, nor should you out of a College, nor should you out of a Theatre.
Pay your Ship's officers, your Church officers, your College tutors, and your Stage tutors, what will honorably maintain them. Let there be no starring on the Stage boards, more than on the deck, but the Broadside well delivered.
And let the English Gentleman consider with himself what he has got to teach the people: perhaps then, he may tell the English Actor what he has to teach them.
Ever faithfully yours,
(Signed) J. Ruskin.
Brantwood, July 30th, 1880.
II.
My Dear Sir: I am heartily glad you think my letter may be of some use. I wish it had contained the tenth part of what I wanted to say.
May I ask you at least to add this note to it, to tell how indignant I was, a few days ago, to see the drop-scene(!) of the Folies at Paris composed of huge advertisements! The ghastly want of sense of beauty, and endurance of loathsomeness gaining hourly on the people!
They were playing the Fille du Tambour Major superbly, for the most part; they gave the introductory convent scene without the least caricature, the Abbess being played by a very beautiful and gracefully-mannered actress, and the whole thing would have been delightful had the mere decorations of the theatre been clean and pretty. To think that all the strength of the world combining in Paris to amuse itself can't have clean box-curtains! or a pretty landscape sketch for a drop scene!—but sits in squalor and dismalness, with bills stuck all over its rideau!
I saw Le Chalet here last night, in many respects well played and sung, and it is a quite charming little opera in its story, only it requires an actress of extreme refinement for the main part, and everybody last night sang too loud. There is no music of any high quality in it, but the piece is one which, played with such delicacy as almost any clever, well-bred girl could put into the heroine's part (if the audiences would look for acting more than voice), ought to be extremely delightful to simple persons.
On the other hand, I heard William Tell entirely massacred at the great opera-house at Paris. My belief is they scarcely sang a piece of pure Rossini all night, but had fitted in modern skimble-skamble tunes, and quite unspeakably clumsy and common ballet. I scarcely came away in better humor from the mouthed tediousness of Gerin at the Français, but they took pains with it, and I suppose it pleased a certain class of audience. The William Tell could please nobody at heart.
The libretto of Jean de Nivelle is very beautiful, and ought to have new music written for it. Anything so helplessly tuneless as its present music I never heard, except mosquitoes and cicadas.
Ever faithfully yours,
(Signed) J. Ruskin.
Amiens, October 12th, 1880.