II.
In spite of “wind and weather” the people of Chicago crowded Haverly’s Theatre, where Irving and Miss Terry appeared, night after night, for two weeks; and the critics of the great papers of the West, the “Times,” “Tribune,” “Inter-Ocean,” and “Daily News,” were equal to the occasion. They showed a knowledge of their work, and an appreciation of dramatic art, as illustrated by Irving, quite in keeping with the spirit and ambition of their new and wonderful city. A news-collector, having in view the prejudices of New York and London, as to the literary and journalistic cultivation of Chicago, selected an enthusiastic line or two from the Chicago notices of Irving and Miss Terry, with a view to cast ridicule upon western criticism. This kind of thing is common to news-collectors on both sides of the Atlantic. A reporter desires to please his editor, and to cater for his public. In London, believing that New York will be stirred with the report of a hostile demonstration against an American artist, he makes the most of the working of a rival American clique there against Lotta. New York looks down loftily upon the art culture of Chicago, and London chiefly knows Chicago through its great fire, borne with so much fortitude, and for its “corners in pork.” The local caterer for the news columns of New York and London panders to these ideas. The best-educated writer, the neatest essayist, might appear foolish by cutting unconnected sentences out of his work, and printing them alone.
In the journalistic literature of modern criticism there is nothing better than some of the essays on Irving and his art that appeared in the papers of Chicago and the West. In this connection it is worth while pointing out that the absence of an international copyright between England and America forces native writers, who otherwise would be writing books, into the press. So long as publishers can steal or buy “for a mere song” the works of popular English authors they will not give a remunerative wage to the comparatively unknown writers of their own country. Therefore, busy thinkers,—men and women with literary inspirations devote themselves to journalism. It would be surprising if, under these circumstances, the western press should not here and there entertain and instruct its readers with literary and critical work as much entitled to respect, and as worthy to live, as the more pretentious and more happily and fortunately placed literature of London, Boston, and New York. The American authors best known to-day, and most praised in both hemispheres, have written for the newspapers, and some of them had their training on the press: Bret Harte, Mark Twain, Howells, Aldrich, John Hay, James, Habberton, Winter, Bryant, Artemus Ward (I leave the reader to complete the list, for I mention these name en passant and at random); and how many others are coming on through the columns of the newspapers to take up the running, who shall say? The Chicago press often sacrifices dignity and good taste in the headings with which it seeks to surprise and excite its readers. But this is a feature of Western journalism that will go out with the disappearance of the lower civilization to which, in covering the entire ground of its circulation, it unhesitatingly appeals. The London press is not free from the charge of pandering to depraved tastes in its reports of sensational murders and divorce cases, though the great body of its writers and contributors no doubt sit down to their work with a higher sense of their responsibility to the public than is felt by their American contemporaries.
“Do you think that is so?” Irving asked, when I was propounding this view to an American colleague.
“Yes,” said the journalist addressed; “but I think our newspapers are far more interesting than yours. At the same time you beat us in essay-writing, for that is what your editorials are,—they are essays.”
“That is true,” said Irving, “and very fine some of them are.”
But to return to Chicago criticism,—I repeat that among the best and most appreciative and most scholarly of the criticisms upon Irving and his art, in England and America, are the writings of the Chicago journalists,—McPhelin, of the “Tribune,” Barron, of the “Inter-Ocean,” McConnell, of the “Times,” and Pierce, of the “Daily News.” The two first mentioned are quite young men, not either of them more than twenty-five. I am tempted to quote, in justification of this opinion, and as an example of Chicago work, the following extracts from one of several equally well-written criticisms in the “Tribune”:—
It is true that in every department of art the power of the imagination has declined with the advance of knowledge. The Greek actors went into convulsions through excess of passion. A Roman actor in the midst of frenzied recitation struck a slave dead. If we have not so much imagination as the ancients (a fact which we need not regret), we have finer sensibilities, more penetrating insight, and a truer consciousness of life’s mystery and meaning. The art of to-day, if less exuberant than that of yesterday, is more serene, and, above all, its methods are more truthful.
They are the great actors who have kept pace with the most advanced thought, who have typified in their art the spirit of their age, who have inaugurated eras. Conservatism is stagnation. In its infancy the art of acting was monstrous exaggeration. This was natural, for it was fostered in the childhood of the world, and children love exaggeration. When, at last, the stilts and masks were thrown away, exaggeration of speech was preserved. Actors recited their lines in loud, monotonous sing-song. The ranters of our stage to-day are the lineal descendants of these men. Le Kain in France, and Garrick in England, made great strides towards natural methods in dramatic representation. The reflective genius of Kemble, at the beginning of this century, did much to complete the revolution in taste begun by Garrick. Kean was noted for the splendor and the volume of his power rather than for innovations in methods of expression. The actors who followed him prided themselves on their adherence to tradition,—tradition for which the rest of the world cared nothing. These artists were content to stand still while the culture of the century passed by them. At last there emerged out of obscurity, out of the jostling multitude of mediocrity, a man who drank in the spirit of his age,—a man who broke down the rotten barriers of tradition; a man who caught the intensity, the poetry, the artistic realism of his time; a man who inaugurated a new epoch in the art of acting. Final success was achieved only after a long and bitter struggle against conservative prejudices.
This man was Henry Irving.
In a broad and comprehensive way his position on the English stage has been defined above. After witnessing his impersonations of Louis XI. and Shylock, some conclusions may be drawn as to his genius and his methods.
There is nothing phenomenal or meteoric about this new actor. Henry Irving is not what Diderot would have us believe a great actor should be, namely, a man without sensibility. Diderot said that sensibility was organic weakness; that it crippled the intelligence, rendering acting alternately warm and cold; and that the great actor should have penetration, without any sensibility whatever. But Talma called sensibility the faculty of exaltation which shakes an actor’s very soul and which enables him to enter into the most tragic situations and the most terrible of passions as if they were his own. In the discussion of these conflicting theories Henry Irving has always taken Talma’s view. He comes nearer realizing Diderot’s ideal of greatness than any other actor of whom we have record.
His imagination is picturesque almost to the verge of sublimity. His fancy is lively and apparently inexhaustible. When he unrolls before us the varied-colored robe of life we look in vain to find one color missing. It is a fancy that is not only vivid, but that is most poetic. How touching is that return of Shylock to his lonely home, walking wearily over the deserted bridge,—the bridge that echoed only a moment before to the shouts and laughter of the merry maskers! The old man walks to the house from which his daughter has fled, knocks twice at the door, and looks up patiently and expectantly towards the casement. Then the curtain falls. The people who do not applaud such a tender touch as this should stop going to the theatre.
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In saying that Irving is realistic, that word is not used in its grosser sense. Realism should be the union of the ideal and the true. There may be truth in Zola’s realism, but there is no ideality; for ideality rejects the trivial, the vulgar, the earthly, and grasps the essence. There may be ideality in Mrs. Burnett’s novels, but sentiment is substituted for truth. The realism of Howells, for instance, is a union of the ideal and the true. Irving’s ideals are in harmony with the realistic tendency of literary thought, because they are drawn from humanity, and not from Olympus. His are human, not heroic, ideals. His Louis XI. is as true to nature as any impersonation can be; and yet it is ideal, inasmuch as the essence of the character is incorporated in action, and the baseness, the cruelty, the bigotry, of the king are not repugnant. Here is the union of the ideal and the true. If a man like Zola were playing Louis XI. he would shock and disgust us by a portrayal not essential, but of superficial grossness.
In attempting to estimate Irving’s genius one cannot catalogue qualities, but must indicate in a general way the nature of that genius as it is judged from its manifestations. Irving cannot be classified, for he is the leader of a new school of acting, as Tennyson is the leader of a new school of poetry. They who in the future will write of the great Victorian Era will find, perhaps, a resemblance between the actor and the poet, not only because both have opened up new fields of art, but because the chief characteristic of each is originality in form. If Tennyson is the poet who should be read by poets, Irving is the actor who should be studied by actors. The idea intended to be conveyed is, that both Tennyson and Irving excel in perfection of detail; in other words, of technique, or form. The great poet who wishes to be heard in the future must give us the polish and the intensity of Tennyson; the actor who would be great must give us the polish and the intensity of Irving.
Any line in Irving’s acting will illustrate his intensity, by which is meant the grasping of a fuller meaning than appears on the surface. When Shylock is flattering Portia in the trial scene, exclaiming, “A Daniel come to judgment,” etc., it is startling, the manner in which he leans forward suddenly and whispers with venomous unction and cunning the insidious compliment, “How much more elder art thou than thy looks!” The words are very simple, but their effects depend on the intensity of meaning with which they are uttered.
Praise has already been accorded Irving’s Shylock, because it is a type of the medieval Jew, interpreted, not according to the traditions of a bigoted age, but in the light of the liberality of the nineteenth century. This creation is, perhaps, the best proof of the assertion that Henry Irving has embodied in his art the spirit of his age, and therein lies his greatness.
Several lessons American managers will draw from the success of the Irving engagement. One is that Shakespearian plays must not be mutilated to give prominence to one actor. Artistic harmony must not be sacrificed to personal ambition. Another lesson is that an actor must not undertake all alone to act a play; he must have a company of actors, not a company of incompetent amateurs. A third is that Shakespearian plays are the jewels of dramatic literature, and their setting should surely be as rich as that given to the extravagant productions that are doing so much to vitiate popular taste.
In conclusion it may be remarked that it is gratifying that Henry Irving in his American tour has been regarded, not from a fashionable or a national, but from a purely artistic stand-point. In art the Spartan and the Athenian are brothers; the same love of beauty lives in Rome and in Geneva, in London and in New York. In the sunshine of art the national merges into the universal, and the mists of prejudice die away upon the horizon of the world.