34, De Vere Gardens. W.
November 30th, 1894.
My dear Heinemann,
All thanks for the privilege of perusal—which I greatly appreciate. I applaud the boldness with which you attack de front all the difficulties of the damnable little art, and which ought to bring you all honour. It is refreshingly courageous of you, for example, to have staked your fortune on a dramatis personae of 3, when you might, like H.A. Jones, have sought safety in 30 or so. I think the idea of the First Step interesting—the situation of the girl who has become a man’s mistress, but rises in arms at the idea that her sister should do so—but I am not certain that it stands forth, as the subject, with that big dotting of the big i, that the barbarous art of the actable drama requires. In that art one must specify one’s subject as unmistakeably as one orders one’s dinner—I mean leave the audience no trouble to disengage or disentangle it. Forget not that you write for the stupid—that is, that your maximum of refinement must meet the minimum of intelligence of the audience—the intelligence, in other words, of the biggest ass it may conceivably contain. It is a most unholy trade! But you are very brave and gay and easy with it. You have attempted a tour de force in trying to carry on 2 acts with only three people (I can think of no other case but Maupassant’s Paix du Ménage—performed at the Français after his death by Bartet, Le Bargy & Worms), and with only one question, as it were, to create in the bosom of the spectator that principle of suspense which is the essence of the function of a theatrical action—the suspense as to whether or no, and how, by what means or by what catastrophe, a certain thing will happen or fail. The particular thing, in the First Step, is the fate of the young sister’s chastity, the “question” whether or no Annie shall lose her or save her. It is interesting but I am not sure it fills the play enough—and whether in your very laudable desire to be unconventional and real you haven’t simplified too much. However, this will show in the test—though I pity you for the ordeal of interpretation. I can’t help wishing Annie were rather worse herself, for the dramatic effect of the contrast between her own life and character and her intensity about the other girl; in other words, I think you have made her too good and the man she lives with too bad. The situation would have had a fuller force if his entanglement with the actress had been more represented—so that (with the actress introduced) the action would have been closer and the effect of the circumstances leading Frank to sacrifice the girl more pictured, more dramatic. Excuse this preachment. I didn’t mean to pick holes in your so serious and honourable attempt—but only to show you with what care I have read it and how much it has made me reflect!
I owe you also long-delayed thanks for the Ibsen—I mean Act III, which I also return. It is a great—a very great drop; but it has distinct beauty and it could, in representation, I think be made fine.
All success to your own tragic Muse. She is evidently much in earnest and she is altogether in the movement. Do take with her also, after this, another turn.
Yours ever, my dear Heinemann,
Henry James.
P.S. I long to hear about Manchester.
Of this, the first book printed by The Scarab Press, one hundred copies are for sale at Dunster House, 26 Holyoke Street & Mt. Auburn, Cambridge, Massachusetts.