Now, this change in the young woman’s emotional outlook from the hero, of sorts, to the actor, is a change I can’t help feeling to be for the worse. For, you see, the object of the emotional outpouring is no longer a man who does something, but only a man who pretends to do something, who postures and poses and plays at doing something! “The Captain with his whiskers” of whom our grandmothers sang, and at whom our mothers were not allowed to peep through the slats of their Venetian blinds, may have been a bit of a dog, not “a marrying man,” mayhap, as another old song had it; but at least his scarlet jacket and his gold lace stood for something, for something worth having. That scarlet was smoke-blackened at Waterloo, that gold lace lost its lustre on the slopes at Inkerman. Girls don’t sing “The Captain with his whiskers” now, and, to tell you the truth, I’m rather glad of that. May I not live to see the day, though I am afraid I shall, when they will hymn the seductions of “The actor with his grease pot.”
Please understand—but I need not ask that, you always do understand me, you are the only woman who ever has, and consequently made the right allowances—that I do not say one word in contempt of the actor’s profession as such. It is an arduous trade, and as honest as any other whose object is to amuse the public. They call it an “art” now, I notice, and, perhaps it is, a kind of a sort of an art; but my point is that it is not a business that calls out the best, the virile, from a man. On the other hand, it does evoke, by the confession of lots of actors and actresses themselves, the malign qualities of personal vanity, petty jealousy, and peacockiness. The constant assumption of other personalities does and must wipe out such personality as the man may have to begin with. If you are always pretending to be somebody else you must inevitably lose your own self at last. And then, it is so quite awfully an affair of clothes; of clothes and of powdered wigs, and of shaven faces and smirks. Now, I put it to you, Alexa, do you think a delightful woman ought to fall in love with a suit of clothes bought in Covent Garden? Further, do you think she can be really delightful if she does?
After all, perhaps, the change is not so great, or the thing so serious as it seems. Perhaps, when all’s said and done, it is only the actor in his character of hero with whom the young woman “falls in love.” There would be a sharp reaction, I make no doubt, did she see the fellow himself in tweeds guzzling brandy and soda in a Strand bar, or even in evening dress sipping champagne at the Savoy. And, to do him justice, sometimes, on the stage, in the glare of the footlights, an actor does look uncommonly like a gentleman. You might almost fancy he was the Sir Rupert Glenalmond or the Lord Archibald Heavyswell he pretends to be. But still it is, while you are about it, better to “fall in love” with the reality than with the sham, isn’t it? You must fall in love with something, I know; but let it be with the Man, not with the Mimic.
Therefore, Alexa dear, next time you go to the theatre spend the dressing hour in the cultivation of the critical spirit. That shall save you. Be a modern girl by all means; be as modern as ever you can, and count on my support to the utmost extreme of your modernity, but don’t, don’t be a little duffer.
Always your affectionate, if, this time, also
Your admonitory
Father.