The lovely bit of hockey which James Barton gives is for me far more distinguished than all the rest of his work in the Winter Garden Revue. He is a real artist, but it is work that one sees rather a deal of this season, whereas the hockey dance is like nothing else to be found. A lovely moment of rhythmic leg work. We are now thoroughly familiar with the stage drunk, as we have long been familiarized by Weber and Fields with the stage Jew, which is fortunately passing out for lack of artist to present it. Léon Errol is good for once, even twice. He is quite alone in his very witty falls and runs. They are full of the struggle of the drunk to regain his character and manhood. The act lives on a very flat plane otherwise. It has no roundness.
I have come on my list to Mijares and Co., in "Monkey Business." We have the exquisite criterion always for the wire, in the perfect Bird Millman. "Monkey Business" is a very good act, and both men do excellent work on the taut and slack wire. "Monkey," in this case being a man, does as beautiful a piece of work as I know of. I have never seen a back somersault upon a high wire. I have never heard of it before. There may be whole generations of artists gifted in this particular stunt. You have here, nevertheless, a moment of very great beauty in the cleanness of this man's surprising agility and sureness. The monkey costume hinders the beauty of the thing. It should be done with pale blue silk tights against a cherry velvet drop, or else in deep ultramarine on an old gold background.
The acrobatic novelty called "The Legrohs" relies chiefly on its most exceptional member, who would be complete without the other two. He is most decidedly a virtuoso in vaudeville. Very gifted, certainly, if at moments a little disconcerting in the flexibility and the seemingly uncertain turns of his body. It is the old-fashioned contortionism saved by charming acrobatic variations. This "Legroh" knows how to make a superb pattern with his body, and the things he does with it are done with such ease and skill as to make you forget the actual physical effort and you are lost for the time being in the beauty of this muscular kaleidoscopic brilliancy. You feel it is like "puzzle—find the man" for a time, but then you follow his exquisite changes from one design into another with genuine delight, and appreciate his excessive grace and easy rapidity. He gives you chiefly the impression of a dragon-fly blown in the wind of a brisk morning over cool stretches of water. You would expect him to land on a lily-pad any moment and smooth his wings with his needle-like legs.
So it is the men and women of vaudeville transform themselves into lovely flower and animal forms, and the animals take on semblances of human sensibility in vaudeville. It is the superb arabesque of the beautiful human body that I care for most, and get the most from in these cameo-like bits of beauty and art. So brief they are, and like the wonders of sea gardens as you look through the glass bottoms of the little boats. So like the wonders of the microscopic, full of surprising novelties of colour and form. So like the kaleidoscope in the ever changing, ever shifting bits of colour reflecting each other, falling into new patterns with each twist of the toy. If you care for the iridescence of the moment you will trust vaudeville as you are not able to trust any other sort of a performance. You have no chance for the fatigue of problem. You are at rest as far as thinking is concerned. It is something for the eye first and last. It is something for the ear now and then, only very seldomly, however. For me, they are the saviours of the dullest art in existence, the art of the stage. Duse was quite right about it. The stage should be swept of actors. It is not a place for imitation and photography. It is a place for the laughter of the senses, for the laughter of the body. It is a place for the tumbling blocks of the brain to fall in heaps. I give first place to the acrobat and his associates because it is the art where the human mind is for once relieved of its stupidity. The acrobat is master of his body and he lets his brain go a-roving upon other matters, if he has one. He is expected to be silent. He would agree with William James, transposing "music prevents thinking" into "talking prevents silence." In so many instances, it prevents conversation. That is why I like tea chitchat. Words are never meant to mean anything then. They are simply given legs and wings, and they jump and fly. They land where they can, and fall flat if they must. The audience that patronizes vaudeville would do well to be present at most first numbers, and remain for most or many of the closing ones. A number, I repeat, like the Four Danubes, should not be snubbed by any one.
I have seen recently, then, by way of summary, four fine bits of artistry in vaudeville—Ella Shields, James Watts, the Brothers Rath, and the Four Danubes. I shall speak again of these people. They are well worth it. They turn pastime into perfect memory. They are, therefore, among the great artists.
A CHARMING EQUESTRIENNE
I am impelled to portray, at this time, my devotion to the little equestrienne, by the presence of a traveling circus in these lofty altitudes in which I am now living, seven thousand feet above the sea, in our great southwest. The mere sight of this master of the miniature ring, with all the atmosphere of the tent about him, after almost insurmountable difficulties crossing the mountains, over through the canyons of this expansive country, delivering an address in excellently chosen English, while poised at a considerable height on the wire, to the multitude on the ground below him, during which time he is to give what is known as the "free exhibit" as a high wire artist—all this turns me once more to the ever charming theme of acrobatics in general and equestrianism in particular, and it is of a special genius in this field that I wish to speak.
I have always been a lover of these artists of bodily vigour, of muscular melody, as I like to call it. As I watched this ringmaster of the little traveling circus, this master mountebank of the sturdy figure, ably poised upon his head on the high wire, outlined against the body of the high mountain in the near distance, about which the thunder clouds were huddling, and in and out of which the lightning was sharply playing, it all formed for me another of those perfect sensations from that phase of art expression known as the circus. My happiest memories in this field are from the streets of Paris before the war, the incomparably lovely fêtes. Only the sun knows where these dear artists may be now.