Now that the literary man has an intelligent public he cares nothing for the ignorant patron. The literary man makes money. The world is becoming civilized and the literary man stands high. In England, however, if Charles Darwin had been invited to dinner, and there had been present some sprig of nobility, some titled vessel holding the germs of hereditary disease, Darwin would have been compelled to occupy a place beneath him. But I have hopes even for England. The same is true of the artist. The man who can now paint a picture by which he receives from five thousand to fifty thousand dollars, is necessarily respectable. The actor who may realize from one to two thousand dollars a night, or even more, is welcomed in the stupidest and richest society. So with the singers and with all others who instruct and amuse mankind. Many people imagine that he who amuses them must be lower than they. This, however, is hardly possible. I believe in the aristocracy of the brain and heart; in the aristocracy of intelligence and goodness, and not only appreciate but admire the great actor, the great painter, the great sculptor, the marvelous singer. In other words, I admire all people who tend to make this life richer, who give an additional thought to this poor world.
Question. Do you think this liberal movement, favoring the better class of plays, inaugurated by the Rev. Dr. Abbott, will tend to soften the sentiment of the orthodox churches against the stage?
Answer. I have not read what Dr. Abbott has written on this subject. From your statement of his position, I think he entertains quite a sensible view, and, when we take into consideration that he is a minister, a miraculously sensible view. It is not the business of the dramatist, the actor, the painter or the sculptor to teach what the church calls morality. The dramatist and the actor ought to be truthful, ought to be natural—that is to say, truthfully and naturally artistic. He should present pictures of life properly chosen, artistically constructed; an exhibition of emotions truthfully done, artistically done. If vice is presented naturally, no one will fall in love with vice. If the better qualities of the human heart are presented naturally, no one can fail to fall in love with them. But they need not be presented for that purpose. The object of the artist is to present truthfully and artistically. He is not a Sunday school teacher. He is not to have the moral effect eternally in his mind. It is enough for him to be truly artistic. Because, as I have said, a great many times, the greatest good is done by indirection. For instance, a man lives a good, noble, honest and lofty life. The value of that life would be destroyed if he kept calling attention to it—if he said to all who met him, "Look at me!" he would become intolerable. The truly artistic speaks of perfection; that is to say, of harmony, not only of conduct, but of harmony and proportion in everything. The pulpit is always afraid of the passions, and really imagines that it has some influence on men and women, keeping them in the path of virtue. No greater mistake was ever made. Eternally talking and harping on that one subject, in my judgment, does harm. Forever keeping it in the mind by reading passages from the Bible, by talking about the "corruption of the human heart," of the "power of temptation," of the scarcity of virtue, of the plentifulness of vice—all these platitudes tend to produce exactly what they are directed against.
Question. I fear, Colonel, that I have surprised you into agreeing with a clergyman. The following are the points made by the Rev. Dr. Abbott in his editorial on the theatre, and it seems to me that you and he think very much alike—on that subject. The points are these:
1. It is not the function of the drama to teach moral lessons.
2. A moral lesson neither makes nor mars either a drama or a novel.
3. The moral quality of a play does not depend upon the result.
4. The real function of the drama is like that of the novel—not to amuse, not to excite; but to portray life, and so minister to it. And as virtue and vice, goodness and evil, are the great fundamental facts of life, they must, in either serious story or serious play, be portrayed. If they are so portrayed that the vice is alluring and the virtue repugnant, the play or story is immoral; if so portrayed that the vice is repellant and the virtue alluring, they play or story is moral.
5. The church has no occasion to ask the theatre to preach; though if it does preach we have a right to demand that its ethical doctrines be pure and high. But we have a right to demand that in its pictures of life it so portrays vice as to make it abhorrent, and so portrays virtue as to make it attractive.
Answer. I agree in most of what you have read, though I must confess that to find a minister agreeing with me, or to find myself agreeing with a minister, makes me a little uncertain. All art, in my judgment, is for the sake of expression—equally true of the drama as of painting and sculpture. No poem touches the human heart unless it touches the universal. It must, at some point, move in unison with the great ebb and flow of things. The same is true of the play, of a piece of music or a statue. I think that all real artists, in all departments, touch the universal and when they do the result is good; but the result need not have been a consideration. There is an old story that at first there was a temple erected upon the earth by God himself; that afterward this temple was shivered into countless pieces and distributed over the whole earth, and that all the rubies and diamonds and precious stones since found are parts of that temple. Now, if we could conceive of a building, or of anything involving all Art, and that it had been scattered abroad, then I would say that whoever find and portrays truthfully a thought, an emotion, a truth, has found and restored one of the jewels.