[3]. T. Johnson, London correspondent of Le Figaro.
My reason for telling about my loss of memory, which was quite an unimportant incident in itself, is merely to prove to authors how unnecessary it is to take the trouble of explaining the characters of their creations. Alexandre Dumas was certainly anxious to give us the reasons which caused Mrs. Clarkson to act as strangely as she did. He had created a person who was extremely interesting and full of action as the play proceeds. She reveals herself to the public, in the first act, by the lines which Mrs. Clarkson says to Mme. de Septmonts. “I should be very glad, madame, if you would call on me. We could talk about one of your friends, M. Gérard, whom I love perhaps, as much as you do, although he does not perhaps care for me as he does for you.”
That was quite enough to interest the public in these two women. It was the eternal struggle of good and evil, the combat between Vice and Virtue. But it evidently seemed rather commonplace to Dumas, ancient history, in fact, and he wanted to rejuvenate the old theme by trying to arrange for an orchestra with organ and banjo. The result he obtained was a fearful cacophony. He wrote a foolish piece, which might have been a beautiful one. The originality of his style, the loyalty of his ideas, and the brutality of his humor sufficed for rejuvenating old ideas, which, in reality, are the eternal basis of all tragedies, comedies, novels, pictures, poems, and pamphlets. It was Love between Vice and Virtue. Among the spectators who saw the first performance of “L’Etrangère” in London, and there were quite as many French as English present, not one remarked that there was something wanting, and not one of them said that he had not understood the character.
I talked about it to a very learned Frenchman.
“Did you notice the gap in the third act?” I asked him.
“No,” he replied.
“In my big scene with Croizette?”
“No.”
“Well, then, read what I left out,” I insisted.
When he had read this he exclaimed: “So much the better. It’s very dull, all that story, and quite useless. I understand the character without all that rigmarole and that romantic history.”