Miss De Goncourt hung upon the music of his words. At least such was her confession to Miss Elmira Jenks, her admirer and satellite, (every dramatic student has a human satellite, or a confiding dog, and the latter is generally the most constant) who agreed with her that in Art, sympathy is everything.
Miss De Goncourt may be said to have served an amateur apprenticeship to the art of the playwright; it had begun at school with Charades; it had progressed through several seasons of amateur theatricals; it had culminated in five Acts of blank verse; and apart from the epistolary appeals that had been made to London Managers, to save the reputation of native modern dramatists by its immediate production, Miss Elmira Jenks had discussed the work in a certain lady's journal, to which she contributed, assuring the world that Before the Dawn was worthy of the noblest efforts of dramatic poetry. Miss De Goncourt was also put forward as an honour to womanhood, having preferred the higher life of Art to the lower mission of Matrimony; and all that she and her friends now desired, was a fitting opportunity for the demonstration of the integrity of her ambition, which was to follow in the footsteps of Mrs. Inchbald, Joanna Baillie, and other distinguished lady dramatists. Miss De Goncourt was a spinster and an orphan, with a settled income of three hundred and fifty pounds a year; and she sat in her little Bedford Park study from day to day, with a pen in her hand, and a smile on her lips, a smile of hope and confidence.
It was a dainty room, with a grey dimity dado, that marked off a few old engravings of poetic and dramatic subjects. The over-mantel was green and white, with busts of Shakspeare, Shelley, Joan of Arc, and Florence Nightingale, upon its little shelves. There were bookcases and cabinets here and there, containing favourite authors and relics of great actresses, such as hair-pins used by Helen Faucit, a shoestring belonging to Rachel, and a brooch which had been worn by Mrs. Siddons. Had not these geniuses, watched, waited and suffered? Then what right had she to be impatient? It must have been a sweet nature that could philosophise thus in face of an entire cabinet of rejected plays, bound in white morocco, emblematic of their purity, though destined, it might be, to revolutionise the present frivolous stage as soon as the production of Before the Dawn should send both actors and managers to their author's door ravenous for the right to give her other works to an astonished and delighted public.
This day of triumph might be nearer than either friends or scoffers anticipated. Mr. Elliston Drury had taken a warm interest in her work; had indorsed the advice she had received to try Before the Dawn at a Matinée; had consented to play the leading character; and, what was more interesting still, had volunteered to coach her in the part of the heroine, if she was willing to impersonate that poetic and self-sacrificing creation. Miss De Goncourt was willing to place herself in the hands of Mr. Elliston Drury; Miss De Goncourt did place herself in his hands; and oh the rapture of hearing her words read to the assembled company of "Artistes" in the Green Room of the Parthenon Theatre on the day when the parts were distributed! The delight of those first rehearsals! She felt so much at home on the Stage, that she began to dream of a pre-existence in which she had been a priestess of Art, somewhat after the manner of her Roman girl who, crowned with a poisoned diadem, was sacrificed in the Temple, but to live again with the gods in a sublimated world of song. Mr. Elliston Drury accompanied her to the train after each rehearsal, and paid her so much homage, that she began to associate him in her tender feminine mind with the Roman youth for whose love she was martyred at the shrine; and, long before the eventful morning came, Mr. Elliston Drury (who had received a fortnight's notice at the Parthenon, but still had the future all before him) had made up his mind to hang up his hat, for good, in the æsthetic little hall of the De Goncourt inside the blue-and-white palings of the Bedford Park Estate.
"Was it not a success, then, Before the Dawn?" Ask the ring of authors, the conspirators, the tribe of envy, hatred, and malice assembled on that memorable occasion to crush the new authoress. Ask the leading actors, who had always dreaded the day when Mr. Elliston Drury should play a star part in a Metropolitan Theatre. No, Ladies and Gentlemen, Before the Dawn was a failure. Certain prominent critics were suborned to say so; and one of them, more cruel than the rest, declared that all the humorous range of modern Burlesque did not supply a reminiscence so positively comic as the scene in which the Roman Maiden, staggering under her poisoned crown (which would fall into an irresistibly funny angle with the Actress's un-Roman nose), hurled back upon Tiberius Cæsar the curse of the avenging gods.
But they have a consolation, the Lady Dramatist and her illustrious husband (he did hang up his hat, and his coat, he had little else to move from his garret in the Strand), in having possibly found a more useful field of duty than that of an active participation in the work before the footlights. It has been sarcastically, and we believe wrongfully asserted by a Tory Earl that critics are men who have failed as authors; but a similar calumny has been perpetrated by Miss Elmira Jenks (whose satelliteship came to a violent end with the marriage of her bright particular star to Mr. Elliston Drury) who has not hesitated to declare in her unscrupulous paper that the modern teachers of elocution are ladies and gentlemen who have failed as actors and actresses. Mr. and Mrs. Elliston Drury nevertheless pursue the even tenor of their way; their elocution classes are well attended; Mrs. Drury's afternoons never lack interesting visitors; and her husband's occasional Shakspearian recitals at Hammersmith and Putney, inspire the local critics with eloquent expressions of regret that the degenerate condition of the stage should condemn so rare an actor to the drawing-room and the platform.
Mr. Elliston Drury finds this a sufficient balm for his bruised soul; and his admiring wife declares that walking along the vale of life hand in hand with Elliston, is after all bliss enough, without the added and questionable joy of being a popular Lady Dramatist.
"The Saturday Review" at Spithead.—Our Special's account is too late for this week. He went away on Friday last, and was last seen on board the new P. & O. ship Victoria. Wire just received says, "Steamed through Fleet in tug. Tender reminiscences. Big guns everywhere. We're the biggest. Salutations." That's all!