If Poetic Justice was present at the debate, she probably did not receive much enlightenment on the questions which are now vexing her in Europe. To quote any of the substance of the debate would be an insult to her intelligence.
A more serious event was Richard Bennet’s recent production of Brieux’s Maternity. Considering the deadly earnestness with which author and cast struggled to inculcate lessons, the apathy of the public in respect to moral instruction was pathetic. On the night of my visit there was exactly one normal “theatre-goer” in the house. There was a sprinkling of people who had long admitted what Brieux has to say, and went from “high-brow” reasons. There was a young society matron who had escaped from her husband for the evening and is taking an amateurish interest in social questions. There were numerous persons who are always on the lookout for a chance to cackle at what they consider broad humor. These blonde ladies furnished an interesting refutation of one of Brieux’s theories. In one scene various women tell their troubles, emphasizing the fact that all women are united in their sorrows and understand them, whereas men do not. Immediately after this the drunken husband returns and disgusts and outrages the wife. There were many laughs in the audience to greet him—but not one from a man. Even the blonde ladies’ fat escorts tried to quiet them while the rest of us were hissing.
Granville Barker opens this week with Androcles and the Lion and some of the other recent London productions. A number of the backers of the old “New Theatre” are guaranteeing his expenses, a fact which is a historical corroboration for Mr. Barker’s wit. When he was brought over as the chosen manager for that institution, he objected to the immense size of the house. “But the alterations you suggest would cost us a million dollars,” he was told. “If you don’t make them, it will cost you three million,” he replied, and sailed back to London. His popularity with the New Theatre guarantors has been steadily increasing from that day to this.
There is even a rumor that if the present experiment succeeds, the New Theatre project will be resumed. This whisper aroused an answering howl from the American managers and actors. Why should good American money be spent in encouraging English talent, especially in such a disastrous season? they wailed. The answer was, in effect, the one that should be made to the whole “made in America” propaganda. What has American production done that it should be encouraged? When “made in America” comes to have any relation to honesty and intelligence, it will be time enough to invoke “patriotism” in its favor. In the meantime, the more disastrous foreign competition can be to our present shoddy products, the better.
This ironic year has produced few more strange reversals than the one which has brought Mr. McClure to the status of an employee of Mr. Munsey. When a man has apparently won his life campaign and written so engagingly of it as has Mr. McClure in his Autobiography, we begin to regard him as beyond the touch of the fates. Perhaps the present eventuality should be taken, however, merely as another proof that in our present arrangement of things it is less profitable to have a touch of genius than to become the owner of trust companies. At any rate McClure’s Magazine has apparently not profited much in recent years by Mr. McClure’s separation from its editorial policy.
There is one real consolation in a season which has brought such material devastation to commercial managers and magazines. When conventionally-planned “successes” don’t succeed, success comes to have less meaning. People who are after money in the promotion of artistic products are in their desperation more ready to try less “safe” ways of getting it, while the others have a decidedly better chance of gaining a respectful public attention.
Music
Kreisler and Shattuck
In certain realms, words are opaque and stupid things. In others—oh, comforting thought!—they seem to become transparent and almost intelligent. Following this out consistently, it becomes easy to write a page about Arthur Shattuck, pianist, and very difficult to say anything at all about Fritz Kreisler, violinist.
Arthur Shattuck was a disappointment. His faults, in a lesser man, would have been considered the sign of mere mediocrity; but in himself, they are obtrusive and disagreeable. An exasperating contrast existed between what may be called his style, with its rhythmic sureness and its admirable perspectives, and his great lack of tonal beauty. He cracks out hard tones. Any particular phrase of Mr. Boyle’s concerto for piano with orchestra, when passed on from the orchestra to the solo instrument, lost its lyric curve and became flat and lifeless under Mr. Shattuck’s long, aggressive hands. When another pianist, Ernest Hutcheson, played the same work with the composer conducting the New York Philharmonic, a certain phenomenon was lacking which appeared when Frederick Stock conducted the work with the Chicago Symphony. This phenomenon (let it be whispered) was a strange prominence of the brass choir of the orchestra in certain portions of the work which led one to believe that Mr. Stock was, perhaps, more interested in the orchestral accompaniment than in the performance of the soloist. If this were as true as it appeared, it is on a par with another startling fact:—that the public is really learning something about tone-values and the possible beauties of piano music. What else could account for the numerous confessions caught in snatches in the corridors and stairways, the composite of which was, “He left me cold”?... Arthur Shattuck is a millionaire.