I sympathise always with his struggles with his personnel, but I think, though, he hardly allows enough for the point of view. These actors and actresses are not literary. (They should be, I know.) They look at an author’s work as a man looks at the universe—a small part at a time. That trite old paradox that, to the actor, the part is greater than the whole, should never be forgotten. Remember, too, how “touchy,” as he calls it, they must be, in the nature of things. Their touchiness, their affectation, their lack of culture—all are inherent in them. Their success is always immediate, using the word in its literal sense as a metaphysician would use it; the author’s success is mediate, through time and trial. So one should not be discouraged because they fail to appreciate one’s efforts to give them the atmosphere of the period. They will get the atmosphere intuitively, or not at all.
He complains of “loss of time,” “thankless task,” “inefficiency,” and the like. Now, I think that is grumbling without cause. Take my own case, for example. I have no problems of dramatic art to wrestle with, only the problem of coal consumption. But it is ultimately the same thing, i.e., energy. My friend mourns the shameful loss of energy incident to the production of a decent presentment of his dramatic conception. I, as an engineer, mourn over the hideous loss of coal incidental to the propulsion of the ship. The loss in his case, I suppose, is incalculable: in mine it is nearly seventy per cent. Think of it for a moment. The Lusitania’s furnaces consume one thousand tons of coal per day, seven hundred of which are, in all probability, lost in the inefficiency of the steam-engine as a prime mover. It runs through the whole of our life, my friend! Waste, waste, waste! What we call the perfect cycle, the conversion of energy into heat and heat into energy, cannot, in practice, be accomplished without loss. What may interest you still more is that we cannot, even in theory, calculate on no loss whatever in the progress of the cycle, and by this same “entropy loss,” as we call it, some of our more reckless physicists foresee the running down of the great universe-machine some day, and so eliminating both plays and steam-engines from the problem altogether. But this is my point. Prodigious loss is the law of nature which she imposes both on artist and artisan. Indeed, artist and artisan have their reason of being in that loss, as I think you will admit.
Again, history will corroborate my contention as to the catholicity of this loss. Imagine the French Revolution, the Lutheran Reformation, the “Catholic” Reaction, and the like, to be revolutions of the vast human engine. Consider then the loss of power. Consider the impulse, the enormous impulse, applied to the piston, and then look at the result. What losses in leakages, in cooled enthusiasms, in friction-heat, in (pardon the ludicrous analogy) waste gases! Think, too, of the loss involved in unbalanced minds, as in unbalanced engines, one mass of bigoted inertia retarding another mass! Oh, my friend, my friend, you talk of “losses” as though you playwrights had a monopoly of it. Ask men of all trades, of all faiths, and they will give you, in their answers, increased knowledge of human life.
Such, at least, is my method—digging into the hearts of men. Take, for instance, my friend the Second Officer. A tall, lean young man, with an iron jaw under his brown beard. I began to talk to him one evening because he said he never had letters from home. He had a sister, he told me, but there was no joy in the telling. “We don’t hit it off,” he observed grimly, and I smiled. He has no sweetheart, loves nothing but dogs. How he loves dogs! He has two at his heels all day long. He loves them almost as much as dogs love the Chief Officer, which is to distraction. He will take the solemn English terrier up on his knee and give me a lecture thereon. This same pup, I learn, is “low”—look at his nose! He is in bad health—just feel his back teeth! Saucy? Yes, certainly, but not a thoroughbred hair on him. He has worms, too, I understand, somewhere inside, and on several occasions during the voyage his bowels needed attention. I, in my utter ignorance of dog-lore, begin to marvel that the animal holds together at all under the stress of these deficiencies. Perhaps the dirt which he collects by rolling about on deck affords a protective covering. Once a week, however, his lord and master divests him of even this shadowy defence, and he emerges from a bucket, clean, soapy, and coughing violently. In all probability he rejoices in consumption as well.
The Second Officer, I say, teaches me philosophy. He has had a hard life, I think. By sheer industry he has risen from common sailor to his present berth. I say “sheer” because it seems to me that when a man has no friends or relations who care to write to him, the way of life must be very steep indeed. I was surprised, though, to learn of his loneliness. Had he, then, no kindly light to lead him on? Unconsciously he answered me. Would I come down below and have something to drink? With pleasure; and so we went. The last time I had been in that room was when his predecessor, the little man with four children and a house of his own, had extended hospitality to me. It is not a pleasant room. A spare bunk full of canvas bolts, cordage, and other stores, make it untidy; and the Steward’s stores are just behind the after bulkhead, so that it smells like a ship-chandler’s warehouse. Well, we sit down, and the whiskey passes. We light cigars (magnificent Campania Generals at three farthings each), and then he ferrets about in his locker. I look at the pictures. Almanack issued by a rope-maker in Manchester; photo of an Irish terrier, legs wide part, tail at an angle of forty-five to the rest of him; photo of Scotch terrier, short legs, fat body, ears like a donkey’s; photo of the officers of s.s. Timbuctoo, in full uniform, my friend among them, taken on the upper deck, bulldog in the foreground. By this time the Second Officer has exhumed an oblong wooden case containing a worn violin. Ah! I have his secret. He holds it like a baby, and plucks at the strings. Then he plays.
Well, he knows, by instinct I imagine, that I care nothing for music, as music. So when I ask for hymn-tunes, he smiles soberly and complies. I hear my favourites to my heart’s content—“Hark, Hark, My Soul,” “Weary of Earth,” “Abide With Me,” and “Thou Knowest, Lord.” How glad they must be who believe these words! The red sun was flooding the room with his last flaming signal as the man played:
“Abide with me; fast falls the eventide;
The darkness deepens; Lord with me abide,
When other helpers fail, and comforts flee,
Help of the helpless, O abide with me!”
Yes, mon ami, all men know of that tremendous loss inherent in all their labours. And it is, I think, to balance that loss that they have invented religion.