PASTICHE AND PREJUDICE

PASTICHE
AND
PREJUDICE

BY
A. B. WALKLEY

NEW YORK
ALFRED A. KNOPF MCMXXI

Reprinted, by the courtesy of the Proprietors,
from The Times.

Printed in Great Britain.

PASTICHE

Writing of Lamennais, Renan says: “Il créa avec des réminiscences de la Bible et du langage ecclésiastique cette manière harmonieuse et grandiose qui réalise le phénomène unique dans l’histoire littéraire d’un pastiche de génie.” Renan was nothing if not fastidious, and “unique” is a hard word, for which I should like to substitute the milder “rare.” Pastiches “of genius” are rare because genius is rare in any kind, and more than ever rare in that kind wherein the writer deliberately forgoes his own natural, instinctive form of expression for an alien form. But even fairly plausible pastiches are rare, for the simple reason that though, with taste and application, and above all an anxious care for style, you may succeed in mimicking the literary form of another author or another age, it is impossible for you to reproduce their spirit—since no two human beings in this world are identical. Perhaps the easiest of all kinds is the theatrical “imitation,” because all that is to be imitated is voice, tone, gesture—an actor’s words not being his own—yet I have never seen one that got beyond parody. The sense of an audience is not fine enough to appreciate exact imitation; it demands exaggeration, caricature.

Parody, indeed, is the pitfall of all pastiche. Even Mr. Max Beerbohm, extraordinarily susceptible and responsive to style as he is, did not escape it in that delightful little book of his wherein, some years ago, he imitated many of our contemporary authors. I can think of but a single instance which faithfully reproduces not only the language but almost the spirit of the authors imitated—M. Marcel Proust’s volume of “Pastiches et Mélanges.” The only stricture one can pass on it, if stricture it be, is that M. Proust’s Balzac and St. Simon and the rest are a little “more Royalist than the King,” a little more like Balzac and St. Simon than the originals themselves; I mean, a little too intensely, too concentratedly, Balzac and St. Simon. But Marcel Proust is one of my prejudices. To say that his first two books, “Swann” and “Les Jeunes Filles,” have given me more exquisite pleasure than anything in modern French literature would not be enough—I should have to say, in all modern literature. Mrs. Wharton, I see from the “Letters,” sent Henry James a copy of “Swann” when it first came out (1918): I wish we could have had his views of it. It offers another kind of psychology from Henry James’s, and he would probably have said, as he was fond of saying, that it had more “saturation” than “form.” But I am wandering from my subject of pastiche.

I was present one afternoon at a curious experiment in theatrical pastiche. This was a rehearsal of a rehearsal of the screen scene from The School for Scandal, which was supposed to be directed by Sheridan himself. Rather a complicated affair, because Miss Lilian Braithwaite was supposed to be playing not Lady Teazle but Mrs. Abington playing Lady Teazle, Mr. Gilbert Hare had to play Mr. Parsons playing Sir Peter, and so forth—histrionics, so to speak, raised to the second power. To tell the truth, I think the middle term tended to fall out. It was easy enough for the players to make themselves up after the originals in the Garrick Club picture of the screen scene, but how these originals spoke or what their personal peculiarities were, on or off the stage, who shall now say? There you have the difference between fact and fiction. Lady Teazle and Sir Peter, having no existence save in the book of the play, are producible from it at any time, as “real” as they ever were, but Mrs. Abington and Mr. Parsons are not fixed in a book, and their reality died with them. Naturally enough the actual scene written by Sheridan “went” with very much greater force than the setting of conversations, interruptions, etc., in which it was embedded, for the simple reason that the one part had had the luck to be imagined by Sheridan and the other had not. But as a pastiche this new part, written round the old, seemed to me on the whole very well done; there was hardly a word that Sheridan and his friends might not have said. Just one, however, there noticeably was. Mr. Gerald du Maurier (as Sheridan) was made to tell Mr. Leon Quartermaine (as Charles) that, in his laughter at the discovery of Lady Teazle, he was not to expect the “sympathy of the audience.” That, I feel sure, was an anachronism, a bit of quite modern theatrical lingo. I should guess that it came to us from the French, who are fond of talking of a rôle sympathique. Mr. du Maurier, if any one, must remember his father’s delightful sketch of English people shopping in Normandy, when the artful shopwoman is cajoling a foolish-faced Englishman with “le visage de monsieur m’est si sympathique.” The Italian simpatico is, of course, even more hard-worked. I felt sure, then, as I say, about the anachronism; but I am quite aware that it is never safe to trust to one’s instinct in these matters. It is by no means impossible that some one may triumphantly produce against me a newspaper or book of 1775 which speaks of “the sympathy of the audience.” The unexpected in these cases does occasionally happen.

And certainly any one who has tried his hand at a pastiche of a dead and gone author will have frequently been astonished, not at the antiquity but at the modernity of the style. Language changes less rapidly than we are apt to suppose. The bad writers seem to get old-fashioned earliest—because, I suppose, they yield most easily to ephemeral tricks of speech. For example, Fanny Burney, who, I cannot but think, wrote a bad style, and in her later books (as Macaulay pointed out) a kind of debased Johnsonese, is now decidedly old-fashioned. But Jane Austen, whose style, though scarcely brilliant, was never bad, is not. A modern Mr. Collins would not talk of “elegant females”—but even then he was put forward as ridiculous for doing so. Jane was fond of “the chief of the day” and “the harp was bringing.” These phrases are passées, but I doubt if you will find many others.

Our sense of the past, in fact, may illude us. And that reminds me of Henry James’s solitary pastiche, his posthumous (and fragmentary) “Sense of the Past.” The “past” he deals with is, roughly, the Jane Austen period, and I think his language would very much have astonished Jane Austen. For one thing, they didn’t colloquially emphasize in her day as Henry James makes them do. I take a page at random:—“He mustn’t be too terribly clever for us, certainly! We enjoy immensely your being so extraordinary; but I’m sure you’ll take it in good part if I remind you that there is a limit.” Is this our ultra-modern Mrs. Brookenham speaking? No, it is Mrs. Midmore, somewhere about 1820. To be more exact, it is Henry James speaking with the emphasis that always abounded in his novels and his letters and his talk. Again: “I can’t keep off that strangeness of my momentary lapse.” That doesn’t sound to my ear a bit like 1820. Again: “It must have been one of your pale passions, as you call ’em, truly—so that even if her ghost does hover I shan’t be afraid of so very thin a shade.” Note the “’em,” the author’s timid little speck of antique colour, but note also how the speaker carries on the “ghost” figure—in a way that is signed “Henry James, 19—” all over. The fact is, Henry James, with his marked, individual, curiously “modern” style, was the last man to express himself in an alien style, particularly the more simple style of an earlier age. To write a pure pastiche you must begin by surrendering, putting clean away your own personality—how otherwise are you to take on another’s?

I have no illusions about the essays in pastiche to be found in the earlier of the following papers. If they do not always fall below parody, they never rise above it. Occasional fragments of authentic text will be recognized at a glance. “These Things are but Toyes.”

AN ARISTOTELIAN FRAGMENT

In the neighbourhood of Wardour Street, where the princes of the film hold their Court, a legislative code for film-making, a “Poetics” of the film, by some maestro di color che sanno, has long been yearned for. If only, they say, if only the maestro himself, the great Aristotle, had been alive to write it! After all, kinematograph is Greek, isn’t it? It seems to cry aloud, somehow, for its code by the great Greek authority. Well, they little knew what luck was in store for them!

To-day comes a startling piece of news from the East. A certain Major Ferdinand M. Pinto, O.B.E., R.E., whether on military duty or on furlough the report does not say, has been sojourning with the monks of Mount Porthos, and, in the most singular manner, has discovered in the possession of his hosts a precious treasure of which they were entirely ignorant. It was a Greek manuscript, and, as the Reverend Prior laughingly observed, it was Greek to them. It seems that—such is the licence of modern manners even in monasteries—the monks have lately taken to smoking, and to using what in lay circles are called “spills.” Now on the spill which the Major was lighting for his cigar there suddenly stared him in the face the words

ὥσπερ Ἀγάθων λέγει

and the name Agathon thrilled him with memories of a certain Oxford quad, with dear “old Strachan” annoying the Master by wondering why Agathon should have said anything so obvious as that “it is probable that many things should happen contrary to probability.” To examine the spill, all the spills collected, was the work of a moment. They proved, at a glance, to be an entirely unknown MS. of the “Poetics,” more complete even than the Parisian, and with new readings transcending even the acutest conjectures of Vahlen. But, greatest find of all, there was disclosed—though with unfortunate lacunæ caused by the monks’ cigars—an entirely new chapter inquiring into the structure of the Moving Picture Drama. Through the courtesy of the Pseudo-Hellenic Society I am favoured with a translation of this chapter, and a few passages, which seemed of more general interest, are here extracted.

“As we have said,” the MS. begins, “it is a question whether tragedy is to be judged in itself or in relation also to the audience. But it is another story (ἄλλος λόγος) with the moving pictures. For it is not clear whether they have an ‘itself’ at all, or, if they have, where this self is to be found, whether on the screen, or in the lens of the camera, or in the head of the photographic artist. Whereas there is no doubt (save in very inclement weather) about the audience. They are to be judged, then, solely in relation to the audience. And, for this reason, they do not resemble tragedy, whose action, we said, must be whole, consisting of a beginning, a middle, and an end. For the audience may arrive at the end of a picture play, and though, in due time, the beginning will come round again, the audience may not have the patience to wait for it. Some audiences prefer to arrive in the middle and to proceed to the end, and then to end with the beginning. By this means the general sense of confusion in human affairs is confirmed in the picture theatre, and in this sense, but only in this sense, the picture drama may be said to be, like tragedy, an imitation of life.

“Nor can it be said of picture drama, as it was of tragedy, that the element of plot is more important than the element of character. For here neither element is important. The important element now is motion. Any plot will serve the picture poet’s purpose (indeed most of them take them ready-made from those prose epics known as ‘shockers’), and any characters likewise (it will suffice if these be simplified types or ‘masks’). The essence of the matter is that all should be kept moving. And as moving objects are best seen to be moving when they are moving quickly, the picture poet will contrive that his horses shall always, as Homer says, devour the ground and his motor cars be ‘all out.’... Unity of plot—when there is a plot—does not, as some persons think, consist in the unity of the hero. It consists in the final dwelling together in unity of the hero and his bride. Final must be understood as posterior to the pursuit of the bride by other men, who may be either white or red. Red men are better, as more unbridled in their passions than white. As Æschylus first introduced a second actor in tragedy, so an American poet, whose name is too barbarous to be written in Greek, introduced the red man in picture drama....

“With regard to the hero and his bride, though their characters should, as in tragedy, be morally good (χρηστά), it is chiefly necessary that their persons should be kinematographically good or good on the film. For at every peripety of the action they must become suddenly enlarged by the device of the photographer, so that every furrow of the knitted brow and every twitch of the agitated mouth is shown as large as life, if not larger. It is, in fact, by this photographic enlargement that the critical turns of the action are marked and distinguished, in the absence of the tragic element of diction. Where the tragic actor talks big, the picture player looks big. Nevertheless, the element of diction is not entirely wanting. Sentences (which should comprise as many solecisms as possible) may be shown on the screen, descriptive of what the players are doing or saying. But the more skilful players habitually say something else than what is thus imputed to them, thereby giving the audience the additional interest of conjecturing what they actually do say in place of what they ought to have said.

... “Picture poetry is a more philosophical and liberal thing than history; for history expresses the particular, but picture poetry the not too particular. The particular is, for example, what Alcibiades did or suffered. The not too particular is what Charlie Chaplin did or suffered. But the moving pictures do to some extent show actual happenings, in order to reassure people by nature incredulous. For what has not happened we do not at once feel sure to be possible; but what has happened is manifestly possible; otherwise it would not have happened. On the whole, however, as the tragic poet should prefer probable impossibilities to improbable possibilities, the picture poet should go, as Agathon says, one better, and aim at improbable impossibilities.”...

MR. SHAKESPEARE DISORDERLY

At the meeting preliminary to “Warriors’ Day” I was wending my way along the corridor of the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, when I encountered an amphibious-looking figure with the mien of one of Mr. W. W. Jacobs’s people, but attired in the classic tunic and sandals of a Greek of the best period. Knowing that the meeting was to include all sorts and conditions of theatrical men, I taxed him with being somebody out of Orphée aux Enfers or La Belle Hélène. He said it was not a bad shot, but, as a matter of fact, he was a ferryman, “saving your honour’s reverence, name o’ Charon.” “A ferryman?” said I; “then you must be from the Upper River, Godstow way.” “No, sir,” he answered, “I ply my trade on the Styx, and I’ve brought over a boatful of our tip-toppers—our intelli-gents-you-are they calls ’em in the Elysian Fields—to this ’ere meetin’. Precious dry work it is, too, sir,” he added, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “Where are they?” I asked in high excitement. “In this ’ere box, sir, where the management have allowed them to sit incog.” “And who, my good fellow, are they?” “Well, sir, let me see; there’s Mr. William Shakespeare, one of the most pop’lar of our gents and the neatest hand at nectar punch with a toast in it. Then there’s Mr. David Garrick, little Davy, as they calls ’im (though the other one, ’im who’s always a-slingin’ stones at the giants, isn’t no great size, neither), and there’s ’is friend Dr. Samuel Johnson, a werry harbitrary cove, and there’s Mrs. Siddons, an ’oly terror of a woman, sir, as you might say. Likewise, there’s Mr. Sheridan and Mr. Edmund Kean, both on ’em gents with a powerful thirst—just like mine this blessed mornin’, sir.” At this second reminder I gave him wherewithal to slake his thirst, directed him to the bar, and, as soon as he was out of sight, slipped noiselessly into the back of the box, where I hid behind the overcoats.

Mr. Shakespeare was beckoning Mrs. Siddons to his side. “Come hither, good mistress Sal” (this to the majestic Sarah, the Tragic Muse!), “and prythee, dearest chuck, sit close, for ’tis a nipping and an eager air, and poor Will’s a-cold.”

Mrs. S.—Sir, you are vastly obleeging, but where’s the chair?

Dr. Johnson.—Madam, you who have so often occasioned a want of seats to other people, will the more easily excuse the want of one yourself.

Mr. Shakespeare.—Marry come up! Wouldst not sit in my lap, Sal? ’Tis not so deep as a well nor so wide as a church door, but ’twill serve.

Mrs. S. (scandalized but dignified).—Sir, I am sensible of the honour, but fear my train would incommode the Immortal Bard.

Mr. Shakespeare.—Oh, Immortal Bard be——

Mr. Garrick (hastily).—I perceive, sir, a stir among the company. The gentleman who is taking the chair has notable eyebrows; he must be——

Mr. Shakespeare.—Master George Robey. I’ve heard of him and his eyebrows.

Mr. G.—No, no, ’tis Sir Arthur Pinero, an actor-dramatist like yourself, sir.

Mr. Shakespeare.—Beshrew me, but I would hear the chimes at midnight with him and drink a health unto his knighthood. (Sings.) “And let me the canakin clink, clink, and——”

The House (indignantly).—Sh-h-h!

Mr. Shakespeare.—A murrain on these gallants! They have no ear for a catch and should get them to a monastery. But I’ll sit like my grandsire, carved in alabaster. Who’s the young spark, now speaking?

Dr. J. (shocked).—The young spark, sir, is His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales.

Mr. Sheridan.—Egad! This reminds me of old times, but the young man is not a bit like my friend Prinny. And though I managed Drury Lane, I never got Prinny on my stage.

Dr. J.—Sir, your Prinny never had so good a cause to be there. He only thought he fought in the wars; but this Prince is a real ex-Service man, pleading for the ex-Service men, his comrades in arms. He has been a soldier, and not a man of us in this box but wishes he could say as much for himself. Every man thinks meanly of himself for not having been a soldier; but he will think less meanly if he can help those who have. That is the very purpose of this numerous assembly.

Mr. Shakespeare.—Oh, most learned doctor, a Daniel come to judgment! I’ faith I am most heartily of thy mind, and would drink a loving toast to the young Prince and another to the ex-Service fellows, and eke a third to this—how runs it?—this numerous assembly. (Sings.) “And let me the canakin clink, clink, and——”

The House (in a frenzy of indignation).—Sh-h-h! Turn him out! (Hisses.)

Mr. Shakespeare.—What! the “bird”! Well-a-day, this isn’t the first time they’ve hissed my Ghost.

Mr. Kean.—Sir, they’ve hissed me!

Mr. Shakespeare.—Ha! say’st thou, honest Ned! But thou wast a jackanapes to let thyself be caught with the Alderman’s wife and——

Mrs. S. (icily).—Mr. Shakespeare, there are ladies present.

Mr. Sheridan (whispering to Dr. J.).—But what does little Davy here, doctor? He has always been represented as very saving.

Dr. J.—No, sir. Davy is a liberal man. He has given away more money than any man in England. There may be a little vanity mixed, but he has shown that money is not his first object.

At this moment Charon popped his head in at the door, pulling his forelock, and said, “Time, gen’lemen, time!” The house was rising and I took the opportunity to step back, unperceived, into the corridor. Mr. Shakespeare led the procession out, declaring that, as he had come in a galliard, he must return in a coranto, and offering to dance it with Mrs. Siddons, who, however, excused herself, saying that she knew no touch of it, though she had of old taken great strides in her profession. Dr. Johnson turned back, when half way out, to touch the doorpost. Mr. Garrick sallied forth arm-in-arm with Mr. Kean and Mr. Sheridan. “Egad!” chuckled Mr. Sheridan, “Garrick between Tragedy and Comedy,” and subsequently caused some confusion by tumbling down the stairs and lying helpless at the bottom. When the attendants ran to his assistance and asked his name, he said he was Mr. Wilberforce. As they emerged under the portico the crowd outside raised a loud cheer, and Mr. Shakespeare doffed his plumed cap and bowed graciously to right and left until they told him that the crowd were cheering the Prince of Wales, when he looked crestfallen and called those within earshot “groundlings” and “lousy knaves.” As he jumped into a taxi, I heard him direct the driver to the “Mermaid,” when Dr. Johnson, running up and puffing loudly, cried, “A tavern chair is the throne of human felicity. But the ‘Mitre’ is the nearer. Let us go there, and I’ll have a frisk with you.” And as the taxi disappeared down Catherine Street, my ear caught the distant strain, “And let me the canakin clink, clink.”

SIR ROGER AT THE RUSSIAN BALLET

No. 1000. Wednesday, October 29th, 19—.

Saltare elegantius quam necesse est probæ.

Sallust.

My friend Sir Roger de Coverley, when we last met together at the club, told me that he had a great mind to see the Muscovite dancers with me, assuring me at the same time that he had not been at a playhouse these twenty years. When he learnt from me that these dancers were to be sought in Leicester Fields, he asked me if there would not be some danger in coming home late, in case the Mohocks should be abroad. “However,” says the knight, “if Captain Sentry will make one with us to-morrow night, I will have my own coach in readiness to attend you; for John tells me he has got the fore-wheels mended.” Thinking to smoak him, I whispered, “You must have a care, for all the streets in the West are now up,” but he was not to be daunted, saying he minded well when all the West Country was up with Monmouth; and the Captain bid Sir Roger fear nothing, for that he had put on the same sword which he made use of at the battle of Steenkirk.

When we had convoyed him in safety to Leicester Fields, and he had descended from his coach at the door, he straightway engaged in a conference with the door-keeper, who is a notable prating gossip, and stroak’d the page-boy upon the head, bidding him be a good child and mind his book. As soon as we were in our places my old friend stood up and looked about him with that pleasure which a mind seasoned with humanity naturally feels in itself, at the sight of a multitude of people who seem pleased with one another, and partake of the same common entertainment. He seemed to be no less pleased with the gay silks and satins and sarsenets and brocades of the ladies, but pish’d at the strange sight of their bare backs. “Not so bare, neither,” I whispered to him, “for if you look at them through your spy-glass you will see they wear a little coat of paint, which particularity has gained them the name of Picts.” “I warrant you,” he answered, with a more than ordinary vehemence, “these naked ones are widows—widows, Sir, are the most perverse creatures in the world.” Thinking to humour him, I said most like they were war widows, whereon the good knight lifted his hat to our brave fellows who fought in the Low Countries, and offered several reflections on the greatness of the British land and sea forces, with many other honest prejudices which naturally cleave to the heart of a true Englishman.

Luckily, the Muscovites then began dancing and posturing in their pantomime which they call Petrouchka and the old gentleman was wonderfully attentive to the antics of the three live fantoccini. When the black fellow, as he called the Moor, clove the head of his rival with the scimitar, the knight said he had never looked for such barbarity from a fellow who, but a moment ago, was innocently playing a game of ball, like a child. What strange disorders, he added, are bred in the minds of men whose passions are not regulated by virtue, and disciplined by reason. “But pray, you that are a critic, is this in accordance with your rules, as you call them? Did your Aristotle allow pity and terror to be moved by such means as dancing?” I answered that the Greek philosopher had never seen the Muscovites and that, in any case, we had the authority of Shakespeare for expecting murder from any jealous Moor. “Moreover, these Muscovites dance murder as they dance everything. I love to shelter myself under the examples of great men, and let me put you in mind of Hesiod, who says, ‘The gods have bestowed fortitude on some men, and on others a disposition for dancing.’ Fortunately the Muscovites have the more amiable gift.” The knight, with the proper respect of a country gentleman for classick authority, was struck dumb by Hesiod.

He remained silent during the earlier part of Schéhérazade until Karsavina, as the favourite of the Sultan’s harem, persuaded the Chief Eunuch to release her orange-tawny favourite, Monsieur Massine, at which the knight exclaimed, “On my word, a notable young baggage!” I refrained from telling my innocent friend that in the old Arabian tale these tawny creatures were apes. He mightily liked the Sultan’s long beard. “When I am walking in my gallery in the country,” says he, “and see the beards of my ancestors, I cannot forbear regarding them as so many old patriarchs, and myself as an idle smock-faced young fellow. I love to see your Abrahams and Isaacs, as we have them in old pieces of tapestry with beards below their girdles. I suppose this fellow, with all these wives, must be Solomon.” And, his thoughts running upon that King, he said he kept his Book of Wisdom by his bedside in the country and found it, though Apocryphal, more conducive to virtue than the writings of Monsieur La Rochefoucauld or, indeed, of Socrates himself, whose life he had read at the end of the Dictionary. Captain Sentry, seeing two or three wags who sat near us lean with an attentive ear towards Sir Roger, and fearing lest they should smoak the knight, plucked him by the elbow, and whispered something in his ear that lasted until the Sultan returned to the harem and put the ladies and their tawny companions to the sword. The favourite’s plunging the dagger into her heart moved him to tears, but he dried them hastily on bethinking him she was a Mahometan, and asked of us, on our way home, whether there was no playhouse in London where they danced true Church of England pantomimes.

PARTRIDGE AT “JULIUS CÆSAR”

Mr. Jones having spent three hours in reading and kissing Sophia’s letter, and being at last in a state of good spirits, he agreed to carry an appointment, which he had before made, into execution. This was, to attend Mrs. Miller and her youngest daughter into the gallery at the St. James’s playhouse, and to admit Mr. Partridge as one of the company. For, as Jones had really that taste for humour which many affect, he expected to enjoy much entertainment in the criticisms of Partridge; from whom he expected the simple dictates of nature, unimproved, indeed, but likewise unadulterated by art.

In the first row, then, of the first gallery did Mr. Jones, Mrs. Miller, her youngest daughter, and Partridge take their places. Partridge immediately declared it was the finest place he had ever been in. When the first music was played he said it was a wonder how so many fiddlers could play at one time without putting one another out.

As soon as the play, which was Shakespeare’s Julius Cæsar, began, Partridge was all attention, nor did he break silence till the scene in Brutus’s orchard, when he asked Jones, “What season of the year is it, Sir?” Jones answered, “Wait but a moment and you shall hear the boy Lucius say it is the 14th of March.” To which Partridge replied with a smile, “Ay, then I understand why the boy was asleep. Had it been in apple-harvesting time I warrant you he would have been awake and busy as soon as what’s-his-name, Squire Brutus, had turned his back.” And upon the entreaties of Portia to share Brutus’s confidence he inquired if she was not a Somersetshire wench. “For Madam,” said he, “is mighty like the housewives in our county, who will plague their husbands to death rather than let ’em keep a secret.” Nor was he satisfied with Cæsar’s yielding to Calphurnia’s objections against his going to the Capitol. “Ay, anything to please your wife, you old dotard,” said he; “you might have known better than to give heed to a silly woman’s nightmares.”

When they came to the Forum scene and the speeches of Brutus and Antony, Partridge sat with his eyes fixed on the orators and with his mouth open. The same passions which succeeded each other in the crowd of citizens succeeded likewise in him. He was at first all for Brutus and then all for Antony, until he learnt that Cæsar had left 75 drachmas to every Roman citizen. “How much is that in our English money?” he asked Jones, who answered that it was about two guineas. At that he looked chapfallen, bethinking him that, though a round sum, it was not enough to warrant the crowd in such extravagant rejoicing.

“I begin to suspect, Sir,” said he to Jones, “this Squire Antony hath not been above hoodwinking us, but he seemed so much more concerned about the matter than the other speaker, Brutus, that I for one couldn’t help believing every word he said. Yet I believed the other one, too, when he was talking, and I was mightily pleased with what he said about liberty and Britons never being slaves.” “You mean Romans,” answered Jones, “not Britons.” “Well, well,” said Partridge, “I know it is only a play, but if I thought they were merely Romans, and not Britons at heart, I should not care a hang about ’em or what became of ’em.”

To say the truth, I believe honest Partridge, though a raw country fellow and ignorant of those dramatic rules which learned critics from the Temple and the other Inns of Court have introduced, along with improved catcalls, into our playhouses, was here uttering the sentiments of nature. Should we be concerned about the fortunes of those ancient Romans were they utter strangers to us and did we not put ourselves in their places, which is as much as to turn them all from Romans into Britons? To be sure, while our imagination is thus turning them, it will not forbear a few necessary amendments for the sake of verisimilitude. For, to name only one particular, no free and independent Briton could imagine himself bribed by so paltry a legacy as a couple of guineas; but he can multiply that sum in his mind until it shall have reached the much more considerable amount which he will consent to take for his vote at a Westminster election; and thus honour will be satisfied. And the critics aforesaid will then be able to point out to us the advantages of British over Roman liberty, being attended not only with the proud privileges of our great and glorious Constitution, but also with a higher emolument.

Mr. Jones would doubtless have made these reflections to himself had he not, while Partridge was still speaking, been distracted by the sudden appearance in an opposite box of Lady Bellaston and Sophia. As he had only left her ladyship that very afternoon, after a conversation of so private a nature that it must on no account be communicated to the reader, he would have disregarded the imperious signals which she forthwith began making to him with her fan; but the truth is, whatever reluctance he may have felt to rejoin her ladyship at that moment was overborne by his eagerness to approach the amiable Sophia, though he turned pale and his knees trembled at the risk of that approach in circumstances so dangerous. As soon as he had recovered his composure he hastened to obey her ladyship’s commands, but on his entry into the box his spirits were again confounded by the evident agitation of Sophia, and, seizing her hand, he stammered, “Madam, I——.” “Hoity, toity! Mr. Jones,” cried Lady Bellaston; “do you salute a chit of a girl before you take notice of a dowager? Are these the new manners among people of fashion? It is lucky for my heart that I can call myself a dowager, for I vow to-night you look like a veritable Adonis, and,” she added in a whisper too low to be heard by Sophia, “your Venus adores you more madly than ever, you wicked wretch.”

Jones was ready to sink with fear. He sat kicking his heels, playing with his fingers, and looking more like a fool, if it be possible, than a young booby squire when he is at first introduced into a polite assembly. He began, however, now to recover himself; and taking a hint from the behaviour of Lady Bellaston, who, he saw, did not intend openly to claim any close acquaintance with him, he resolved as entirely to affect the stranger on his part. Accordingly, he leaned over to Sophia, who was staring hard at the stage, and asked her if she enjoyed the performance. “Pray, don’t tease Miss Western with your civilities,” interrupted Lady Bellaston, “for you must know the child hath lost her heart this night to that ravishing fellow Ainley, though I tell her to my certain knowledge he is a husband already, and, what is more, a father. These country girls have nothing but sweethearts in their heads.” “Upon my honour, madam,” cried Sophia, “your ladyship injures me.” “Not I, miss, indeed,” replied her ladyship tartly, “and if you want a sweetheart, have you not one of the most gallant young fellows about town ready to your hand in Lord Fellamar? You must be an arrant mad woman to refuse him.” Sophia was visibly too much confounded to make any observations, and again turned towards the stage, Lady Bellaston taking the opportunity to dart languishing glances at Jones behind her back and to squeeze his hand; in short, to practise the behaviour customary with women of fashion who desire to signify their sentiments for a gentleman without expressing them in actual speech; when Jones, who saw the agitation of Sophia’s mind, resolved to take the only method of relieving her, which was by retiring. This he did, as Brutus was rushing upon his own sword; and poor Jones almost wished the sword might spit him, too, in his rage and despair at what her ladyship had maliciously insinuated about Sophia and Mr. Ainley.

DR. JOHNSON AT THE STADIUM

I am now to record a curious incident in Dr. Johnson’s life, which fell under my own observation; of which pars magna fui, and which I am persuaded will, with the liberal-minded, be in no way to his discredit.

When I was a boy in the year 1745 I wore a white cockade and prayed for King James, till one of my uncles gave me a shilling on condition that I should pray for King George, which I accordingly did. This uncle was General Cochran; and it was with natural gratification that I received from another member of that family, Mr. Charles Cochran, a more valuable present than a shilling, that is to say, an invitation to witness the Great Fight at the Stadium and to bring with me a friend. “Pray,” said I, “let us have Dr. Johnson.” Mr. Cochran, who is much more modest than our other great theatre-manager, Mr. Garrick, feared that Dr. Johnson could hardly be prevailed upon to condescend. “Come,” said I, “if you’ll let me negotiate for you, I will be answerable that all shall go well.”

I had not forgotten Mrs. Thrale’s relation (which she afterwards printed in her “Anecdotes”) that “Mr. Johnson was very conversant in the art of attack and defence by boxing, which science he had learned from his uncle Andrew, I believe; and I have heard him discourse upon the age when people were received, and when rejected, in the schools once held for that brutal amusement, much to the admiration of those who had no expectation of his skill in such matters, from the sight of a figure which precluded all possibility of personal prowess.” This lively lady was, however, too ready to deviate from exact authenticity of narration; and, further, I reflected that, whatever the propensities of his youth, he who had now risen to be called by Dr. Smollett the Great Cham of literature might well be affronted if asked to countenance a prize-fight.

Notwithstanding the high veneration which I entertained for him, I was sensible that he was sometimes a little actuated by the spirit of contradiction, and by means of that I hoped I should gain my point. I therefore, while we were sitting quietly by ourselves at his house in an evening, took occasion to open my plan thus:—“Mr. Cochran, sir, sends his respectful compliments to you, and would be happy if you would do him the honour to visit his entertainment at the Stadium on Thursday next?” Johnson.—“Sir, I am obliged to Mr. Cochran. I will go——” Boswell.—“Provided, sir, I suppose, that the entertainment is of a kind agreeable to you?” Johnson.—“What do you mean, sir? What do you take me for? Do you think I am so ignorant of the world as to imagine that I am to prescribe to a gentleman what kind of entertainment he is to offer his friends?” Boswell.—“But if it were a prize-fight?” Johnson.—“Well, sir, and what then?” Boswell.—“It might bring queer company.” Johnson.—“My dear friend, let us have no more of this. I am sorry to be angry with you; but really it is treating me strangely to talk to me as if I could not meet any company whatever occasionally.” Thus I secured him.

As it proved, however, whether by good luck or by the forethought of the ingenious Mr. Cochran, Dr. Johnson could not have found himself in better company than that gathered round him in Block H at the Stadium. There were many members of the Literary Club, among them Mr. Beauclerk, Mr. Burke, Mr. Garrick, Mr. Gibbon, Sir Joshua Reynolds, and Mr. R. B. Sheridan. A gentleman present, who had been dining at the Duke of Montrose’s, where the bottle had been circulated pretty freely, was rash enough to rally Dr. Johnson about his Uncle Andrew, suggesting that his uncle’s nephew might now take the opportunity of exhibiting his prowess in the ring. Johnson.—“Sir, to be facetious, it is not necessary to be indecent. I am not for tapping any man’s claret, but we see that thou hast already tapped his Grace’s.” Burke.—“It is remarkable how little gore is ever shed in these contests. Here have we been for half an hour watching—let me see, what are their names?—Eddie Feathers and Gus Platts—and not even a bleeding nose between them.” Reynolds.—“In a previous contest one boxer knocked the other’s teeth out.” Sheridan.—“Yes, but they were false teeth.”

At this moment the talk was interrupted by the arrival of the Prince. As His Highness passed Dr. Johnson, my revered friend made an obeisance which was an even more studied act of homage than his famous bow to the Archbishop of York; and he subsequently joined in singing “For he’s a jolly good fellow” with the most loyal enthusiasm, repeating the word “fe-ellow” over and over again, doubtless because it was the only one he knew. (“Like a word in a catch,” Beauclerk whispered.) I am sorry that I did not take note of an eloquent argument in which he proceeded to maintain that the situation of Prince of Wales was the happiest of any person’s in the kingdom, even beyond that of the Sovereign.

But there was still no sign of Beckett and Carpentier, the heroes of the evening, and the company became a little weary of the preliminary contests. A hush fell upon the assembly, and many glanced furtively towards the alley down which the champions were to approach. Gibbon.—“We are unhappy because we are kept waiting. ‘Man never is, but always to be, blest.’” Johnson.—“And we are awaiting we know not what. To the impatience of expectation is added the disquiet of the unknown.” Garrick (playing round his old friend with a fond vivacity).—“My dear sir, men are naturally a little restless, when they have backed Beckett at 70 to 40.” Reynolds.—“But, see, the lights of the kinematographers” (we were all abashed by the word in the presence of the Great Lexicographer) “are brighter than ever. I observe all the contestants take care to smile under them.” Sheridan.—“When they do agree, their unanimity is wonderful.” Johnson.—“Among the anfractuosities of the human mind, I know not if it may not be one, that there is a morbid longing to attitudinize in the ‘moving pictures.’”

But at length Beckett and Carpentier made their triumphal entry. Beckett first, quietly smiling, with eyes cast down, Carpentier debonair and lightly saluting the crowd with an elegant wave of the hand. After the pair had stripped and Dr. Johnson had pointed out that “the tenuity, the thin part” in Carpentier’s frame indicated greater lightness, if Beckett’s girth promised more solid resistance, Mr. Angle invited the company to preserve silence during the rounds and to abstain from smoking. To add a last touch to the solemnity of the moment, Carpentier’s supernumerary henchmen (some six or eight, over and above his trainer and seconds) came and knelt by us, in single file, in the alley between Block H and Block E, as though at worship.

What then happened, in the twinkling of an eye, all the world now knows, and knows rather better than I knew myself at the moment, for I saw Beckett lying on his face in the ring without clearly distinguishing the decisive blow. While Carpentier was being carried round the ring on the shoulders of his friends, being kissed first by his trainer and then by ladies obligingly held up to the ring for the amiable purpose, I confess that I watched Beckett, and was pleased to see he had successfully resumed his quiet smile. As I carried my revered friend home to Bolt Court in a taximetric cabriolet, I remarked to him that Beckett’s defeat was a blow to our patriotic pride, whereupon he suddenly uttered, in a strong, determined tone, an apophthegm at which many will start:—“Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel!” “And yet,” said Beauclerk, when I told him of this later, “he had not been kissed by Carpentier.”

MY UNCLE TOBY PUZZLED

“’Tis a pity,” cried my father, one winter’s night, after reading the account of the Shakespeare Memorial meeting—“’tis a pity,” cried my father, putting my mother’s thread-paper into the newspaper for a mark as he spoke,—“that truth, brother Toby, should shut herself up in such impregnable fastnesses, and be so obstinate as to surrender herself up sometimes only upon the closest siege.”

The word siege, like a talismanic power, in my father’s metaphor, wafting back my uncle Toby’s fancy, quick as a note could follow the touch, he opened his ears.

“And there was nothing to shame them in the truth, neither,” said my father, “seeing that they had many thousands of pounds to their credit. How could a bishop think there was danger in telling it?”

“Lord bless us! Mr. Shandy,” cried my mother, “what is all this story about?”

“About Shakespeare, my dear,” said my father.

“He has been dead a hundred years ago,” replied my mother.

My uncle Toby, who was no chronologer, whistled “Lillibullero.”

“By all that’s good and great! ma’am,” cried my father, taking the oath out of Ernulphus’s digest, “of course. If it was not for the aids of philosophy, which befriend one so much as they do, you would put a man beside all temper. He is as dead as a doornail, and they are thinking of building a theatre to honour his memory.”

“And why should they not, Mr. Shandy?” said my mother.

“To be sure, there’s no reason why,” replied my father, “save that they haven’t enough money left over after buying a plot of land in Gower Street to build upon.”

Corporal Trim touched his Montero-cap and looked hard at my uncle Toby. “If I durst presume,” said he, “to give your honour my advice, and speak my opinion in this matter.” “Thou art welcome, Trim,” said my uncle Toby. “Why then,” replied Trim, “I think, with humble submission to your honour’s better judgment, I think that had we but a rood or a rood and a half of this ground to do what we pleased with, I would make fortifications for you something like a tansy, with all their batteries, saps, ditches, and palisadoes, that it should be worth all the world’s riding twenty miles to go and see it.”

“Then thou wouldst have, Trim,” said my father, “to palisado the Y.M.C.A.”

“I never understood rightly the meaning of that word,” said my Uncle Toby, “and I am sure nothing of that name was known to our armies in Flanders.”

“’Tis an association of Christian young men,” replied my father, “who for the present hold the Shakespeare Memorialists’ ground in Gower Street.” ’Twas no inconsistent part of my uncle Toby’s character that he feared God and reverenced religion. So the moment my father finished his remark my uncle Toby fell a-whistling “Lillibullero” with more zeal (though more out of tune) than usual.

“And the money these Christian youths pay for rents,” continued my father, “is to be used to maintain a company of strolling players” [Here my uncle Toby, throwing back his head, gave a monstrous, long, loud whew-w-w.], “who are to go up and down the country showing the plays of Shakespeare. Up and down, and that, by the way, is how their curtain went on twenty-two occasions in Romeo and Juliet.”

“Who says so?” asked my uncle Toby.

“A parson,” replied my father.

“Had he been a soldier,” said my uncle, “he would never have told such a taradiddle. He would have known that the curtain is that part of the wall or rampart which lies between the two bastions, and joins them.”

“By the mother who bore us! brother Toby,” quoth my father, “you would provoke a saint. Here have you got us, I know not how, souse into the middle of the old subject again. We are speaking of Shakespeare and not of fortifications.”

“Was Shakespeare a soldier, Mr. Shandy, or a young men’s Christian?” said my mother, who had lost her way in the argument.

“Neither one nor t’other, my dear,” replied my father (my uncle Toby softly whistled “Lillibullero”); “he was a writer of plays.”

“They are foolish things,” said my mother.

“Sometimes,” replied my father, “but you have not seen Shakespeare’s, Mrs. Shandy. And it is for the like of you, I tell you point-blank——”

As my father pronounced the word point-blank my uncle Toby rose up to say something upon projectiles, but my father continued:—

“It is for the like of you that these Shakespeare Memorialists are sending their strolling players around the country, to set the goodwives wondering about Shakespeare, as they wondered about Diego’s nose in the tale of the learned Hafen Slawkenbergius.”

“Surely the wonderful nose was Cyrano’s?” said my mother. “Cyrano’s or Diego’s, ’tis all one,” cried my father in a passion. “Zooks! Cannot a man use a plain analogy but his wife must interrupt him with her foolish questions about it? May the eternal curse of all the devils in——”

“Our armies swore terribly in Flanders,” cried my uncle Toby, “but nothing to this.”

“As you please, Mr. Shandy,” said my mother.

“Where was I?” said my father, in some confusion, and letting his hand fall upon my uncle Toby’s shoulder in sign of repentance for his violent cursing.

“You was at Slawkenbergius,” replied my uncle Toby.

“No, no, brother, Shakespeare, I was speaking of Shakespeare, and how they were going to carry him round the country because they had not money enough to build a theatre for him in London.”

“But could they not hire one?” said my uncle Toby.

“No, for my Lord Lytton said that would be too speculative a venture.”

“’Tis a mighty strange business,” said my uncle, in much perplexity. “They buy their land, as I understand it, brother, to build a house for Shakespeare in London, but lease it for a house for young Christians instead, and spend their money on sending Shakespeare packing out of London.”

“’Tis all the fault of the Londoners,” replied my father. “They have no soul for Shakespeare, and for that matter, as I believe, no soul at all.”

“A Londoner has no soul, an’ please your honour,” whispered Corporal Trim doubtingly, and touching his Montero-cap to my uncle.

“I am not much versed, Corporal,” quoth my uncle Toby, “in things of that kind; but I suppose God would not leave him without one, any more than thee or me.”

LADY CATHERINE AND MR. COLLINS

Elizabeth and Charlotte were seated one morning in the parlour at Hunsford parsonage, enjoying the prospect of Rosings from the front window, and Mr. Collins was working in his garden, which was one of his most respectable pleasures, when the peace of the household was suspended by the arrival of a letter from London:—

“Theatre Royal, Drury Lane,

“London, December, 19—.

“Dear Cousin William,—We have long neglected to maintain a commerce of letters, but I have learned through the public prints of your recent union with an elegant female from Hertfordshire and desire to tender you and your lady my respects in what I trust will prove an agreeable form. I am directing an entertainment at this theatre, which is designed to be in harmony with the general Christmas rejoicings, and, you may rest assured, in no way offends the principles of the Church which you adorn. Will you not honour it by your presence and thus confer an innocent enjoyment upon your lady? In that hope, I enclose a box ticket for the pantomime on Monday se’nnight and remain your well-wisher and cousin,

“Arthur Collins.”

Smiling to herself, Elizabeth reflected that the two Messrs. Collins might certainly call cousins in epistolary composition, while Charlotte anxiously inquired if the proposal had her William’s approval.

“I am by no means of opinion,” said he, “that an entertainment of this kind, given by a man of character, who is also my own second cousin, to respectable people, can have any evil tendency; but, before accepting the invitation, it is, of course, proper that I should seek the countenance of Lady Catherine de Bourgh.” Accordingly, he lost no time in making his way to Rosings.

Lady Catherine, who chanced to be meditating that very morning on a visit to London for the purchase of a new bonnet and pèlerine, was all affability and condescension.

“To be sure, you will go, Mr. Collins,” said her ladyship. “I advise you to accept the invitation without delay. It is the duty of a clergyman of your station to refine and improve such entertainments by his presence. Nay,” she added, “Sir Lewis highly approved them and I myself will go with you.” Mr. Collins was overwhelmed by civility far beyond his expectations, and hurried away to prepare Charlotte and Elizabeth for this splendid addition to their party.

Early on the Monday se’nnight they set out for London in one of her ladyship’s carriages, for, as Mr. Collins took the opportunity of remarking, she had several, drawn by four post-horses, which they changed at the “Bell” at Bromley. On the way her ladyship examined the young ladies’ knotting-work and advised them to do it differently, instructed Elizabeth in the humility of deportment appropriate to the front seat of a carriage, and determined what the weather was to be to-morrow.

When they were at last arrived and seated in their box Lady Catherine approved the spacious dignity of the baronial hall, which, she said, reminded her of the great gallery at Pemberley, but was shocked at the familiarities which passed between the Baron and Baroness Beauxchamps and their page-boy. “These foreign nobles,” she exclaimed, “adventurers, I daresay! It was Sir Lewis’s opinion that all foreigners were adventurers. No English baron, it is certain, would talk so familiarly to a common domestic, a person of inferior birth, and of no importance in the world. Honour, decorum, prudence, nay, interest, forbid it. With such manners, I do not wonder that the domestic arrangements are in disorder, the very stair-carpet unfastened, and a machine for cleaning knives actually brought into a reception room! See, they cannot even lay a table-cloth!” And her ladyship advised Charlotte on the proper way of laying table-cloths, especially in clergymen’s families.

After a song of Miss Florence Smithson’s Charlotte talked in a low tone with Elizabeth, and her ladyship called out:—“What is that you are saying, Mrs. Collins? What is it you are talking of? What are you telling Miss Bennet? Let me hear what it is.”

“We are speaking of music, madam,” said Charlotte.

“Of music! Then pray speak aloud. It is of all subjects my delight. I must have my share in the conversation, if you are speaking of music. There are few people in England, I suppose, who have more true enjoyment of music than myself, or a better natural taste. If I had ever learnt, I should have been a great proficient.”

When Cinderella set out for the ball in her coach-and-six with a whole train of running-footmen Lady Catherine signified her approbation. “Young women should always be properly guarded and attended, according to their situation in life. When my niece Georgiana went to Ramsgate last summer, I made a point of her having two men-servants go with her. I am excessively attentive to all those things.”

But now they were at the ball, and the box party was all attention. The Prince, dignified and a little stiff, reminded Elizabeth of Mr. Darcy. But guests so strange as Mutt and Jeff, she thought, would never be allowed to pollute the shades of Pemberley. Mr. Collins’s usually cold composure forsook him at the sight of the Baroness playing cards with the Baron on one of her paniers as a table, and felt it his duty to apologize to Lady Catherine for the unseemly incident. “If your ladyship will warrant me,” he began, “I will point out to my cousin that neither a person of your high station nor a clergyman of the Church of England ought to be asked to witness this licentiousness of behaviour.” “And advise him,” said her ladyship, “on the authority of Lady Catherine de Bourgh, that paniers were never used for this disgraceful purpose. There is no one in England who knows more about paniers than myself, for my grandmother, Lady Anne, wore them, and some day Mrs. Jennings, the housekeeper, shall show them to Miss Bennet,” for Elizabeth could not forbear a smile, “at Rosings.”

The party retired early, for Elizabeth had to be conveyed to her uncle’s as far as Gracechurch Street, and Lady Catherine desired the interval of a long night before choosing her new bonnet. It was not until Mr. Collins was once more in his parsonage that he sent his cousin an acknowledgment of the entertainment afforded at Drury Lane, as follows:—

“Hunsford, near Westerham, Kent,

“January, 19—.

“Dear Sir,—We withdrew from your Christmas entertainment on Monday last with mingled feelings of gratification and reprobation. When I say ‘we’ I should tell you that my Charlotte and I not only brought with us a Miss Elizabeth Bennet, one of the friends of her maiden state, but were honoured by the company of the Right Honourable Lady Catherine de Bourgh, widow of Sir Lewis de Bourgh, whose bounty and beneficence have, as you know, preferred me to the valuable rectory of this parish, where it shall be my earnest endeavour to demean myself with grateful respect towards her ladyship, and be ever ready to perform those rites and ceremonies which are instituted by the Church of England. It is as a clergyman that I feel it my duty to warn you against the sinful game of cards exhibited in the scene of the Prince’s ball. If it had been family whist, I could have excused it, for there can be little harm in whist, at least among players who are not in such circumstances as to make five shillings any object. But the Baroness Beauxchamps is manifestly engaged in a game of sheer chance, if not of downright cheating. The admission of this incident to your stage cannot but have proceeded, you must allow me to tell you, from a faulty degree of indulgence. And I am to add, on the high authority of Lady Catherine, probably the highest on this as on many other subjects, that there is no instance on record of the paniers once worn by ladies being used as card-tables. With respectful compliments to your lady and family,

“I remain, dear sir, your cousin,

“William Collins.”

MR. PICKWICK AT THE PLAY

“And now,” said Mr. Pickwick, looking round on his friends with a good-humoured smile, and a sparkle in the eye which no spectacles could dim or conceal, “the question is, Where shall we go to-night?”

With the faithful Sam in attendance behind his chair, he was seated at the head of his own table, with Mr. Snodgrass on his left and Mr. Winkle on his right and Mr. Alfred Jingle opposite him; his face was rosy with jollity, for they had just dispatched a hearty meal of chops and tomato sauce, with bottled ale and Madeira, and a special allowance of milk punch for the host.

Mr. Jingle proposed Mr. Pickwick; and Mr. Pickwick proposed Mr. Jingle. Mr. Snodgrass proposed Mr. Winkle; and Mr. Winkle proposed Mr. Snodgrass; while Sam, taking a deep pull at the stone bottle of milk punch behind his master’s chair, silently proposed himself.

“And where,” said Mr. Pickwick, “shall we go to-night?” Mr. Snodgrass, as modest as all great geniuses are, was silent. Mr. Winkle, who had been thinking of Arabella, started violently, looked knowing, and was beginning to stammer something, when he was interrupted by Mr. Jingle—“A musical comedy, old boy—no plot—fine women—gags—go by-by—wake up for chorus—entertaining, very.”

“And lyrics,” said Mr. Snodgrass, with poetic rapture.

“I was just going to suggest it,” said Mr. Winkle, “when this individual” (scowling at Mr. Jingle, who laid his hand on his heart, with a derisive smile), “when, I repeat, this individual interrupted me.”

“A musical comedy, with all my heart,” said Mr. Pickwick. “Sam, give me the paper. H’m, h’m, what’s this? The Eclipse, a farce with songs—will that do?”

“But is a farce with songs a musical comedy?” objected Mr. Winkle.

“Bless my soul,” said Mr. Pickwick, “this is very puzzling.”

“Beggin’ your pardon, sir,” said Sam, touching his forelock, “it’s a distinction without a difference—as the pork pieman remarked when they asked him if his pork wasn’t kittens.”

“Then,” said Mr. Pickwick, with a benevolent twinkle, “by all means let us go to The Eclipse.”

“Beg pardon, sir,” said Sam again, doubtfully, “there ain’t no astrongomies in it, is there?” Sam had not forgotten his adventure with the scientific gentleman at Clifton. But, as nobody knew, they set off for the Garrick Theatre, and were soon ensconced in a box.

They found the stage occupied by a waiter, who was the very image of the waiter Mr. Pickwick had seen at the Old Royal Hotel at Birmingham, except that he didn’t imperceptibly melt away. Waiters, in general, never walk or run; they have a peculiar and mysterious power of skimming out of rooms which other mortals possess not. But this waiter, unlike his kind, couldn’t “get off” anyhow. He explained that it was because the composer had given him no music to “get off” with.

“Poor fellow,” said Mr. Pickwick, greatly distressed; “will he have to stop there all night?”

“Not,” muttered Sam to himself, “if I wos behind ’im with a bradawl.”

However, the waiter did at last get off, and then came on again and sang another verse, amid loud hoorays, until Mr. Pickwick’s eyes were wet with gratification at the universal jollity.

“Fine fellow, fine fellow,” cried Mr. Pickwick; “what is his name?”

“Hush-h-h, my dear sir,” whispered a charming young man of not much more than fifty in the next box, in whom Mr. Pickwick, abashed, recognized Mr. Angelo Cyrus Bantam, “that is Mr. Alfred Lester.”

“A born waiter,” interjected Mr. Jingle, “once a waiter always a waiter—stage custom—Medes and Persians—wears his napkin for a nightcap—droll fellow, very.”

By and by there was much talk of a mysterious Tubby Haig, and they even sang a song about him; but he did not appear on the stage, and Mr. Pickwick, whose curiosity was excited, asked who this Tubby Haig was.

Sam guessed he might be own brother to Mr. Wardle’s Fat Boy, Joe, or perhaps “the old gen’l’m’n as wore the pigtail—reg’lar fat man, as hadn’t caught a glimpse of his own shoes for five-and-forty year,” but Mr. Bantam again leaned over from his box and whispered:—

“Hush-h-h, my dear sir, nobody is fat or old in Ba-a——I mean in literary circles. Mr. Tubby Haig is a popular author of detective stories, much prized, along with alleytors and commoneys, by the youth of this town.”

But a sudden start of Mr. Winkle’s and a rapturous exclamation from Mr. Snodgrass again directed Mr. Pickwick’s attention to the scene. He almost fainted with dismay. Standing in the middle of the stage, in the full glare of the lights, was a lady with her shoulders and back (which she kept turning to the lights) bare to the waist!

“Bless my soul,” cried Mr. Pickwick, shrinking behind the curtain of the box, “what a dreadful thing!”

He mustered up courage, and looked out again. The lady was still there, not a bit discomposed.

“Most extraordinary female, this,” thought Mr. Pickwick, popping in again.

She still remained, however, and even threw an arch glance in Mr. Pickwick’s direction, as much as to say, “You old dear.”

“But—but—” cried Mr. Pickwick, in an agony, “won’t she catch cold?”

“Bless your heart, no, sir,” said Sam, “she’s quite used to it, and it’s done with the very best intentions, as the gen’l’man said ven he run away from his wife, ’cos she seemed unhappy with him.”

If Mr. Pickwick was distressed, very different was the effect of the lovely vision upon Mr. Winkle. Alas for the weakness of human nature! he forgot for the moment all about Arabella. Suddenly grasping his hat, he rose from his seat, said “Good-night, my dear sir,” to Mr. Pickwick between his set teeth, added brokenly, “My friend, my benefactor, my honoured companion, do not judge me harshly”—and dashed out of the box.

“Very extraordinary,” said Mr. Pickwick to himself, “what can that young man be going to do?”

Meanwhile, for Mr. Winkle to rush downstairs, into the street, round the corner, as far as the stage-door, was the work of a moment. Taking out a card engraved “Nathaniel Winkle, M.P.C.,” he hastily pencilled a few fervent words on it and handed it to the door-keeper, requiring him instantly to convey it to Miss Teddie Gerard.

“What now, imperence,” said the man, roughly pushing him from the door and knocking his hat over his eyes.

At the same moment Mr. Winkle found his arms pinioned from behind by Sam Weller, who led him, crestfallen, back into the street and his senses. The public were now leaving the theatre, and Mr. Pickwick, beckoning Mr. Winkle to approach, fixed a searching look upon him, and uttered in a low, but distinct and emphatic, tone these remarkable words:—

“You’re a humbug, sir.”

“A what!” said Mr. Winkle, starting.

“A humbug, sir.”

With these words, Mr. Pickwick turned slowly on his heel, and rejoined his friends.

MR. CRICHTON AND MR. LITTIMER

They were seated together, Mr. and Mrs. Crichton in the bar-parlour of their little public-house in the Harrow Road, at the more fashionable end, for which Mr. Crichton had himself invented the sign (in memory of his past experiences) of “The Case is Altered.” Mr. Crichton, too, was altered and yet the same. He wore one of the Earl’s old smoking-jackets, with a coronet still embroidered on the breast pocket—not, he said, out of anything so vulgar as ostentation, but as a sort of last link with the Upper House—but his patent leather boots had given place to carpet slippers, and his trousers, once so impeccable, were now baggy at the knees. Altogether he was an easier, more relaxed Crichton, freed as he was from the restraining, if respectful, criticism of the servants’ hall. Indeed, Miss Fisher, who had always hated him, hinted that he had become slightly Rabelaisian—a reference which she owed to mademoiselle—though she would not have dared to repeat the hint to Mrs. Crichton (née Tweeny). For marriage had in no degree abated Tweeny’s reverence for her Crichton, or rather, as old habit still impelled her to call him, her Guv.

The Guv. was at this moment comforting himself with a glass of port (from the wood) and thinking of that bin of ’47 he had helped the Earl to finish in past days. And now he was inhabiting a road where (at least at the other, the unfashionable, end) port was invariably “port wine.” Such are the vicissitudes of human affairs. Tweeny herself was guilty of the solecism, as was perhaps to be expected from a lady who, for her own drinking, preferred swipes. Though she had made great strides in her education under the Guv.’s guidance (she was now nearly into quadratic equations, and could say the dates of accession of the kings of England down to James II.), she still made sad havoc of her nominatives and verbs in the heat of conversation.

“A gent as wants to see the Guv.,” said the potboy, popping his head in at the bar-parlour door—the potboy, for Tweeny knew better than to have a barmaid about the place for the Guv. to cast a favourable eye on.

A not very clean card was handed in, inscribed:—

“Mr. Littimer,”

and the owner walked in after it. Or, rather, glided softly in, shutting the door after entry as delicately as though the inmates had just fallen into a sweet sleep on which their life depended. Mr. Littimer was an old-fashioned looking man, with mutton-chop whiskers, a “stock,” tied in a large bow, a long frock-coat, and tight trousers—the whole suggesting nothing of recent or even modern date, but, say, 1850. It was an appearance of intense respectability, of super-respectability, of that 1850 respectability which was so infinitely more respectable than any respectability of our own day. Mr. Crichton stared, as well he might, and washed his hands with invisible soap. Though, in fact, now middle-aged, he felt in this man’s presence extremely young. He clean forgot that he had been a King in Babylon. Indeed, for the first time in his life he, the consummate, the magisterial, the admirable Crichton, felt almost green.

“Mr. Crichton, sir,” said the visitor, with an apologetic inclination of the head, “I have ventured to take the great liberty of calling upon you, if you please, sir, and,” he added with another inclination of the head to Mrs. Crichton (who felt what she would herself have called flabbergasted), “if you please, ma’am, as an old friend of your worthy father. He was butler at Mrs. Steerforth’s when I valeted poor Mr. James.” His eye fell, respectably, on Mr. Crichton’s port. “Ah!” he said, “his wine was Madeira, but——” A second glass of port was thereupon placed on the table, and he sipped it respectably.

Mr. Crichton could only stare, speechless. All his aplomb had gone. He gazed at a ship’s bucket, his most cherished island relic, which hung from the ceiling (as a shade for the electric light—one of his little mechanical ingenuities), and wondered whether he ever could have put anybody’s head in it. His philosophy was, for once, at fault. He knew, none better, that “nature” had made us all unequal, dividing us up into earls and butlers and tweenies, but now for the first time it dawned upon him that “nature” had made us unequally respectable. Here was something more respectable, vastly more respectable, than himself; respectable not in the grand but in the sublime manner.

He could not guess his visitor’s thoughts, and it was well for his peace of mind that he could not. For Mr. Littimer’s thoughts were, respectably, paternal. He thought of Mr. Crichton, sen., and still more of the senior Mrs. Crichton, once “own woman” to Mrs. Steerforth. Ah! those old days and those old loves! How sad and bad and mad it was—for Mr. Littimer’s poet was Browning, as his host’s was Henley, as suited the difference in their dates—and how they had deceived old Crichton between them! So this was his boy, his, Littimer’s, though no one knew it save himself and the dead woman! And as he gazed, with respectable fondness, at this image, modernized, modified, subdued, of his own respectability, he reflected that there was something in heredity, after all. And he smiled, respectably, as he remembered his boy’s opinion that the union of butler and lady’s maid was perhaps the happiest of all combinations. Perhaps, yes; but without any perhaps, if the combination included the valet.

Unhappy, on the other hand, were those combinations from which valets were pointedly excluded. There was that outrageous young person whom Mr. James left behind at Naples and who turned upon him, the respectable Littimer, like a fury, when he was prepared to overlook her past in honourable marriage.

His meditations were interrupted by Mrs. Crichton, who had been mentally piecing together her recollections of “David Copperfield”—her Guv. had given her a Dickens course—and had now arrived at a conclusion. “Axin’ yer pardon, mister,” she said (being still, as we have stated, a little vulgar when excited), “but if you was valet to Mr. James Steerforth, you’re the man as ’elped ’im to ruin that pore gal, and as afterwards went to quod for stealin’. I blushes”—here her eye fell on the Guv., who quietly dropped the correction “blush”—“I blush for yer, Mr. Littimer.” “Ah, ma’am,” Mr. Littimer respectably apologized, “I attribute my past follies entirely to having lived a thoughtless life in the service of young men; and to having allowed myself to be led by them into weaknesses, which I had not the strength to resist.”

“And that, I venture to suggest, ma’am,” he respectably continued, “is why your worthy husband has been so much more fortunate in the world than myself. We are both respectable, if I may say so, patterns of respectability” (Crichton coloured with gratification at this compliment from the Master), “and yet our respectability has brought us very different fates. And why, if you please, ma’am? Because I have served the young, while he has served the old—for I believe, ma’am, the most noble the Earl of Loam is long past the meridian. Besides, ma’am, we Early Victorians had not your husband’s educational advantages. There were no Board schools for me. Not that I’m complaining, ma’am. We could still teach the young ’uns a thing or two about respectability.” And so with a proud humility (and an intuition that there was to be no more port) he took his leave, again shutting the door with the utmost delicacy. He was, in truth, well content. He had seen his boy. The sacred lamp of respectability was not out.

But Mr. Crichton sat in a maze, still washing his hands with invisible soap.

HENRY JAMES REPUDIATES “THE REPROBATE”

He had dropped, a little wearily, the poor dear man, into a seat at the shady end of the terrace, whither he had wended or, it came over him with a sense of the blest “irony” of vulgar misinterpretation, almost zig-zagged his way after lunch. For he had permitted himself the merest sip of the ducal Yquem or Brane Cantenac, or whatever—he knew too well, oh, didn’t he? after all these years of Scratchem house-parties, the dangerous convivialities one had better show for beautifully appreciating than freely partake of—but he had been unable, in his exposure as the author of established reputation, the celebrity of the hour, the “master,” as chattering Lady Jemima would call him between the omelette and the chaudfroid, to “take cover” from the ducal dates. Well, the “All clear” was now sounded, but his head was still dizzy with the reverberating ’87’s and ’90’s and ’96’s and other such bombs of chronological precision that the host had dropped upon the guests as the butler filled their glasses. His subsequent consciousness was quite to cherish the view that dates which went thus distressingly to one’s head must somehow not be allowed to slip out of it again, but be turned into “copy” for readers who innocently look to their favourite romancers for connoisseurship in wines. What Lady Jemima had flung out at lunch was true, readers are a “rum lot,” and, hang it all, who says art says sacrifice, readers were a necessary evil, the many-headed monster must be fed, and he’d be blest if he wouldn’t feed it with dates, and show himself for, indulgently, richly, chronologically, “rum.”

It marked, however, the feeling of the hour with him that this vision of future “bluffing” about vintages interfered not at all with the measure of his actual malaise. He still nervously fingered the telegram handed to him at lunch, and, when read, furtively crumpled into his pocket under Lady Jemima’s celebrated nose. It was entirely odious to him, the crude purport of the message, as well as the hideous yellow ochre of its envelope. “Confidently expect you,” the horrid thing ran, “to come and see your own play.” This Stage Society, if that was its confounded name, was indeed of a confidence! Yes, and of the last vulgarity! His conscience was not void, but, on the contrary, quite charged and brimming with remembered lapses from the ideal life of letters—it was the hair-shirt he secretly wore even in the Scratchem world under the conventional garment which the Lady Jemimas of that world teased him by calling a “boiled rag”—but the “expected,” that, thank goodness, he had never been guilty of. Nay, was it not his “note,” as the reviewers said, blithely and persistently to balk “expectation”? Had he not in every book of his successfully hugged his own mystery? Had not these same reviewers always missed his little point with a perfection exactly as admirable when they patted him on the back as when they kicked him on the shins? Did a single one of them ever discover “the figure in the carpet”? How many baffled readers hadn’t written to him imploring him to divulge what really happened between Milly and Densher in that last meeting at Venice? Certainly he was in no chuckling mood under the smart of the telegram, but it seemed to him that he could almost have chuckled at the thought that he beautifully didn’t know what happened in that Venetian meeting himself! And this impossible Stage Society, with that collective fatuity which seems always so much more gross than any individual sort, “confidently expected” him to come!

What was it, please, he put the question to himself with a heat which seemed to give even the shady end of the terrace the inconvenience of an exposure to full sun, they expected him to come to, or, still worse, for having probed the wound he must not flinch with the scalpel, to come for? Oh, no, he had not forgotten The Reprobate, and what angered him was that they hadn’t, either. He had not forgotten a blessed one of the plays he had written for the country towns a score of years ago, when he had been bitten by the tarantula of the theatre, and, remembering them, he felt now viciously capable of biting the tarantula back. He had written them, God forgive him, for country towns. He positively shuddered when he found himself in a country town, to this day. The terrace at Scratchem notoriously commanded a distant prospect of at least three, in as many counties, with cathedrals, famous inns, theatres—the whole orthodox equipment, he summed it up vindictively in cheap journalese, of country towns. Vindictive, too, was his reflection that these objects of his old crazy solicitude must have been revolutionized in twenty years, their cathedrals “restored,” their inns (the “A.B.C.” vouched for it) “entirely refitted with electric light,” their theatres turned into picture palaces. All the old associations of The Reprobate were extinct. It was monstrous that it should be entirely refitted with electric light.

And in the crude glare of that powerful illuminant, with every switch or whatever mercilessly turned—didn’t they call it?—“on,” he seemed to see the wretched thing, bare and hideous, with no cheap artifice of “make-up,” no dab of rouge or streak of burnt cork, spared the dishonour of exposure. The crack in the golden bowl would be revealed, his awkward age would be brought up against him, what Maisie knew would be nothing to what everybody would now know. His agony was not long purely mental; it suddenly became intercostal. A sharp point had dug him in the ribs. It was Lady Jemima’s, it couldn’t not be Lady Jemima’s, pink parasol. Aware of the really great ease of really great ladies he forced a smile, as he rubbed his side. Ah, Olympians were unconventional indeed—that was a part of their high bravery and privilege.

“Dear Master,” she began, and the phrase hurt him even more than the parasol, “won’t you take poor little me?”

The great lady had read his telegram! Olympian unconventionality was of a licence!

“Yes,” she archly beamed, “I looked over your shoulder at lunch, and——”

“And,” he interruptingly wailed, “you know all.”

“All,” she nodded, “tout le tremblement, the whole caboodle. Now be an angel and take me.”

“But, dear lady,” he gloomed at her, “that’s just it. The blest play is so naïvely, so vulgarly, beyond all redemption though not, thank Heaven, beyond my repudiation, caboodle.”

“Oh, fiddlesticks,” she playfully rejoined, and the artist in him registered for future use her rich Olympian vocabulary, “you wrote it, Master, anyhow. We’ve all been young once. Take me, and we’ll both be young again,” she gave it him straight, “together.”

Ah, then the woman was dangerous. Scratchem gossip had, for once, not overshot the mark. He would show her, all Olympian though she was, that giving it straight was a game two could play at.

“Dear lady,” he said, “you’re wonderful. But I won’t take you. What’s more, I’m not”—and he had it to himself surprisingly ready—“taking any.”

M. BERGERET ON FILM CENSORING

A late October sun of unusual splendour lit up the windows of M. Paillot’s bookshop, at the corner of the Place Saint-Exupère and the Rue des Tintelleries. But it was sombre in the back region of the shop where the second-hand book shelves were and M. Mazure, the departmental archivist, adjusted his spectacles to read his copy of Le Phare, with one eye on the newspaper and the other on M. Paillot and his customers. For M. Mazure wished not so much to read as to be seen reading, in order that he might be asked what the leading article was and reply, “Oh, a little thing of my own.” But the question was not asked, for the only other habitué present was the Lecturer in Latin at the Faculty of Letters, who was sad and silent. M. Bergeret was turning over the new books and the old with a friendly hand, and though he never bought a book for fear of the outcries of his wife and three daughters he was on the best of terms with M. Paillot, who held him in high esteem as the reservoir and alembic of those humaner letters that are the livelihood and profit of booksellers. He took up Vol. XXXVIII. of “L’Histoire Générale des Voyages,” which always opened at the same place, p. 212, and he read:—

“ver un passage au nord. ‘C’est à cet échec, dit-il, que nous devons n’avoir pu visiter les îles Sandwich et enrichir notre voyage d’une découverte qui....’”

For six years past the same page had presented itself to M. Bergeret, as an example of the monotony of life, as a symbol of the uniformity of daily tasks, and it saddened him.

At that moment M. de Terremondre, president of the Society of Agriculture and Archæology, entered the shop and greeted his friends with the slight air of superiority of a traveller over stay-at-homes. “I’ve just got back from England,” he said, “and here, if either of you have enough English to read it, is to-day’s Times.”

M. Mazure hastily thrust Le Phare into his pocket and looked askance at the voluminous foreign journal, wherein he could claim no little thing of his own. M. Bergeret accepted it and applied himself as conscientiously to construing the text as though it were one of those books of the Æneid from which he was compiling his “Virgilius Nauticus.” “The manners of our neighbours,” he presently said, “are as usual more interesting to a student of human nature than their politics. I read that they are seriously concerned about the ethical teaching of their kinematography, and they have appointed a film censor, the deputy T. P. O’Connor.”

“I think I have heard speak of him over there,” interrupted M. de Terremondre; “they call him, familiarly, Tépé.”

“A mysterious name,” said M. Bergeret, “but manifestly not abusive, and that of itself is a high honour. History records few nicknames that do not revile. And if the deputy O’Connor, or Tépé, can successfully acquit himself of his present functions he will be indeed an ornament to history, a saint of the Positivist Calendar, which is no doubt less glorious than the Roman, but more exclusive.”

“Talking of Roman saints,” broke in M. Mazure, “the Abbé Lantaigne has been spreading it abroad that you called Joan of Arc a mascot.”

“By way of argument merely,” said M. Bergeret, “not of epigram. The Abbé and I were discussing theology, about which I never permit myself to be facetious.”

“But what of Tépé and his censorial functions?” asked M. de Terremondre.

“They are extremely delicate,” replied M. Bergeret, “and offer pitfalls to a censor with a velleity for nice distinctions. Thus I read that this one has already distinguished, and distinguished con allegrezza, between romantic crime and realistic crime, between murder in Mexico and murder in Mile End (which I take to be a suburb of London). He has distinguished between ‘guilty love’ and ‘the pursuit of lust.’ He has distinguished between a lightly-clad lady swimming and the same lady at rest. Surely a man gifted with so exquisite a discrimination is wasted in rude practical life. He should have been a metaphysician.”

“Well, I,” confessed M. de Terremondre, “am no metaphysician, and it seems to me murder is murder all the world over.”

“Pardon me,” said M. Bergeret, “but there, I think, your Tépé is quite right. Murder is murder all the world over if you are on the spot. But if you are at a sufficient distance from it in space or time, it may present itself as a thrilling adventure. Thus the Mexican film censor will be right in prohibiting films of murder in Mexico, and not wrong in admitting those of murder in Mile End. Where would tragedy be without murder? We enjoy the murders of Julius Cæsar or of Duncan because they are remote; they gratify the primeval passion for blood in us without a sense of risk. But we could not tolerate a play or a picture of yesterday’s murder next door, because we think it might happen to ourselves. Remember that murder was long esteemed in our human societies as an energetic action, and in our manners and in our institutions there still subsist traces of this antique esteem. And that is why I approve the English film censor for treating with a wise indulgence one of the most venerable of our human admirations. He gratifies it under conditions of remoteness that deprive bloodshed of its reality while conserving its artistic verisimilitude.”

“But, bless my soul,” said M. de Terremondre “how does the man distinguish between guilty love and lust?”

“It is a fine point,” said M. Bergeret. “The Fathers of the Church, the schoolmen, the Renaissance humanists, Descartes and Locke, Kant, Hegel, and Schopenhauer, have all failed to make the distinction, and some of them have even confounded with the two what men to-day agree in calling innocent love. But is love ever innocent—unless it be that love Professor Bellac in Pailleron’s play described as l’amour psychique, the love that Petrarch bore to Laura?”

“If I remember aright,” interposed M. Mazure, “someone else in the play remarked that Laura had eleven children.”

Just then Mme. de Gromance passed across the Place. The conversation was suspended while all three men watched her into the patissier’s opposite, elegantly hovering over the plates of cakes, and finally settling on a baba au rhum.

“Sapristi!” exclaimed M. de Terremondre, “she’s the prettiest woman in the whole place.”

M. Bergeret mentally went over several passages in Æneid, Book IV., looked ruefully at his frayed shirt cuffs, and regretted the narrow life of a provincial university lecturer that reduced him to insignificance in the eyes of the prettiest woman in the place.

“Yes,” he said with a sigh, “it is a very fine point. I wonder how on earth Tépé manages to settle it?”

THE CHOCOLATE DRAMA

Civilization is a failure. That we all knew, even before the war, and indeed ever since the world first began to suffer from the intolerable nuisance of disobedient parents. But the latest and most fatal sign of decadence is the advent of a paradoxical Lord Chancellor. I read in a Times leader:—“When the Lord Chancellor ponderously observes in the House of Lords that the primary business of theatres ‘is not to sell chocolates but to present the drama,’ he is making a statement which is too absurd to analyse.” The Times, I rejoice to see, is living up to its high traditions of intrepid and incisive utterance. I should not myself complain if the Lord Chancellor was merely ponderous. As the dying Heine observed, when someone wondered if Providence would pardon him, c’est son métier. What is so flagrant is the Lord Chancellor’s ignorance of the commanding position acquired by chocolate in relation to the modern drama.

Let me not be misunderstood. I am not a chocolatier. I have no vested interest in either Menier or Marquis. But I am a frequenter of the playhouse, and live, therefore, in the odour of chocolate. I know that without chocolates our womenkind could not endure our modern drama; and without womenkind the drama would cease to exist. The question is, therefore, of the deepest theatrical importance. I feel sure the British Drama League must have had a meeting about it. The advocates of a national theatre have probably considered it in committee. The two bodies (if they are not one and the same) should arrange an early deputation to the Food Controller.

Meanwhile the Lord Chancellor wantonly paradoxes. Evidently he is no playgoer. That is a trifle, and since the production of Iolanthe perhaps even (in the phrase of a famous criminal lawyer) “a amiable weakness.” But, evidently also, he is not a chocolate eater, and that is serious. I suppose, after all, you are not allowed to eat chocolates on the Woolsack. But there is the Petty Bag. It would hold at least 2 lb. of best mixed. Why not turn it to a grateful and comforting purpose? The Great Seal, too, might be done in chocolate, and as I understand the Lord Chancellor must never part with it, day or night, he would have a perpetual source of nourishment. It is time that the symbols of office ceased to be useless ornaments. Stay! I believe I have stumbled incidentally on the secret of Lord Halsbury’s splendid longevity. Ask Menier or Marquis.

But the present Chancellor has, clearly, missed his opportunities. Let him visit our theatres and there recognize the futility of his pretence that their primary business is to present drama. He will see at once that what he put forward as a main business is in reality a mere parergon. Drama is presented, but only as an agreeable, not too obtrusive, accompaniment to the eating of chocolate. The curtain goes up, and the ladies in the audience, distraites, and manifestly feeling with Mrs. Gamp (or was it Betsy Prig?) a sort of sinking, yawn through the first scene or two. Then there is a rustle of paper wrappings, little white cardboard boxes are brought out and passed from hand to hand, there is a dainty picking and choosing of round and square and triangular, with a knowing rejection of the hard-toffee-filled ones, and now the fair faces are all set in a fixed smile of contentment and the fair jaws are steadily, rhythmically at work. To an unprepared observer it cannot be a pretty sight. Fair Americans chewing gum are nothing to it. There are superfine male voluptuaries who do not much care to see women eat, even at the festive board. But to see scores of women simultaneously eating chocolates at the theatre is an uncanny thing. They do it in unison, and they do it with an air of furtive enjoyment, as though it were some secret vice and all the better for being sinful. The act-drop goes up and down, actors are heard talking or the orchestra playing, men pass out for a cigarette and repass, but the fair jaws never cease working. The habit of needlework, lace-making, and perhaps war knitting has given lovely woman that form of genius which has been defined as a long patience. They eat chocolates with the monotonous regularity with which they hemstitch linen or darn socks. It has been said that women go to church for the sake of the hims, but they go to the theatre for the sake of chocolates. And the Lord Chancellor, good, easy man, says the primary business of the theatre is to present drama!

No, its primary business is to provide comfortable and amusing surroundings for fair chocolate-eaters. The play is there for the same reason the coon band is at a restaurant, to assist mastication. That is the real explanation of recent vicissitudes in the dramatic genres. Why has tragedy virtually disappeared from the stage? Because it will go with neither fondants nor pralinés. Why the enormous vogue of revues? Because they suit every kind of chocolate from 4s. to 6s. per lb. Why is Mr. George Robey so universal a favourite? Because he creates the kind of laughter which never interferes with your munching. The true, if hitherto secret, history of the drama is a history of theatrical dietary. Why is the Restoration drama so widely different from the Victorian? Because the first was an accompaniment to oranges and the second to pork-pies. We live now in a more refined age, the age of chocolate, and enjoy the drama that chocolate deserves. There has been what the vulgar call a “slump” in the theatrical world, and all sorts of far-fetched explanations have been offered, such as the dearth of good plays and the dismissal of the “temporary” ladies from Government offices, with consequent loss of pocket-money for playgoing. The real cause is quite simple, as real causes always are. Chocolate has “gone up.”

And that is the secret of all the agitation about the 8 o’clock rule. The purveyors know that, once in the theatre, ladies must eat chocolate, whatever its price. It is a necessity for them there, not a luxury, and after 8 p.m., when the imported supplies are running low, almost any price might be obtained for the staple article of food on the spot. But why, it may be asked, are the imported supplies, in present circumstances, insufficient for the whole evening’s consumption? Simply because the chocolates eaten by women are purchased by men, and men are so forgetful. Besides they have an absurd prejudice against bulging pockets. Clearly “Dora” ought gracefully to withdraw the 8 o’clock prohibition. It would not only be a kindness to those meritorious public servants, the chocolate vendors, but be also a great lift to the languishing drama. Ladies who have emptied their chocolate boxes are apt to become peevish—and then woe to the last act. With still another smooth round tablet to turn over on the tongue (especially if it is the delightful sort that has peppermint cream inside) the play might be followed to the very end with satisfaction, and even enthusiasm. The Lord Chancellor may ignore these facts, but they are well known to every serious student of the chocolate drama.

GROCK

There must be a philosophy of clowns. I would rather find it than look up their history, which is “older than any history that is written in any book,” though the respectable compilers of Encyclopædias (I feel sure without looking) must often have written it in their books. I have, however, been reading Croce’s history of Pulcinella, because that is history written by a philosopher. It is also a work of formidable erudition, disproving, among other things, the theory of the learned Dieterich that he was a survival from the stage of ancient Rome. No, he seems to have been invented by one Silvio Fiorillo, a Neapolitan actor who flourished “negli ultimi decenni del Cinquecento e nei primi del Seicento”—in fact, was a contemporary of an English actor, one William Shakespeare. Pulcinella, you know (transmogrified, and spoiled, for us as Punch), was a sort of clown, and it is interesting to learn that he was invented by an actor all out of his own head. But I for one should be vastly more interested to know who invented Grock. For Grock also is a sort of clown. Yet no; one must distinguish. There are clowns and there is Grock. For Grock happens to be an artist, and the artist is always an individual. After all, as an individual artist, he must have invented himself.

It was a remarkably happy invention. You may see that for yourselves at the Coliseum, generally, though true clown-lovers follow it about all over the map wherever it is to be seen. Victor Hugo (and the theme would not have been unworthy of that lyre) would have described it in a series of antitheses. It is genial and macabre, owlishly stupid and Macchiavellianly astute, platypode and feather-light, cacophonous and divinely musical. Grock’s first act is a practical antithesis. A strange creature with a very high and very bald cranium (you think of what Fitzgerald said of James Spedding’s: “No wonder no hair can grow at such an altitude”) and in very baggy breeches waddles in with an enormous portmanteau—which proves to contain a fiddle no larger than your hand. The creature looks more simian than human, but is graciously affable—another Sir Oran Haut-ton, in fact, with fiddle substituted for Sir Oran’s flute and French horn.

But Sir Oran was dumb, whereas Grock has a voice which reverberates along the orchestra and seems almost to lift the roof. He uses it to counterfeit the deep notes of an imaginary double bass, which he balances himself on a chair to play, and he uses it to roar with contemptuous surprise at being asked if he can play the piano. But it is good-humoured contempt. Grock is an accommodating monster, and at a mere hint from the violinist waddles off to change into evening clothes. In them he looks like a grotesque beetle. Then his antics at the piano! His chair being too far from the keyboard he makes great efforts to push the piano nearer. When it is pointed out that it would be easier to move the chair he beams with delight at the cleverness of the idea and expresses it in a peculiarly bland roar. Then he slides, in apparent absence of mind, all over the piano-case and, on finally deciding to play a tune, does it with his feet. Thereafter he thrusts his feet through the seat of the chair and proceeds to give a performance of extraordinary brilliance on the concertina.... But I am in despair, because I see that these tricks, which in action send one into convulsions of laughter, are not ludicrous, are not to be realized at all in narrative. It is the old difficulty of transposing the comic from three dimensions into two—and when the comic becomes the grotesque, and that extreme form of the grotesque which constitutes the clownesque, then the difficulty becomes sheer impossibility.

Why does this queer combination of anthropoid appearance, unearthly noises, physical agility, and musical talent—so flat in description—make one laugh so immoderately in actual presentation? Well, there is, first, the old idea of the parturient mountains and the ridiculous mouse. Of the many theories of the comic (all, according to Jean Paul Richter, themselves comic) the best known perhaps is the theory of suddenly relaxed strain. Your psychic energies have been strained (say by Grock’s huge portmanteau), and are suddenly in excess and let loose by an inadequate sequel (the tiny fiddle). Then there is the old theory of Aristotle, that the comic is ugliness without pain. That will account for your laughter at Grock’s grotesque appearance, his baggy breeches, his beetle-like dress clothes, his hideous mouth giving utterance to harmless sentiments. Again, there is the pleasure arising from the discovery that an apparent idiot has wholly unexpected superiorities, acrobatic skill, and virtuosity in musical execution. But “not such a fool as he looks” is the class-badge of clowns in general. There is something still unexplained in the attraction of Grock. One can only call it his individuality—his benign, bland outlook on a cosmos of which he seems modestly to possess the secret hidden from ourselves. One comes in the end to the old helpless explanation of any individual artist. Grock pleases because he is Grock.

And now I think one can begin to see why literature (or if you think that too pretentious a word, say letterpress) fails to do justice to clowns. Other comic personages have their verbal jokes, which can be quoted in evidence, but the clown (certainly the clown of the Grock type) is a joke confined to appearance and action. His effects, too, are all of the simplest and broadest—the obvious things (obvious when he has invented them) which are the most difficult of all to translate into prose. You see, I have been driven to depend on general epithets like grotesque, bland, macabre, which fit the man too loosely (like ready-made clothes cut to fit innumerable men) to give you his exact measure. My only consolation is that I have failed with the best. Grock, with all his erudition, all his nicety of analysis, has failed to realize Pulcinella for me. And that is where clowns may enjoy a secret, malign pleasure; they proudly confront a universe which delights in them but cannot describe them. A critic may say to an acrobat, for instance:—“I cannot swing on your trapeze, but I can understand you, while you cannot understand me.” But Grock seems to understand everything (he could do no less, with that noble forehead), probably even critics, while they, poor souls, can only struggle helplessly with their inadequate adjectives, and give him up. But if he condescended to criticism, be sure he would not struggle helplessly. He would blandly thrust his feet through the seat of his chair, and then write his criticism with them. And (Grock is a Frenchman) it would be better than Sainte-Beuve.

THE FUNCTION OF CRITICISM

Every critic or would-be critic has his own little theory of criticism, as every baby in Utopia Limited had its own ickle prospectus. This makes him an avid, but generally a recalcitrant, student of other people’s theories. He is naturally anxious, that is, to learn what the other people think about what inevitably occupies so much of his own thoughts; at the same time, as he cannot but have formed his own theory after his own temperament, consciously or not, he must experience a certain discomfort when he encounters other theories based on temperaments alien from his own. You have, in fact, the converse of Stendhal’s statement that every commendation from confrère to confrère is a certificate of resemblance; every sign of unlikeness provokes the opposite of commendation. So I took up with somewhat mixed feelings an important leading article in the Literary Supplement on “The Function of Criticism.” Important because its subject is, as Henry James said once in a letter to Mrs. Humphry Ward, among “the highest speculations that can engage the human mind.” (Oho! I should like to hear Mr. Bottles or any other homme sensuel moyen on that!) Well, after reading the article, I have the profoundest respect for the writer, whoever he may be; he knows what he is talking about au fond, and can talk admirably about it. But then comes in that inevitable recalcitrancy. It seems to me that if the writer is right, then most art and criticism are on the wrong tack. Maybe they are—the writer evidently thinks they are—but one cannot accept that uncomfortable conclusion offhand, and so one cannot but ask oneself whether the writer is right, after all.

He is certainly wrong about Croce. The ideal critic, he says, “will not accept from Croce the thesis that all expression is art; for he knows that if expression means anything it is by no means all art.” Now the very foundation-stone of the Crocean æsthetic is that art is the expression of intuitions; when you come to concepts, or the relations of intuitions, though the expression of them is art, the concepts themselves (what “expression means”) are not; you will have passed out of the region of art. Thus your historian, logician, or zoologist, say, has a style of his own; that side of him is art. But historical judgments, logic, or zoology are not. Croce discusses this distinction exhaustively, and, I should have thought, clearly. Yet here our leader-writer puts forward as a refutation of Croce a statement carefully made by Croce himself. But this is a detail which does not affect the writer’s main position. I only mention it as one of the many misrepresentations of Croce which students of that philosopher are, by this time, used to accepting as, apparently, inevitable.

Now, says the writer, the critic must have a philosophy and, what is more, a philosophy of a certain sort. That the critic must have a philosophy we should, I suppose, all agree; for the critic is a historian, and a historian without a theory of realities, a system of values, i.e., a philosophy, has no basis for his judgments—he is merely a chronicler. (And a chronicler, let me say in passing, is precisely what I should call the writer’s “historical critic”—who “essentially has no concern with the greater or less literary excellence of the objects whose history he traces—their existence is alone sufficient for him.”) But what particular philosophy must the critic have? It must be, says the writer, “a humanistic philosophy. His inquiries must be modulated, and subject to an intimate, organic governance by an ideal of the good life.” Beware of confusing this ideal of good life with mere conventional morality. Art is autonomous and therefore independent of that. No; “an ideal of the good life, if it is to have the internal coherence and the organic force of a true ideal, must inevitably be æsthetic. There is no other power than our æsthetic intuition by which we can imagine or conceive it; we can express it only in æsthetic terms.” And so we get back to Plato and the Platonic ideas and, generally, to “the Greeks for the principles of art and criticism.” “The secret” of the humanistic philosophy “lies in Aristotle.”

But is not this attempt to distinguish between conventional morality and an ideal of the good life, æsthetically formed, rather specious? At any rate, the world at large, for a good many centuries, has applauded, or discountenanced, Greek criticism as essentially moralistic—as importing into the region of æsthetics the standards of ordinary, conventional morality. That is, surely, a commonplace about Aristotle. His ideal tragic hero is to be neither saint nor utter villain, but a character between these two extremes. Further, he must be illustrious, like Œdipus or Thyestes (Poetics, ed. Butcher, XIII. 3). Again, tragedy is an imitation of persons who are above the common level (XV. 8). It seems to me that the standards applied here are those of our ordinary, or conventional, morality, and I am only confused by the introduction of the mysterious “ideal of the good life.” It seems to me—that may be my stupidity—but it seemed so, also, to our forefathers, for it was this very moralism of Greek criticism that led men for so many centuries to demand “instruction” from art. And that is why it was such a feather in Dryden’s cap (Dryden, of whom our leader-writer has a poor opinion, as a critic without a philosophy) to have said the memorable and decisive thing: “delight is the chief if not the only end of poesy; instruction can be admitted but in the second place, for poesy only instructs as it delights.”

This “ideal of good life” leads our leader-writer far—away up into the clouds. Among the activities of the human spirit art takes “the place of sovereignty.” It “is the manifestation of the ideal in human life.” This attitude, of course, will not be altogether unfamiliar to students of æsthetics. Something not unlike it has been heard before from the “mystic” æstheticians of a century ago. It leaves me unconvinced. I cannot but think that that philosophy makes out a better case which assigns to art, as intuition-expression, not the “place of sovereignty” but the place of foundation in the human spirit; for which it is not flower nor fruit, but root. You see, Croce, like “cheerfulness” in Boswell’s story of the other philosopher, will come “breaking in.”

COTERIE CRITICISM

A young critic was recently so obliging as to send me the proof of an article in the hope that I might find something in it to interest me. I did, but not, I imagine, what was expected. The article discussed a modern author of European reputation, and incidentally compared his mind and his style with that of Mr. X., Mrs. Y., and Miss Z. These three, it appeared, were contemporary English novelists, and—here was the interesting thing to me in our young critic’s article—I had never heard of one of them. They were evidently “intellectuals”—the whole tenor of the article showed that—the idols of some young and naturally solemn critical “school,” familiar classics, I dare say, in Chelsea studios and Girton or Newnham rooms. One often wonders what these serious young people are reading, and here, it seemed, was a valuable light. They must be reading, at all events, Mr. X., and Mrs. Y., and Miss Z. Otherwise, our young critic would never have referred to them with such gravity and with so confident an assumption that his particular set of readers would know all about them. And yet the collocation of these three names, these coterie classics, with that of the great European author, famous throughout the whole world of polite letters, struck one as infinitely grotesque. It showed so naïve a confusion of literary “values,” so queer a sense of proportion and congruity. It was, in short, coterie criticism.

There seems to be a good deal of that about just now. One sees innumerable reviews of innumerable poets, which one supposes to be written by other poets, so solemnly do the writers take their topic and their author and themselves. And for the most part this writing bears the mark of “green, unknowing youth”—the bland assumption that literature was invented yesterday, and that, since the Armistice, we cannot but require a brand-new set of literary canons, estimates, and evaluations. Evidently our young warriors have come back from the front with their spirit of camaraderie still glowing within them. Well, youth will be served, and we must resign ourselves, with a helpless shrug, to a deluge of crude over-estimates, enthusiastic magnifications of the ephemeral, and solemn examinations of the novels of Mr. X., Mrs. Y., and Miss Z. And we must be prepared to see the old reputations going down like a row of ninepins. We shall have to make a polite affectation of listening to the young gentlemen who dismiss Meredith as “pretentious” and tell us that Hardy “can’t write” and that Anatole France is vieux jeu. For if you are always adoring the new because it is new, then you may as well make a complete thing of it by decrying the old because it is old. The breath you can spare from puffing the “Georgians” up you may as well use for puffing the “Victorians” out. And thus the world wags.

What is more, it is thus that the history of literature gets itself evolved. For it is time that I tried to see what good can be said of the coteries, as well as what ill, and this, I think, can be said for them—that they keep the ball rolling. It is they, with their foolish face of praise, who discover the new talents and begin the new movements. If you are always on the pounce for novelties you must occasionally “spot a winner” and find a novelty that the outer world ratifies into a permanency. The minor Elizabethan dramatists were once the darlings of a coterie, but Webster and one or two others still survive. The Lakists were once coterie poets, and, if Southey has petered out, Wordsworth remains. Of course they make awful “howlers.” A coterie started the vogue of that terribly tiresome “Jean Christophe,” of Romain Rolland, and where is it now? On the other hand, a coterie “discovered” Pater, and it was a real find; the world will not willingly let die “Marius” or the “Renaissance.” Henry James began as the idol of a coterie, and “The Golden Bowl” is not yet broken. It may be—who knows?—that the novels of Mr. X., Mrs. Y., and Miss Z. will by and by range themselves proudly on our shelves alongside Fielding and Jane and Meredith and Hardy.

But while these young reputations are still to make in the great world, let us not, as Mrs. Gamp says, proticipate; let us keep our high estimate of them modestly to ourselves, and not stick them up on the classic shelf among the best bindings before their time. What makes it worse is that the coteries are apt to have no classic shelf. Their walls are lined and their boudoir tables littered with new books, and nothing but new books. Women are great offenders in this way, especially the women whom American journals call “Society Ladies”—who are accustomed, in the absence of contradiction and criticism and other correctives (tabooed as “bad form”), to mistake their wayward fancies for considered judgments. We want a modern Molière to write us another Femmes Savantes. (I present the idea to Mr. Bernard Shaw. They have dubbed him “the English Molière.” Well, here’s a chance for him to make good.) There is Lady Dulcibella. She is always recommending you a new book that nobody else has ever heard of. “Oh, how perfectly sweet of you to call on this horrid wet afternoon! Have you read ‘Mes Larmes’? It’s written by a Russian actress with such wonderful red hair, you can’t think, and they say she was a princess, until those dreadful Bolshevists, you know. We met her at Florence in the winter, and everybody said she was just like one of the Botticellis in the Accademia. They do say that Guido da Verona—or D’Annunzio, or somebody (don’t you think that horrid little D’Annunzio is just like a frog?)—was quite mad about her. But ‘Mes Larmes’ is perfectly sweet, and don’t forget to order it. Two lumps or three?” And listen to the chatter of some of those wonderfully bedizened ladies who variegate, if they don’t exactly decorate, the stalls of one of our Sunday coterie theatres. The queer books they rave about! The odd Moldo-Wallachian or Syro-Phœnician dramatists they have discovered!

All this, it is only fair to remember, may leave our young critic inviolate. After all, he may belong to no coterie, or only to a coterie of one; he may have sound critical reasons for the faith that is in him about Mr. X., and Mrs. Y., and Miss Z. And even if he does represent a coterie, he might, I suppose, find a fairly effective retort to some of my observations. “You talk of our love of novelties for novelty’s sake. But you have admitted that, if we always go for the new, we must sometimes light on the true. What we really go for is life. The new is more lively than the old. The actual, the present, the world we are at this moment living in, has more to say to us in literature than the old dead world, the ‘sixty years since’ of your classic Scott. The classic, as Stendhal said, is what pleased our grandfathers; but I am out to please my grandfather’s grandson. And our coteries, I dare say, are often kept together by the mere docility of mind, the imitative instinct, of their members. But is there not a good deal of mere docility among the old fogey party, the people who reject the new because it is new and admire the old because it is old? Is not this mere imitative instinct at work also among the upholders of literary traditions and the approved classics? Absurdity for absurdity, the youthful coterie is no worse than the old fogey crowd.” To put all straight I will now go and read the novels of Mr. X., Mrs. Y., and Miss Z.

CRITICISM AND CREATION

A play of Dryden’s has been successfully revived by the Phœnix Society. One or two others might be tried, but not many. For most of Dryden’s plays, as the curious may satisfy themselves by reading them, are as dead as a doornail. They bore us in the reading, and would simply drive us out of the theatre. Some of Dryden’s non-dramatic poems still permit themselves to be read, but the permission is rarely sought by modern readers, apart from candidates for some academic examination in English literature, who have no choice. Yet we all render him lip service as a great poet. How many are there to pay him proper homage as a great critic? For a great critic he was, and, moreover, our first dramatic critic in time as well as in importance. He discussed not the details of this or that play, but the fundamental principles of drama. He abounded in ideas, and expressed them with a conversational ease which, in his time, was an entirely new thing. But it would be impertinent to praise Dryden’s prose style after Johnson’s exhaustive eulogy and the delicate appreciations of Professor Ker. What I would point out is that all Dryden’s critical work can still be read with pleasure, while most of his dramatic work cannot be read at all. And the humour of it is that I shall at once be told the dramatic work was “creative,” while the critical was not.

This distinction, an essentially false one, as I shall hope to show, is still a great favourite with our authors of fiction; they “create,” their critics do not. Authors who write, in Flaubert’s phrase, like cochers de fiacre, and who are particularly given to this contrast, it would be cruel to deprive of a comforting illusion; but authors of merit and repute also share it, and to them I would urge my modest plea for a reconsideration of the matter.

What does the dramatist, or writer of fiction in general, create? Actions and characters? Not so, for these are only created in real life, by the contending volitions of real men and the impact between their volitions and external reality. The author creates images of actions and characters, or, in other words, expresses his intuitions of life. When the intuition is vivid, when the image is a Falstaff, a Baron Hulot, a Don Quixote, a Colonel Newcome, we are apt to think of it as a real person. And they are, in truth, as real to us as anybody in the actual world whom we have never met but only know of. For the historic person, unmet, is, just like the imaginary person, only a bundle for us of our intuitions. Julius Cæsar was a real person, but we can only know of him, as we know of Mr. Pickwick, by hearsay. These vivid intuitions are what your author likes to call “creations.” So they are. That is the magic of art.

And because, to the vast majority of men, their intuitions (in the case of actual reality encountered, their perceptions) of other men and their actions are their most interesting experience, art is allowed without challenge to arrogate to itself this quality of “creation.” There is a biographical dictionary of Balzac’s personages—some 2,000, if I remember rightly—of whom a few are actual historical people. But, in fact, you make no distinction. The one set are as real to you as the others. In this way the Comédie Humaine does, as its author said, compete with the État Civil. There are few ideas, speculations, judgments in Balzac that are worth a rap; when he tried abstract thought he was apt to achieve nonsense. But very few readers want abstract thought. They want “to know people,” “to see people.” Balzac makes “people,” tells you all about their families, their incomes, their loves and hates, “splendours and miseries,” their struggles, their orgies, their squalor, their death. That is “creative” art. Let us admire it. Let us revel in it. Let us be profoundly thankful for it.

But when, as so frequently happens, one hears some fourteenth-rate yarn-spinner, who also makes “people,” but people who were not worth making, people who are puppets or the mere phantoms of a greensick brain—when one hears this gentleman claiming kinship with Balzac or with my friend the distinguished novelist and real artist already mentioned, as a “creator” one is inclined to smile. “Creation” is a blessed word. But the thing created may be quite valueless.

And so it is, precisely, with criticism. For criticism is also “creative.” But it does not create images of people or their lives; it creates thought, ideas, concepts. That is, it builds up something new out of the artist’s intuitions and exhibits the relations between them. Here, in the conceptual world, we are in a different region from the intuitional world of the artist. Those who care to enter it, who feel at home in it, are comparatively few; the absence of personal interest, of “people,” makes it seem cold to the average, gregarious man. “People” are a natural, ideas an acquired, taste. But the one set are just as much a “creation” as the other. And in the one set just as in the other the thing created may not be worth creating. Ideas, expositions, illustrations in criticism have a distressing habit of being as poor and conventional and mechanical as many a novelist’s or playwright’s characters and life histories. There is not a pin to choose between them. For as the one thing that matters in art is the artist behind it, so the critic behind it is the one thing that matters in criticism.

These are elementary commonplaces. But they need restating from time to time. For the average man, with all his interest in life fixed on “people,” is always falling into the error that the novelist or playwright makes something, while the critic makes nothing. And your fourteenth-rate author, sharing the temperament of the average man, falls into the same error and seems, indeed, inordinately proud of it. He seems to say: “Why, you, good master critic, couldn’t even begin to do what I, the ‘creative’ artist, do”; and he would probably be surprised by the answer that it is the critic’s very critical faculty, his endowment of judgment and taste, which makes the writing of bad plays or novels impossible, because repugnant to him. It is precisely because the critical faculty is so rare a thing that so many bad novels and plays get themselves written.

But enough of these sharp distinctions between the “creation” of images and the “creation” of concepts! Is not a union of the two, like the union of butler and lady’s-maid, as described by Mr. Crichton, “the happiest of all combinations”? Who does not feel how immensely the mere story part of “Tom Jones” gains by the critical chapter introductions? And, on the other hand, how the mere critical part of Dryden’s “Essay of Dramatic Poesy” gains by the little touches of story, from the opening moment when “they ordered the watermen to let fall their oars more gently” to the close at Somerset Stairs, where “they went up through a crowd of French people, who were merrily dancing in the open air”?

ACTING AND CRITICISM

A veteran who has been regaling the readers of The Times with his recollections of the London stage has dropped by the way a remark on modern theatrical criticism. For it, he says, “the play is everything, and the leading actor or actress has often to be content with a few lines.” Dean Gaisford began a sermon, “Saint Paul says, and I partly agree with him.” I partly agree with the veteran. Criticism has occasionally to deal with plays that cannot be “everything” for it. There are new plays that are merely a vehicle for the art of the actor, who must then get more than a few lines. There are old plays revived to show a new actor in a classic part, and the part is then greater than the whole. This, I think, accounts for “the space devoted to the acting in London criticisms at the time Henry Irving rose to fame.” Either he appeared in new plays of little intrinsic merit, like The Bells, or else in classic parts of melodrama (made classic by Frédéric Lemaître) or of Shakespeare. In these conditions criticism must always gravitate towards the acting. It did so, long before Irving’s time, with Hazlitt over Edmund Kean. It has done so, since Irving’s time, over Sarah and Duse, and must do so again over every new Shylock or Millamant or Sir Peter.

But these conditions are exceptional, and it is well for the drama that they are. For the vitality of the drama primarily depends not upon the talent of its interpreters but on that of its creators, and a new image or new transposition of life in a form appropriate to the theatre is more important than the perfection of the human instrument by which it is “made flesh.” If criticism, then, has of late years and on the whole been able to devote more attention to the play than to the playing, I suggest to our veteran that the fact is a healthy sign for our drama. It shows that there have been plays to criticise and that criticism has done its duty.

But that, I hasten to add, is its luck rather than its merit. One must not ride the high ethical horse, and I should be sorry to suggest that good criticism is ever written from a sense of duty, any more than a good play or any other piece of good literature. Good criticism is written just because the critic feels like that—and bad, it may be added, generally because the critic has been trying to write something which he supposes other people will feel like. The good critic writes with his temperament—and here is a reason why, in the long run, plays will interest him more than players. For are we not all agreed about the first principle of criticism? Is it not to put yourself in the place of the artist criticized, to adopt his point of view, to recreate his work within yourself? Well, the critic can put himself in the place of the playwright much more readily than into that of the actor. The playwright and he are working in different ways, with much the same material, ideas, and images, or, if you like, concepts and intuitions mainly expressed in words—which is only a long way of saying that they are both authors. And they have in common the literary temperament. Now the literary temperament and the histrionic are two very different things.

The actor, as his very name imports, is an active man, a man of action. At his quietest, he perambulates the stage. But violent physical exercise is a part of his trade. He fights single combats, jumps into open graves, plunges into lakes, is swallowed down in quicksands, sharpens knives on the sole of his boot, deftly catches jewel caskets thrown from upper windows, wrestles with heavy-weight champions, knouts or is knouted, stabs or is stabbed, rolls headlong down staircases, writhes in the agonies of poison, and is (or at any rate in the good old days was) kicked, pinched, and pummelled out of the limelight by the “star.” And all this under the handicap of grease-paint and a wig! It must be very fatiguing. But then he enjoys the physical advantages of an active life. He has Sir Willoughby Patterne’s leg (under trousers that never bag at the knee, and terminating in boots of the shiniest patent leather), and all the rest to match. As becomes a man of action, he is no reader. I have heard the late Mr. Henry Neville declare that an actor should never be allowed to look at a book. This may seem to the rest of us a sad fate for him, but look at his compensations! He spends much, if not most, of his stage-life making love to pretty women, wives, widows, or ingénues. Frequently he kisses them, or seems to—for he will tell you, the rogue, that stage-kisses are always delivered in the air. Let us say then that he is often within an inch of kissing a pretty woman—which is already a considerable privilege. When he is not kissing her (or the air, as the case may be), he is sentimentally bidding her to a nunnery go or dying in picturesque agonies at her feet. Anyhow he goes through his work in the society and with the active co-operation of pretty women. And note, for it is an enormous advantage to him, that that work is a fixed, settled thing. His words have been invented for him and written out in advance. He has rehearsed his actions. He knows precisely what he is going to do.

Contrast with this alluring picture the temperament and working habits of the critic. He is a man, not of action, but of contemplation. His pursuit is sedentary, and with his life of forced inaction he risks becoming as fat as Mr. Gibbon, without the alleviation of the Gibbonian style. Personal advantages are not aids to composition, and he may be the ugliest man in London, like G. H. Lewes, whose dramatic criticisms, nevertheless, may still be read with pleasure. His fingers are inky. His face is not “made up,” but sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought. No pretty women help him to write his criticisms. Indeed, if Helen of Troy herself, or Aphrodite new-risen from the sea came into his study he would cry out with writer’s petulance (a far more prevalent and insidious disease than writer’s cramp), “Oh, do please go away! Can’t you see I’m not yet through my second slip?” (She will return when he is out, and “tidy up” his desk for him—a really fiendish revenge). Books, forbidden to the actor, are the critic’s solace—and also his despair, because they have said all the good things and taken the bread out of his mouth. And, unlike the actor, he is working in the unknown. His head is filled with a chaos of half-formed ideas and the transient embarrassed phantoms of logical developments. Will he ever be able to sort them out and to give them at any rate a specious appearance of continuity? Nay, can he foresee the beginning of his next sentence, or even finish this one? Thus he is perpetually on the rack. “Luke’s iron crown and Damien’s bed of steel” are nothing to it. It is true that his criticism does, mysteriously, get itself completed—mysteriously, because he seems to have been no active agent in it, but a mere looker-on while it somehow wrote itself.

Is it surprising that it should generally write itself about the play (which, I daresay, writes itself, too, and with the same tormenting anxiety) rather than about the playing, which proceeds from so different a temperament from the critic’s and operates in conditions so alien from his? But, let me add for the comfort of our veteran, there are critics and critics. If some of us displease him by too often sparing only a few lines for the leading actor or actress, there will always be plenty of others who are more interested in persons than in ideas and images, who care less for transpositions of life than for Sarah’s golden voice and Duse’s limp, and “Quin’s high plume and Oldfield’s petticoat.” These will redress the balance.

ACTING AS ART

Nothing could be more characteristically English than the circumstances which gave rise the other day to the singular question, “Is acting an art?” There was a practical issue, whether the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art was or was not entitled to exemption under an Act of 1843 from the payment of rates. Sir John Simon argued it, of course, as a practical question. He dealt with custom and precedent and authority, dictionary definitions and judicial decisions. He had to keep one eye on æsthetics and the other on the rates. This is our traditional English way. We “drive at practice.” Nevertheless, this question whether acting is an art is really one of pure æsthetics, and is in no way affected by any decision of the Appeal Committee of the London County Council.

You cannot answer it until you have made up your mind what you mean by art. Sir John Simon seems to have suggested that art was something “primarily directed to the satisfaction of the æsthetic sense.” But is there any such thing as a special “æsthetic sense”? Is it anything more than a name for our spiritual reaction to a work of art, our response to it in mind and feeling? And are we not arguing in a circle when we say that art is what provokes the response to art? Perhaps it might amuse, perhaps it might irritate, perhaps it might simply bewilder the Appeal Committee of the London County Council to tell them that art is the expression of intuitions. They might reply that they cannot find intuitions in the rate-book, and that the Act of 1843 is silent about them. Yet this is what art is, and you have to bear it in mind when you ask, “Is the actor an artist?” Art is a spiritual activity, and the artist’s expression of his intuitions (the painter’s “vision,” the actor’s “conception” of his part) is internal; when he wishes to externalize his expression, to communicate it to others, he has to use certain media—paint and canvas, marble and brick, musical notes, words and gestures. But it is the spiritual activity, the intuition-expression, that makes the artist. The medium is no part of his definition.