Mr. Howells, I feel sure, will forgive me if I quote here a comment I
once heard him make on theatrical taste in America. We had been talking
of that strange exigency of the American public which compels the
dramatist (if he wishes to be played) to wind up his play, whatever its
point of departure, with the "happy-ever-after" of the fairy-tales; and
I had remarked that this did not imply a preference for comedy, but
that, on the contrary, our audiences want to be harrowed (and even
slightly shocked) from eight till ten-thirty, and then consoled and
reassured before eleven.
"Yes," said Mr. Howells; "what the American public wants is _a tragedy
with a happy ending_."
What Mr. Howells said of the American theatre is true of the whole
American attitude toward life.
"A tragedy with a happy ending" is exactly what the child wants before
he goes to sleep: the reassurance that "all's well with the world" as he
lies in his cosy nursery. It is a good thing that the child should
receive this reassurance; but as long as he needs it he remains a child,
and the world he lives in is a nursery-world. Things are not always and
everywhere well with the world, and each man has to find it out as he
grows up. It is the finding out that makes him grow, and until he has
faced the fact and digested the lesson he is not grown up--he is still
in the nursery.
The same thing is true of countries and peoples. The "sheltered life,"
whether of the individual or of the nation, must either have a violent
and tragic awakening--or never wake up at all. The keen French
intelligence perceived this centuries ago, and has always preferred to
be awake and alive, at whatever cost. The cost has been heavy, but the
results have been worth it, for France leads the world intellectually
just because she is the most grown up of the nations.
In each of the great nations there is a small minority which is at about
the same level of intellectual culture; but it is not between these
minorities (though even here the level is perhaps higher in France) that
comparisons may profitably be made. A cross-section of average life must
be taken, and compared with the same average in a country like ours, to
understand why France leads in the world of ideas.
The theatre has an importance in France which was matched only in the
most glorious days of Greece. The dramatic sense of the French, their
faculty of perceiving and enjoying the vivid contrasts and ironies of
daily life, and their ability to express emotion where Anglo-Saxons can
only choke with it, this innate dramatic gift, which is a part of their
general artistic endowment, leads them to attach an importance to the
theatre incomprehensible to our blunter races.
Americans new to France, and seeing it first in war-time, will be
continually led to overlook the differences and see the resemblances
between the two countries. They will notice, for instance, that the same
kind of people who pack the music-halls and "movie-shows" at home also
pack them in France. But if they will take a seat at the one of the
French national theatres (the _Théâtre Français_ or the _Odéon_) they
will see people of the same level of education as those of the
cinema-halls enjoying with keen discrimination a tragedy by Racine or a
drama of Victor Hugo's. In America the "movie" and music-hall audiences
require no higher form of nourishment. In France they do, and the
Thursday matinées in theatres which give the classic drama are as packed
as the house where "The Mysteries of New York" are unrolled, while on
the occasion of the free performances given on national holidays in
these theatres a line composed of working-people, poor students and all
kinds of modest wage-earners forms at the door hours before the
performance begins.
The people who assist at these great tragic performances have a strong
enough sense of reality to understand the part that grief and calamity
play in life and in art: they feel instinctively that no real art can be
based on a humbugging attitude toward life, and it is their intellectual
honesty which makes them exact and enjoy its fearless representation.
It is also their higher average of education, of "culture" it would be
truer to say, if the word, with us, had not come to stand for the
pretence rather than the reality. Education in its elementary sense is
much more general in America than in France. There are more people who
can read in the United States; but what do they read? The whole point,
as far as any real standard goes, is there. If the ability to read
carries the average man no higher than the gossip of his neighbours, if
he asks nothing more nourishing out of books and the theatre than he
gets in hanging about the store, the bar and the street-corner, then
culture is bound to be dragged down to him instead of his being lifted
up by culture.