book--Sonia Kovalevsky, Eleonora Duse, Marie Bashkirtseff, and George
Egerton--we find that they all have one feature in common. It was not
I who first noticed this, it was a man. Ola Hansson, seeing them lying
together one day, pointed it out to me, and he said: “The lips of all
four speak the same language,--the young girl, the great tragedian, the
woman of intellect, and the neurotic writer; each one has a something
about the corners of the mouth that expresses a wearied satiety,
mingled with an unsatisfied longing, as though she had as yet enjoyed
nothing.”
Why this wearied satiety mingled with an unsatisfied longing? Why
should these four women, who are four opposites, as it were, have
the same expression? The virgin in body and soul, the great creator
of the rôles of the degenerates, the mathematical professor, and the
neurotic writer? Is it something in themselves, something peculiar in
the organic nature of their womanhood, or is it some influence from
without? Is it because they have chosen a profession which excites,
while it leaves them dissatisfied, for the simple reason that a
profession can never wholly satisfy a woman? Yet these four have
excelled in their profession. But can a woman ever obtain satisfaction
by means of her achievements? Is not her life as a woman--as a wife and
as a mother--the true source of all her happiness? And this touch of
disillusion in all of them--is it the disillusion they have experienced
as _woman_; is it the expression of their bitter experiences in the
gravest moment in a woman’s life? Disappointment in man? _The_ man that
fate thrust across their path, who was their experience? And their
yearning is now fruitless, for the flower of expectant realization
withered before they plucked it.
Two of these women have carried the secret of their faces with them
to the grave, but the others live and are not willing to reveal it.
George Egerton would like to be as silent about it as they are; but
her nerves speak, and her nerves have betrayed her secret in the book
called “Discords.”
When we read “Discords” we ask ourselves how is it possible that
this frail little woman could write such a strong, brutal book? In
“Keynotes” Mrs. Egerton was still a little coquette, with 5¾ gloves
and 18-inch waist, who herself played a fascinating part. She had
something of a midge’s nature, dancing up and down, and turning nervous
somersaults in the sunshine. “Discords” is certainly a continuation of
“Keynotes,” but it is quite another kind of woman who meets us here.
The thrilling, nervous note of the former book has changed into a
clashing, piercing sound, hard as metal; it is the voice of an accuser
in whom all bitterness takes the form of reproaches which are unjust,
and yet unanswerable. It is the voice of a woman who is conscious
of being ill-treated and driven to despair, and who speaks in spite
of herself in the name of thousands of ill-treated and despairing
women. Who can tell us whether her nerves have ill-treated this
woman and driven her to despair, or whether it is her outward fate,
especially her fate with regard to the man? Women of this kind are not
confidential. They take back to-morrow what they have confessed to-day,
partly from a wish not to let themselves be understood, and partly
because the aspect of their experiences varies with every change of
mood, like the colors in a kaleidoscope.
But throughout these changes, one single note is maintained in
“Discords,” as it was in “Keynotes.” In the latter it was a high,
shrill treble, like the song of a bird in spring; in “Discords” it is a
deep bass note, groaning in distress with the groan of a disappointed
woman.
V
The tone of bitter disappointment which pervades “Discords” is the
expression of woman’s disappointment in man. Man and man’s love are
not a joy to her; they are a torment. He is inconsiderate in his
demands, brutal in his caresses, and unsympathetic with those sides of
her nature which are not there for his satisfaction. He is no longer
the great comic animal of “Keynotes,” whom the woman teases and plays
with--he is a nightmare which smothers her during horrible nights, a
hangman who tortures her body and soul during days and years for his
pleasure; a despot who demands admiration, caresses, and devotion,
while her every nerve quivers with an opposite emotion; a man born
blind, whose clumsy fingers press the spot where the pain is, and when
she moans, replies with coarse, unfeeling laughter, “Absurd nonsense!”
Although I believed myself to be acquainted with all the books which
women have written against men, no book that I have ever read has
impressed me with such a vivid sense of physical pain. Most women come
with reasonings, moral sermons, and outbursts of temper: a man may
allow himself much that is forbidden to others, that must be altered.
Women are of no importance in his eyes; he has permitted himself to
look down upon them. They intend to teach him their importance. They
are determined that he shall look up to them. But here we have no trace
of Xantippe-like violence, only a woman who holds her trembling hands
to the wounds which man has inflicted upon her, of which the pain is
intensified each time that he draws near. A woman, driven to despair,
who jumps upon him like a wild-cat, and seizes him by the throat; and
if that does not answer, chooses for herself a death that is ten times
more painful than life with him, _chooses_ it in order that she may
have her own way.
What is this? It is not the well-known domestic animal which we call
woman. It is a wild creature belonging to a wild race, untamed and
untamable, with the yellow gleam of a wild animal in its eyes. It is a
nervous, sensitive creature, whose primitive wildness is awakened by a
blow which it has received, which bursts forth, revengeful and pitiless
as the lightning in the night.
That is what I like about this book. That a woman should have sprung
up, who with her instinct can bore to the bottom layers of womanhood
the quality that enables her to renew the race, her primæval quality,
which man, with all his understanding, has never penetrated. A few
years ago, in a study on Gottfried Keller’s women, I mentioned wildness
as the basis of woman’s nature; Mrs. Egerton has given utterance to
the same opinion in “Keynotes,” and has since tried to embody it in
“Discords;” her best stories are those where the wild instinct breaks
loose.
But why this terror of man, this physical repulsion, as in the story
called “Virgin Soil”? The authoress says that it is because an
ignorant girl in her complete innocence is handed over in marriage to
an exacting husband. But that is not reason enough. The authoress’s
intellect is not as true as her instinct. There must be something
more. The same may be said of “Wedlock,” where the boarding-house cook
marries an amorous working man, who is in receipt of good wages, for
the sake of having her illegitimate child to live with her; he refuses
to allow it, and when the child dies of a childish ailment, she murders
his two children by the first marriage.
Mrs. Egerton’s stories are not invented; neither are they realistic
studies copied from the notes in her diary. They are experiences.
She has lived them all, because the people whom she portrays have
impressed their characters or their fate upon her quivering nerves.
The music of her nerves has sounded like the music of a stringed
instrument beneath the touch of a strange hand, as in that masterpiece,
“Gone Under,” where the woman tells her story between the throes of
sea-sickness and drunkenness. The man to whom she belongs has punished
her unfaithfulness by the murder of her child, and she revenges herself
by drunkenness; yet, in spite of it all, he remains the master whom she
is powerless to punish, and in her despair she throws herself upon the
streets.
Only one man has had sufficient instinct to bring to light this abyss
in woman’s nature, and that is Barbey d’Aurevilly, the poet who was
never understood. But in Mrs. Egerton’s book there is one element
which he had not discovered, and, although she does not express it in
words, it shows itself in her description of men and women. Her men are
Englishmen with bull-dog natures, but the women belong to another race;
and is not this horror, this physical repulsion, this woman raging
against the man, a true representation of the way that the Anglo-Saxon
nature reacts upon the Celtic?
Two races stand opposed to one another in these sketches; perhaps the
authoress herself is not quite conscious of it, but it is plainly
visible in her descriptions of character, where we have the heavy,
massive Englishman, _l’animal mâle_, and the untamable woman who is
prevented by race instinct from loving where she ought to love.
In “The Regeneration of Two,” Mrs. Egerton has tried to describe a
Celtic woman where she can love, but the attempt is most unsuccessful,
for here we see plainly that she lacked the basis of experience. There
are, however, many women who know what love is, although they have
never experienced it. Men came, they married, but the man for them
never came.
VI
There is a little story in this collection called “Her Share,” where
the style is full of tenderness, perhaps even a trifle too sweet. It
affects one like a landscape on an evening in early autumn, when the
sun has gone down and twilight reigns; it seems as though veiled in
gray, for there is no color left, although everything is strangely
clear. Mrs. Egerton has a peculiarly gentle touch and soft voice where
she describes the lonely, independent working girl. Her little story is
often nothing more than the fleeting shadow of a mood, but the style is
sustained throughout in a warm stream of lyric; for this Celtic woman
certainly has the lyrical faculty, a thing which a woman writer rarely
has, if ever, possessed before. There is something in her writing
which seems to express a desire to draw near to the lonely girl and
say: “You have such a good time of it in your grayness. In Grayness
your nerves find rest, your instincts slumber, no man ill-treats you
with his love, you experience discontent in contentment, but you know
nothing of the torture of unstrung nerves. Would I were like you; but I
am a bundle of electric currents bursting forth in all directions into
chaos.”
Besides these two dainty twilight sketches, she has others like the
description in “Gone Under,” of the storm on that voyage from America
to England where we imagine ourselves on board ship, and seem to feel
the rolling sea, to hear the ship cracking and groaning, to smell
the hundreds of fetid smells escaping from all corners, and the damp
ship-biscuits and the taste of the bitter salt spray on the tongue.
We owe this forcible and matter-of-fact method of reproducing the
impressions received by the senses to the retentive power of her
nerves, through which she is able to preserve her passing impressions
and to reproduce them in their full intensity. She relies on her
womanly receptive faculty, not on her brain.
* * * * *
George Egerton’s life has been of the kind which affords ample material
for literary purposes, and it is probable that she has more raw
material ready for use at any time when she may require it; but at
present she retains it in her nerves, as it were, under lock and key.
She had intended from childhood to become an artist, and writing is
only an afterthought; yet, no sooner did she begin to write than the
impressions and experiences of her life shaped themselves into the form
of her two published works. Until the publication of “Discords,” we had
thought that she was one of those intensely individualistic writers who
write one book because they must, but never write another, or, at any
rate, not one that will bear comparison with the first; the publication
of “Discords” has entirely dispelled this opinion, and has given us
good reason to hope for many more works from her pen.
III
_The Modern Woman on the Stage_
I
A lean figure, peculiarly attractive, though scarcely to be called
beautiful; a melancholy face with a strangely sweet expression, no
longer young, yet possessed of a pale, wistful charm; _la femme de
trente ans_, who has lived and suffered, and who knows that life is
full of suffering; a woman without any aggressive self-confidence, yet
queenly, gentle, and subdued in manner, with a pathetic voice,--such
is Eleonora Duse as she appeared in the parts which she created for
herself out of modern pieces. When first I saw her, I tried to think
of some one with whom to compare her; I turned over in my mind the
names of all the greatest actresses in the last ten years or more, and
wondered whether any of them could be said to be her equal, or to have
surpassed her. But neither Wolter nor Bernhardt, neither Ellmenreich
nor the best actresses of the _Théâtre Français_, could be compared
with her. The French and German actresses were entirely different; they
seemed to stand apart, each complete in themselves--while she too stood
apart, complete in herself. They represented a world of their own and a
perfected civilization; and she, though like them in some ways, seemed
to represent the genesis of a world, and a civilization in embryo.
This was not merely the result of comparing an Italian with French and
German, and one school with another,--it was the woman’s temperament
compared to that of others, her acute susceptibility, compared to which
her celebrated predecessors impressed one as being too massive, almost
too crude, and one might be tempted to add, less womanly. Many of
them have possessed a more versatile genius than hers, and nearly all
have had greater advantages at their disposal; but the moment that we
compare them to Duse, their loud, convulsive art suddenly assumes the
appearance of one of those gigantic pictures by Makart, once so fiery
colored and now so faded; and if we compare the famous dramatic artists
of the seventies and eighties with Duse, we might as well compare a
splendid festal march played with many instruments to a Violin solo
floating on the still night air.
The pieces acted by Eleonora Duse at Berlin, where I saw her, were
mainly chosen to suit the public taste, and they differed in nothing
from the usual virtuosa programme. These consisted of Sarah Bernhardt’s
favorite parts, such as “Fédora,” “La Dame aux Camélias,” and pieces
taken from the _répertoire_ of the _Théâtre Français_, such as
“Francillon” and “Divorçons,” varied with “Cavalleria Rusticana,” and
such well-known plays as “Locandiera,” “Fernande,” and “The Doll’s
House.” She did not act Shakespeare, and there she was wise; for what
can Duse’s pale face have in common with the exuberant spirits and
muscular strength of the women of the _Renaissance_, whose own rich
life-blood shone red before their eyes and drove them to deeds of
love and vengeance, which it makes the ladies of our time ill to hear
described. But she also neglected some pieces which must have suited
her better than her French _répertoire_. She did not give us Marco
Praga’s “Modest Girls,” where Paulina’s part seems expressly created
for her, nor his “Ideal Wife,” into which she might have introduced
some of her own instinctive philosophy. Neither did she act the “Tristi
Amori” of her celebrated fellow-countryman, Giuseppe Giacosa.
And yet, in the parts which she did act, she opened to us a new world,
which had no existence before, because it was her own. It was the world
of her own soul, the ever-changing woman’s world, which no one before
her has ever expressed on the stage; she gave us the secret, inner life
of woman, which no poet can wholly fathom, and which only woman herself
can reveal, which with more refined nerves and more sensitive and
varied feelings has emerged bleeding from the older, coarser, narrower
forms of art, to newer, brighter forms, which, though more powerful,
are also more wistful and more hopeless.
II
Eleonora Duse has a strangely wearied look. It is not the weariness of
exhaustion or apathy, nor is it the weariness natural to an overworked
actress, although there are times when she suffers from that to so
great an extent that she acts indifferently the whole evening, and
makes the part a failure. Neither is it the weariness of despondency
which gives the voice a hollow, artificial sound, which is noticeable
in all virtuosas when they are over-tired. Neither is it the utter
prostration resulting from passion, like the drowsiness of beasts of
prey, which our tragic actors and actresses delight in. Passion, the
so-called great passion, which, according to an old legend recounted
in one of the Greek tragedies, comes like the whirlwind, and leaves
nothing behind but death and dried bones--passion such as that is
unknown to Duse. Brunhild, Medea, Messalina, and all the ambitious,
imperious princesses of historic drama are nothing to her; she is no
princess or martyr of ancient history, but a princess in her own right,
and a martyr of circumstances. Throughout her acting there is a feeling
of surprise that she should suffer and be martyred, accompanied by
the dim knowledge that it must be so--and it is that which gives her
soul its weary melancholy. For it is not her body, nor her senses, nor
her mind which give the appearance of having just awoke from a deep
lethargy; the weariness is all in her soul, and it is that which gives
her a soft, caressing, trustful manner, as though she felt lonely,
and yearned for a little sympathy. Love is full of sympathy, and that
is why Eleonora Duse acts love. Not greedy love, which asks more
than it gives, like Walter’s and Bernhardt’s; not sensual love, nor
yet imperious love, like the big woman who takes pity on the little
man, whom it pleases her to make happy. When Duse is in love, even in
“Fédora,” it is always she who is the little woman, and the man is
for her the big man, the giver, who holds her happiness in his hands,
to whose side she steals anxiously, almost timidly, and looks up at
him with her serious, wearied, almost child-like smile. She comes to
him for protection and shelter, just as travelers are wont to gather
round a warm fire, and she clings to him caressingly with her thin
little hands,--the hands of a child and mother. Never has woman been
represented in a more womanly way than by Eleonora Duse; and more than
that, I take it upon myself to maintain that woman has never been
represented upon the stage until now--by Eleonora Duse.
She shows us the everlasting child in woman,--in the full-grown,
experienced woman, who is possessed of an erotic yearning for fulness
of life. Woman is not, and cannot be, happy by herself, nor is the
sacrifice of a moment enough for her; it is not enough for her to
live by the side of the man; a husband’s tenderness is as necessary
to her as the air she breathes. His passion, lit by her, is her life
and happiness. He gives her the love in which her life can blossom
into a fair and beautiful flower. And she accepts him, not with the
silly innocence of a child, not with the ignorance of girlhood, not
with the ungoverned passion of a mistress, not with the condescending
forbearance of the “superior woman,” not with the brotherly affection
of the manly woman,--we have had ample opportunity of seeing and
benefiting by such representations as those in every theatre, and in
every tongue, since first we began to see and to think. They include
every type of womanhood as understood and represented by actresses
great and small. But into all this, Duse introduces a new element,
something which was formerly only a matter of secondary importance on
the stage, which, by the “highest art,” was judged in the light of a
juggler’s trick, and was considered by the lower art as little more
than a valuable ingredient. She makes it the main-string on which
her acting vibrates, the keynote without which her art would have no
meaning. She accepts the man with the whole-hearted sincerity of an
experienced woman, who shrinks from the loneliness of life, and longs
to lose herself in the “loved one”. She has the dreadful sensation that
a human being has nothing but minutes, minutes; that there is nothing
lasting to rely on; that we swim across dark waters from yesterday
until to-morrow, and our unfulfilled desires are less terrible than
the feverish anxiety with which we anticipate the future in times of
prosperity.
Eleonora Duse’s acting tells of infinite suspense.
Her entire art rests on this one note,--Suspense: which means that
we know nothing, possess nothing, can do nothing; that everything is
ruled by chance, and the whole of life is one great uncertainty. This
terrible insecurity stands as a perfect contrast to the “cause and
effect” theory of the schools, which trust in God and logic, and offer
a secure refuge to the playwright’s art. This mysterious darkness, from
whence she steps forward like a sleep-walker, gives a sickly coloring
to her actions. There is something timid about her; she seems to have
an almost superstitious dislike of a shrill sound, or a brilliant
color; and this peculiarity of hers finds expression not only in her
acting, but also in her dress.
We seldom see toilets on the stage which reveal a more individual
taste. Just as Duse never acted anything but what was in her own soul,
she never attempted any disguise of her body. Her own face was the only
mask she wore when I saw her act. The expression of her features, the
deep lines on her cheeks, the melancholy mouth, the sunken eyes with
their large heavy lids, were all characteristic of the part. She always
had the same black, broad, arched eyebrows, the same wavy, shiny black
Italian hair, which was always done up in a modest knot, sometimes
high, sometimes a little lower, from which two curls always escaped
during the course of her acting, because she had a habit of brushing
her forehead with a white and rather bony hand, as though every violent
emotion made her head ache.
No jewel glittered against her sallow skin, and she wore no ornament
on her dress; there was something pathetic in the unconcealed thinness
of her neck and throat. She was of medium height, a slender body with
broad hips, without any signs of the rounded waist which belongs to
the fashionable figure of the drama. She wore no stays, and there was
nothing to hinder the slow, graceful, musical movements of her somewhat
scanty figure. She made frequent gestures with her arms which were
perfectly natural in her, although her Italian vivacity sometimes gave
them a grotesque appearance. But it was the grace of her form, rather
than her gestures, which called attention to the natural stateliness of
her person. As to her dresses, they were not in the least fashionable,
there was nothing of the French fashion-plate style about them; but
then she never made any attempt to follow the fashion,--she set it.
There was an antique look about the long soft folds of her dress, also
something suggestive of the _Renaissance_ in the velvet bodices and low
lace collars.
But her arrangement of color was new; it was not copied either from the
antique or the _Renaissance_, and it was certainly not in accordance
with the present-day fashion. She never wore red,--with the exception
of Nora’s shabby blouse,--nor bright yellow, nor blue; never, in fact,
any strong, deep color. The hues which she affected most were black and
white in all materials, whether for dresses or cloaks. She always wore
pale, cream-colored lace, closely folded across her breast, from whence
her dress fell loosely to the ground; she never wore a waist-band of
any kind whatever.
She sometimes wore pale bronze, faded violet, and quiet myrtle green in
soft materials of velvet and silk. There was an air of mourning about
her dresses which might have suited any age except merry youth, and
that note was entirely absent from her art, for she was never merry.
She had a happy look sometimes, but she was never merry or noisy on the
stage. I have twice seen her in a hat; and they were sober hats, such
as a widow might wear.
III