The Imperium was at its most brilliant for the first performance. Lady
Butcher had done her work well, and the people crowded in the pit had a
good show for their money even before the curtain rose. The orchestra
hidden away beneath gay greenery discoursed light music as the great
men and the lovely women of the hour entered in their fine array,
conscious of being themselves, hoping to be recognised as such. Actors
who had retired with titles had come to support Sir Henry by
encouraging in the audience the habit of applause. Successful
politicians entered the stalls as though they were walking out upon the
platform at a great meeting. They stood for a moment and surveyed the
assembly with a Gladstonian aquiline eye. Their wives blushed with
pride in their property if their husbands were recognised and raised a
buzz.... Lady Butcher, with her son, occupied one stage-box, and on
the opposite side were Lady Bracebridge, her daughter, and, through a
nice calculation on his part, Lord Verschoyle.... There were many
Jews, some authors, a few painters, critics casting listless eyes upon
these preliminary histrionics, women-journalists taking notes of the
frocks worn by the eminent actresses and no less eminent wives of
Cabinet Ministers ... a buzz of voices, a fluttering of fans, the
twittering and hissing of whispered scandal, the cold venom that creeps
in the veins of the society of the mummers.... There were magnificence
and luxury, but beneath it all was the deadly stillness of which
Charles had complained that night on St James's Bridge. Before the
curtain rose, Clara could feel it.... Her dreams of a vast
enthusiastic audience perished as soon as she set foot on the stage to
make sure that Charles's scenery was properly set up.
He walked on to the stage at the same moment, looked round, shook out
his mane and snorted.
'The lighting kills it,' he said.
Clara went to him.
'You see, Charles, it has come true.'
'Half-true. Half-true.'
'Do you feel anything wrong with the audience?'
'No. I have had a peep at it. All the swells are there, but none of
the brains.'
Clara laughed at him.
'It's good-bye, Charles.'
'What do you mean?'
'It can never be the same again.... I'm not the same.'
'What do you mean?' he asked, in alarm.
'I'll tell you after the performance. Where are you sitting?'
'I'm in the Author's box.'
'With his ghost?'
'No. He has only turned in his grave.'
The stage-hands were pretty alert and busy for the shipwreck, which
Charles had contrived very simply: a darkened stage, a mast with a
lamp, which was to sway and founder, and low moving clouds.
Clara and he parted. The music ceased. The storm broke and the
curtain rose.
After a few moments the novelty of the ship scene wore off, a certain
section of the audience, perceiving how it was done laughed at the
simplicity of it and another section cried 'Hush.' The play had to
proceed to a divided house.
The bold sweep of Charles's design for the island-cell carried in spite
of the lighting and was applauded, but, as usual with English actors,
the pace was slow and the verse was ponderously spoken. Lady
Bracebridge's sense of caricature was almost infallible. Sir Henry as
Prospero did look exactly like General Booth and again a section of the
audience laughed. They had come to laugh, as the English always do, at
novelty, and they went on laughing until Miranda was put to sleep.
Clara, put to the challenge of this audience, summoned up every ounce
of her vitality and did coldly and consciously what before she had done
almost in an ecstacy. In the full light, before the huge audience she
felt that the play was betrayed, that there are some things too holy to
be made public.... She loathed that audience, tittering and giggling.
Her entrance was almost a contemptuous command to bid them be silent,
with her wild hair fiercely flying as she danced, every step taken
lightly as though she were dropping from a friendly wind.
'All hail, great master! grave sir, hail! I come
To answer thy best pleasure; be't to fly,
To swim, to dive into the fire, to ride
On the curl'd clouds, to thy strong bidding task
Ariel and all his quality.'
She stood poised as she had stood on the crag in Westmorland. Even in
her stillness there was the very ecstacy of movement, for nothing in
her was still.... A great sigh of pleasure came from the audience,
and, with a movement that was imperceptible and yet made itself felt,
she turned into a thing of stone, and uttered in an unearthly voice her
description of the storm.
'Damme!' said Prospero, under his breath. 'You've got them.'
She had, but she despised so easy a conquest. This audience was like a
still pool. It trembled with pleasure as an impression was thrown into
it like a stone. She could only move its stillness, not touch its
heart. She despised what she was doing, but went through with it
loyally because she was pledged to it.
Her first scene with Prospero was applauded with an astonished
enthusiasm. Her youth, her simplicity, her grace, had given these
metropolitans a new pleasure, a new sensation. It was no more than
that. She knew it was no more. She was angry with the applause which
interrupted the play. The insensibility of the audience had turned her
into a spectacle. Her very quality had separated her from the rest of
the performance, and in her heart she knew that she had failed. There
was no play: there were only three personalities on exhibition--Sir
Henry Butcher, Charles, and herself. Shakespeare, as Charles had said,
had only turned in his grave. Shakespeare, who was the poet of these
people, was ignored by them in favour of the personalities of the
interpreters. There was no altering that. She had made so vivid an
impression that the audience delighted in her and not in her
contribution to the whole enchantment of the play. That was broken
even for her, and as the evening wore on she ceased even to herself to
be Ariel and was forced to be Clara Day, displayed in public.
She loathed it, and yet she had no sense of declension. No enchanted
illusion had been established. Charles Mann's scenery remained
only--scenery. Sir Henry Butcher and the rest of his company were only
actors--acting. A troupe of performing animals would have been more
entertaining: indeed, in her bitter disappointment, Clara felt that she
was one of such a troupe, the lady in tights who holds the hoops
through which the dogs and monkeys jump.... So powerful was this anger
in her that after a while she began to burlesque herself, to exaggerate
her movement, and to keep her voice down to a childish treble, and the
audience adored her. They turned her into a show, a music-hall turn,
at the expense of the magical poetry of Shakespeare's farewell to his
art.... She could not too wildly caricature herself, and as she often
did when she was angry she talked to herself in French:--'_Voila ce
qu'il vous faut_! Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay!'--How they gulped down her
songs! How they roared and bellowed when she danced--the delicious,
wonderful girl!
She would not have done it had she known that Rodd was in front. He
had decided to go at the last moment, to see her, as he thought for the
last time, before she was delivered up to the public.... He knew its
voracity. He knew the use to which the theatre was put, to keep the
public drugged, to keep it drowned beneath the leagues and leagues of
the stale waters of boredom. He knew perfectly well that nothing could
shift them out of it, that any awakening was too painful for them to
endure, and that there was no means of avoiding this constant sacrifice
of personality after personality, talent after talent, victim after
victim. He had hoped against hope that Clara, being what she was,
would save herself in time, but he had decided that he had no right to
interfere, or to offer his assistance. Against a machine like the
Imperium, what could youth do? He credited her with the boundless
confidence of youth, but he knew that she would be broken.
He had a seat at the back of the dress circle, and he suffered agonies.
Mann's scenery annoyed him. The fellow had dramatic imagination, but
what was the good of expressing it in paint and a structure of canvas
and wood without reference to the actors? For that was what Charles
did. He left nothing to the play. His scenery in its way was as
oppressive as the old realism; indeed it was the old realism standing
on its head.... It called attention to itself and away from the drama.
Rodd caught his breath when Clara first appeared. He thought for a
moment that she must succeed, and that the rest of the company, even
the scenery, must be caught up into the beauty she exhaled. But the
electricians were too much for her. They followed her with spot-limes
and gave her no play of light and shadow.... That, Rodd knew, was
Butcher, exploiting his new discovery, thrusting it down the public's
greedy maw. The ruthlessness of it! This exquisite creature of
innocence, this very Ariel, born at last in life to leap forth from the
imagination that had created her, this delicious spirit of freedom,
come to beckon the world on to an awakening from its sloth and shame!
To be used to feed the appetite for sensation and novelty!
Rodd saw how she suffered, saw how as the entertainment proceeded the
wings of her spirit shrivelled and left her with nothing but her talent
and her will. Nothing in all his life had hurt him more.... And he,
too, felt the deadly stillness of this audience, for all its excitement
and uproarious enthusiasm. He was aware of something predatory and
vulturine in it, the very hideous quality that in his own work he had
portrayed so exactly that no one could endure it, and his own soul had
sickened and grown weary until the day when he had met this child of
freedom.... It was as though he saw her being done to death before his
eyes, and this appalling experience took on a ghastly symbolical
significance--richness and lewdness crushing out of existence their
enemies youth and joy. Towards that this London was drifting. It had
no other purpose.... Ay, this audience was Caliban, coveting Miranda,
hating Ariel, lusting to murder Ferdinand--youth, enchantment, love,
all were to be done to death. Clara's performance was to him like the
last choking song of youth. It should have been, he knew she meant it
to be, like all art, a prophecy.
What malign Fate had dogged her to trip her feet, so soon, to lead her
by such strange ways to the success that kills, the success worshipped
in London, the success won at the cost of every living quality.
He watched her very closely, and began to understand her contempt. Her
touch of burlesque made him roar with laughter, so that he was scowled
at by his neighbours in the dress circle, and he began to feel more
hopeful. He felt certain that this was the beginning and the end for
her, and he supposed that she would marry her Lord and retire into an
easy, cultured life. He had liked Verschoyle on his one meeting with
him, and knew that he was to be trusted.