From my garret window I look out on Washington Square. Snow and ice
still lie there, and the trees are black and mean.
On the first page of his new book, “_Moby Lane and Thereabouts_”, Neil
Lyons says: “Spring has many ushers, and is heralded by divers signs.
Some people look for these signs among the hedgerows; others seek them
in the sky, or listen for them in the night, whilst other people neither
look or listen, but go smelling about, or stand upon hill-tops,
tasting.” My sign shall be, I think, the grimy trees of the Square. And
sometimes as I sit here looking out on the icy barrenness I wonder if,
when Spring’s breath does touch the earth, whether flowers will come
up—flowers that I long to see: crocuses, anemones, daffodils. It’s all
very well to see them in shop windows, but God! to see them come up out
of the earth and unfold! But I fear our Square is too sophisticated. I
know a man will come—a common tobacco-chewing man with a stunted soul
who belongs to a Union and gets paid so much coin by the hour—and he
will arrange squares, and oblongs, and diamond shaped plots of earth.
Then will he proceed laboriously and without joy to stick tulips or some
other straight official flower into these geometrical, soulless
patterns. And throughout the year in the Square, nature will be kept in
bounds and orders.
“_Henry VIII_”
It seems scarcely possible that Sir Herbert Tree would have the calm
artistic audacity to come to this country and present his production of
“Henry VIII” in the moth-eaten scenery and costumes that were used in
the London production in the year 1910. Yet he did, and oh! the
wearisome drab antiquity of it all! But the “People” liked it and gave
the beknighted actor-manager “one of the greatest premieres that New
York has witnessed these many years”.
Mention is made in the programme of “the inspiring aerchiological
advice” of Percy Macquoid, R. I. The advice may have been quite
inspiring. I do not doubt it. But the results of that advice! That
medley of costumes! Those photo scenes of Windsor Castle and Blackfriars
Hall and Westminster Abbey! They were bad when first conceived and
painted, and five years in a London storeroom has not improved them to
any degree compatible with their presentation to an audience that has
looked upon the work of Bakst, Urban, Jones, Sime, and Rothenstein.
And what can be said of the lighting? There was one comic spotlight that
followed Sir Herbert (or ought I to say Wolsey? I hardly know; they were
never quite distinct) around the stage like a little motherless puppy.
Sometimes it went before, sometimes it frisked after, on the tail of his
magnificent scarlet gown. It had a grand time! But it never seemed to be
doing the thing it ought to be doing.
But let me not bore you as these things bored me. Pass we now to the
acting. In London the honors of the play were carried off by Arthur
Bouchier as Henry, and his wife, Violet Vanburgh, as Katherine. A
repetition was performed here. Lyn Harding as Henry, and Edith Wynne
Matheson as Katherine, carried every one before them. And Tree? Well, he
had his moments. There was his superb entrance with the look he flashed
at Buckingham: fine too was the acting in the scene of his downfall.
Between these two highlights such ordinary acting has seldom been seen
in a man of Tree’s reputation. In a cold classic way Miss Matheson was
splendid. I liked her much, and but for her some of the scenes in the
play would have been colourless. There was the usual mob of supers who
got caught in doorways and tripped over furniture, but on the whole they
behaved as well as an ordinary stage manager can make such people
behave.
_Yvette Guilbert_
Five years ago I saw Yvette Guilbert in London. I loved her all. Her red
hair; the skinny arms of her, clothed in long black gloves; and her
Gallic body with the low-necked white crinoline that gowned it. And how
she sang!! And her acting! For five years I have carried the memory of
her around with me, matching other people up with her but never finding
her equal. On Sunday, March nineteenth, I saw her again. The black
gloves and the white crinoline were gone, and she had grown a little
stouter. The red hair was there, and the smile. Her voice had changed a
bit and her personality had mellowed. She sang songs that were grave and
moving, like Fiona Macleod’s _Prayer of Women_, and others that were gay
and jocular, like _The Curé Servant_. But whatever she sang—and I didn’t
know a word of what she sang—carried me away completely. Not a mood did
I miss—not a suggestion of a mood. Perfect is her art. She has my
adoration.
“_The Merry Wives of Windsor_”
The latest addition to the Shakespeare Festival that is being thrust
upon the apathetic people of this place is the Hackett-Allen production
of _The Merry Wives of Windsor_. Three things can be said without any
further comment. Joseph Urban did the stage settings. Richard Ordynski
directed the production. Willy Pogany designed the costumes. Gordon
Craig says somewhere that any medium is easier to work in than human
beings. After seeing the work expended on _The Merry Wives of Windsor_
by three geniuses, and watching the actors in that play, we understand
completely.
_Soulless New York_
Witter Bynner, grown somber and blase,—the effect of living in soulless
New York, he says—has become a sort of Greek Chorus to me. In various
strophes with divers variations, in sundry public and private places, he
chants the dismal fact that New York is soulless and that there is a
danger of it robbing me of my joy in life. Not while its streets remain
as they are will I lose the joy I possess! I cannot remember any city
that I have been in where my sense of the comic has been tickled so
often by happenings in the streets. So many comedies are enacted by the
curbstone, so many quaintly funny things happen every hour on the
streets, that it would be impossible for me to forget how jolly life
really is. Of course I see tragedies too, but they seem to be there only
for the purpose of balance!
For some time to come I’ll Dalcroze down the avenues and numerical
by-ways of this “soulless” city. And my smile will always be handy; and
my whistle wet, ready to pipe _Gathering Peascods_ or _The Parson’s
Farewell_ or anything merry and bright to dance to.
To save the theatre, the theatre must be destroyed, the actors
and actresses must all die of the plague. They poison the air,
they make art impossible. It is not drama they play, but pieces
for the theatre. We should return to the Greeks, play in the open
air; the drama dies of stalls and boxes and evening dress, and
people who come to digest their dinner.—_Eleonora Duse._