traced at all, it is the spirit of Tyrtaeus and of Theocritus. The
warlike ballads of Rhigas and Aristotle Valaorites have a fine ring of
music and of passion in them, and the folk-songs of George Drosines are
full of charming pictures of rustic life and delicate idylls of
shepherds' courtships. These we acknowledge that we prefer. The flutes
of the sheepfold are more delightful than the clarions of battle. Still,
poetry played such a noble part in the Greek War of Independence that it
is impossible not to look with reverence on the spirited war-songs that
meant so much to those who were righting for liberty and mean so much
even now to their children.
Other poets besides Drosines have taken the legends that linger among the
peasants and given to them an artistic form. The song of The Seasons is
full of beauty, and there is a delightful poem on The Building of St.
Sophia, which tells how the design of that noble building was suggested
by the golden honeycomb of a bee which had flown from the king's palace
with a crumb of blessed bread that had fallen from the king's hands. The
story is still to be found in Thrace.
One of the ballads, also, has a good deal of spirit. It is by Kostes
Palamas and was suggested by an interesting incident which occurred some
years ago in Athens. In the summer of 1881 there was borne through the
streets the remains of an aged woman in the complete costume of a
Pallikar, which dress she had worn at the siege of Missolonghi and in it
had requested to be buried. The life of this real Greek heroine should
be studied by those who are investigating the question of wherein
womanliness consists. The view the poet takes of her is, we need hardly
say, very different from that which Canon Liddon would entertain. Yet it
is none the less fine on this account, and we are glad that this old lady
has been given a place in art. The volume is, on the whole, delightful
reading, and though not much can be said for lines like these:
There _cometh_ from the West
The timid starry _bands_,
still, the translations are in many instances most felicitous and their
style most pleasing.
Greek Lays, Idylls, Legends, etc. Translated by E. M. Edmonds. (Trubner
and Co.)
OLIVIA AT THE LYCEUM
(Dramatic Review, May 30, 1885.)
Whether or not it is an advantage for a novel to be produced in a
dramatic form is, I think, open to question. The psychological analysis
of such work as that of Mr. George Meredith, for instance, would probably
lose by being transmuted into the passionate action of the stage, nor
does M. Zola's formule scientifique gain anything at all by theatrical
presentation. With Goldsmith it is somewhat different. In The Vicar of
Wakefield he seeks simply to please his readers, and desires not to prove
a theory; he looks on life rather as a picture to be painted than as a
problem to be solved; his aim is to create men and women more than to
vivisect them; his dialogue is essentially dramatic, and his novel seems
to pass naturally into the dramatic form. And to me there is something
very pleasurable in seeing and studying the same subject under different
conditions of art. For life remains eternally unchanged; it is art
which, by presenting it to us under various forms, enables us to realise
its many-sided mysteries, and to catch the quality of its most
fiery-coloured moments. The originality, I mean, which we ask from the
artist, is originality of treatment, not of subject. It is only the
unimaginative who ever invents. The true artist is known by the use he
makes of what he annexes, and he annexes everything.
Looking in this light at Mr. Wills's Olivia, it seems to me a very
exquisite work of art. Indeed, I know no other dramatist who could have
re-told this beautiful English tale with such tenderness and such power,
neither losing the charm of the old story nor forgetting the conditions
of the new form. The sentiment of the poet and the science of the
playwright are exquisitely balanced in it. For though in prose it is a
poem, and while a poem it is also a play.
But fortunate as Mr. Wills has been in the selection of his subject and
in his treatment of it, he is no less fortunate in the actors who
interpret his work. To whatever character Miss Terry plays she brings
the infinite charm of her beauty, and the marvellous grace of her
movements and gestures. It is impossible to escape from the sweet
tyranny of her personality. She dominates her audience by the secret of
Cleopatra. In her Olivia, however, it is not merely her personality that
fascinates us but her power also, her power over pathos, and her command
of situation. The scene in which she bade goodbye to her family was
touching beyond any scene I remember in any modern play, yet no harsh or
violent note was sounded; and when in the succeeding act she struck, in
natural and noble indignation, the libertine who had betrayed her, there
was, I think, no one in the theatre who did not recognise that in Miss
Terry our stage possesses a really great artist, who can thrill an
audience without harrowing it, and by means that seem simple and easy can
produce the finest dramatic effect. Mr. Irving, as Dr. Primrose,
intensified the beautiful and blind idolatry of the old pastor for his
daughter till his own tragedy seems almost greater than hers; the scene
in the third act, where he breaks down in his attempt to reprove the lamb
that has strayed from the fold, was a masterpiece of fine acting; and the
whole performance, while carefully elaborate in detail, was full of
breadth and dignity. I acknowledge that I liked him least at the close
of the second act. It seems to me that here we should be made to feel
not merely the passionate rage of the father, but the powerlessness of
the old man. The taking down of the pistols, and the attempt to follow
the young duellist, are pathetic because they are useless, and I hardly
think that Mr. Irving conveyed this idea. As regards the rest of the
characters, Mr. Terriss's Squire Thornhill was an admirable picture of a
fascinating young rake. Indeed, it was so fascinating that the moral
equilibrium of the audience was quite disturbed, and nobody seemed to
care very much for the virtuous Mr. Burchell. I was not sorry to see
this triumph of the artistic over the ethical sympathy. Perfect heroes
are the monsters of melodramas, and have no place in dramatic art. Life
possibly contains them, but Parnassus often rejects what Peckham may
welcome. I look forward to a reaction in favour of the cultured
criminal. Mr. Norman Forbes was a very pleasing Moses, and gave his
Latin quotations charmingly, Miss Emery's Sophy was most winning, and,
indeed, every part seemed to me well acted except that of the virtuous
Mr. Burchell. This fact, however, rather pleased me than otherwise, as
it increased the charm of his attractive nephew.
The scenery and costumes were excellent, as indeed they always are at the
Lyceum when the piece is produced under Mr. Irving's direction. The
first scene was really very beautiful, and quite as good as the famous
cherry orchard of the Theatre Francais. A critic who posed as an
authority on field sports assured me that no one ever went out hunting
when roses were in full bloom. Personally, that is exactly the season I
would select for the chase, but then I know more about flowers than I do
about foxes, and like them much better. If the critic was right, either
the roses must wither or Squire Thornhill must change his coat. A more
serious objection may be brought against the division of the last act
into three scenes. There, I think, there was a distinct dramatic loss.
The room to which Olivia returns should have been exactly the same room
she had left. As a picture of the eighteenth century, however, the whole
production was admirable, and the details, both of acting and of mise-en-
scene, wonderfully perfect. I wish Olivia would take off her pretty
mittens when her fortune is being told. Cheiromancy is a science which
deals almost entirely with the lines on the palm of the hand, and mittens
would seriously interfere with its mysticism. Still, when all is said,
how easily does this lovely play, this artistic presentation, survive
criticisms founded on cheiromancy and cub-hunting! The Lyceum under Mr.
Irving's management has become a centre of art. We are all of us in his
debt. I trust that we may see some more plays by living dramatists
produced at his theatre, for Olivia has been exquisitely mounted and
exquisitely played.
AS YOU LIKE IT AT COOMBE HOUSE
(Dramatic Review, June 6, 1885.)
In Theophile Gautier's first novel, that golden book of spirit and sense,
that holy writ of beauty, there is a most fascinating account of an
amateur performance of As You Like It in the large orangery of a French
country house. Yet, lovely as Gautier's description is, the real
presentation of the play last week at Coombe seemed to me lovelier still,
for not merely were there present in it all those elements of poetry and
picturesqueness which le maitre impeccable so desired, but to them was
added also the exquisite charm of the open woodland and the delightful
freedom of the open air. Nor indeed could the Pastoral Players have made
a more fortunate selection of a play. A tragedy under the same
conditions would have been impossible. For tragedy is the exaggeration
of the individual, and nature thinks nothing of dwarfing a hero by a
holly bush, and reducing a heroine to a mere effect of colour. The
subtleties also of facial expression are in the open air almost entirely
lost; and while this would be a serious defect in the presentation of a
play which deals immediately with psychology, in the case of a comedy,
where the situations predominate over the characters, we do not feel it
nearly so much; and Shakespeare himself seems to have clearly recognised
this difference, for while he had Hamlet and Macbeth always played by
artificial light he acted As You Like It and the rest of his comedies en
plein jour.
The condition then under which this comedy was produced by Lady Archibald
Campbell and Mr. Godwin did not place any great limitations on the
actor's art, and increased tenfold the value of the play as a picture.
Through an alley of white hawthorn and gold laburnum we passed into the
green pavilion that served as the theatre, the air sweet with odour of
the lilac and with the blackbird's song; and when the curtain fell into
its trench of flowers, and the play commenced, we saw before us a real
forest, and we knew it to be Arden. For with whoop and shout, up through
the rustling fern came the foresters trooping, the banished Duke took his
seat beneath the tall elm, and as his lords lay around him on the grass,
the rich melody of Shakespeare's blank verse began to reach our ears. And
all through the performance this delightful sense of joyous woodland life
was sustained, and even when the scene was left empty for the shepherd to
drive his flock across the sward, or for Rosalind to school Orlando in
love-making, far away we could hear the shrill halloo of the hunter, and
catch now and then the faint music of some distant horn. One distinct
dramatic advantage was gained by the mise en scene.
The abrupt exits and entrances, which are necessitated on the real stage
by the inevitable limitations of space, were in many cases done away
with, and we saw the characters coming gradually towards us through brake
and underwood, or passing away down the slope till they were lost in some
deep recess of the forest; the effect of distance thus gained being
largely increased by the faint wreaths of blue mist that floated at times
across the background. Indeed I never saw an illustration at once so
perfect and so practical of the aesthetic value of smoke.
As for the players themselves, the pleasing naturalness of their method
harmonised delightfully with their natural surroundings. Those of them
who were amateurs were too artistic to be stagey, and those who were
actors too experienced to be artificial. The humorous sadness of Jaques,
that philosopher in search of sensation, found a perfect exponent in Mr.
Hermann Vezin. Touchstone has been so often acted as a low comedy part
that Mr. Elliott's rendering of the swift sententious fool was a welcome
change, and a more graceful and winning Phebe than Mrs. Plowden, a more
tender Celia than Miss Schletter, a more realistic Audrey than Miss
Fulton, I have never seen. Rosalind suffered a good deal through the
omission of the first act; we saw, I mean, more of the saucy boy than we
did of the noble girl; and though the persiflage always told, the poetry
was often lost; still Miss Calhoun gave much pleasure; and Lady Archibald
Campbell's Orlando was a really remarkable performance. Too melancholy
some seemed to think it. Yet is not Orlando lovesick? Too dreamy, I
heard it said. Yet Orlando is a poet. And even admitting that the
vigour of the lad who tripped up the Duke's wrestler was hardly
sufficiently emphasised, still in the low music of Lady Archibald
Campbell's voice, and in the strange beauty of her movements and
gestures, there was a wonderful fascination, and the visible presence of
romance quite consoled me for the possible absence of robustness. Among
the other characters should be mentioned Mr. Claude Ponsonby's First
Lord, Mr. De Cordova's Corin (a bit of excellent acting), and the Silvius
of Mr. Webster.
As regards the costumes the colour scheme was very perfect. Brown and
green were the dominant notes, and yellow was most artistically used.
There were, however, two distinct discords. Touchstone's motley was far
too glaring, and the crude white of Rosalind's bridal raiment in the last
act was absolutely displeasing. A contrast may be striking but should
never be harsh. And lovely in colour as Mrs. Plowden's dress was, a sort
of panegyric on a pansy, I am afraid that in Shakespeare's Arden there
were no Chelsea China Shepherdesses, and I am sure that the romance of
Phebe does not need to be intensified by any reminiscences of porcelain.
Still, As You Like It has probably never been so well mounted, nor
costumes worn with more ease and simplicity. Not the least charming part
of the whole production was the music, which was under the direction of
the Rev. Arthur Batson. The boys' voices were quite exquisite, and Mr.
Walsham sang with much spirit.
On the whole the Pastoral Players are to be warmly congratulated on the
success of their representation, and to the artistic sympathies of Lady
Archibald Campbell, and the artistic knowledge of Mr. Godwin, I am
indebted for a most delightful afternoon. Few things are so pleasurable
as to be able by an hour's drive to exchange Piccadilly for Parnassus.
A HANDBOOK TO MARRIAGE
(Pall Mall Gazette, November 18, 1885.)
In spite of its somewhat alarming title this book may be highly
recommended to every one. As for the authorities the author quotes, they
are almost numberless, and range from Socrates down to Artemus Ward. He
tells us of the wicked bachelor who spoke of marriage as 'a very harmless
amusement' and advised a young friend of his to 'marry early and marry
often'; of Dr. Johnson who proposed that marriage should be arranged by
the Lord Chancellor, without the parties concerned having any choice in
the matter; of the Sussex labourer who asked, 'Why should I give a woman
half my victuals for cooking the other half?' and of Lord Verulam who
thought that unmarried men did the best public work. And, indeed,
marriage is the one subject on which all women agree and all men
disagree. Our author, however, is clearly of the same opinion as the
Scotch lassie who, on her father warning her what a solemn thing it was
to get married, answered, 'I ken that, father, but it's a great deal
solemner to be single.' He may be regarded as the champion of the
married life. Indeed, he has a most interesting chapter on marriage-made
men, and though he dissents, and we think rightly, from the view recently
put forward by a lady or two on the Women's Rights platform that Solomon
owed all his wisdom to the number of his wives, still he appeals to
Bismarck, John Stuart Mill, Mahommed and Lord Beaconsfield, as instances
of men whose success can be traced to the influence of the women they
married. Archbishop Whately once defined woman as 'a creature that does
not reason and pokes the fire from the top,' but since his day the higher
education of women has considerably altered their position. Women have
always had an emotional sympathy with those they love; Girton and Newnham
have rendered intellectual sympathy also possible. In our day it is best
for a man to be married, and men must give up the tyranny in married life
which was once so dear to them, and which, we are afraid, lingers still,
here and there.
'Do you wish to be my wife, Mabel?' said a little boy.
'Yes,' incautiously answered Mabel.
'Then pull off my boots.'
On marriage vows our author has, too, very sensible views and very
amusing stories. He tells of a nervous bridegroom who, confusing the
baptismal and marriage ceremonies, replied when asked if he consented to
take the bride for his wife: 'I renounce them all'; of a Hampshire rustic
who, when giving the ring, said solemnly to the bride: 'With my body I
thee wash up, and with all my hurdle goods I thee and thou'; of another
who, when asked whether he would take his partner to be his wedded wife,
replied with shameful indecision: 'Yes, I'm willin'; but I'd a sight
rather have her sister'; and of a Scotch lady who, on the occasion of her
daughter's wedding, was asked by an old friend whether she might
congratulate her on the event, and answered: 'Yes, yes, upon the whole it
is very satisfactory; it is true Jeannie hates her gudeman, but then
there's always a something!' Indeed, the good stories contained in this
book are quite endless and make it very pleasant reading, while the good
advice is on all points admirable.
Most young married people nowadays start in life with a dreadful
collection of ormolu inkstands covered with sham onyxes, or with a
perfect museum of salt-cellars. We strongly recommend this book as one
of the best of wedding presents. It is a complete handbook to an earthly
Paradise, and its author may be regarded as the Murray of matrimony and
the Baedeker of bliss.
How to be Happy though Married: Being a Handbook to Marriage. By a
Graduate in the University of Matrimony. (T. Fisher Unwin.)
HALF-HOURS WITH THE WORST AUTHORS
(Pall Mall Gazette, January 15, 1886.)
I am very much pleased to see that you are beginning to call attention to
the extremely slipshod and careless style of our ordinary
magazine-writers. Will you allow me to refer your readers to an article
on Borrow, in the current number of Macmillan, which exemplifies very
clearly the truth of your remarks? The author of the article is Mr.
George Saintsbury, a gentleman who has recently written a book on Prose
Style, and here are some specimens of the prose of the future according
to the systeme Saintsbury:
1. He saw the rise, and, _in some instances, the death, of Tennyson_,
Thackeray, Macaulay, Carlyle, Dickens.
2. _See a place_ which Kingsley, _or_ Mr. Ruskin, _or_ some other master
of our decorative school, _have_ described--_much more_ one which has
fallen into the hands of the small fry of their imitators--and you are
almost sure to find that _it has been overdone_.
3. The great mass of his translations, published and unpublished, and
the smaller mass of his early hackwork, no doubt _deserves_ judicious
excerption.
4. 'The Romany Rye' _did not appear_ for six years, _that is to say, in_
1857.
5. The elaborate apparatus which most prose tellers of fantastic tales
_use_, and generally _fail in using_.
6. The great writers, whether they try to be like other people or try
not to be like them (_and sometimes in the first case most of all_),
succeed _only_ in being themselves.
7. If he had a slight _overdose_ of Celtic blood and Celtic-peculiarity,
it was _more than made up_ by the readiness of literary expression which
it gave him. He, if any one, bore an English heart, though, _as there
often has been_, there was something perhaps more than English as well as
less than it in his fashion of expression.
8. His flashes of ethical reflection, which, though like _all_ ethical
reflections _often_ one-sided.
9. He certainly was an _unfriend_ to Whiggery.
10. _That it contains_ a great deal of quaint and piquant writing _is
only to say_ that its writer wrote it.
11. 'Wild Wales,' too, because of _its_ easy and direct _opportunity_ of
comparing its description with the originals.
12. The capital _and_ full-length portraits.
13. Whose attraction is _one_ neither mainly nor in any very great
degree one of pure form.
14. _Constantly right in general_.
These are merely a few examples of the style of Mr. Saintsbury, a writer
who seems quite ignorant of the commonest laws both of grammar and of
literary expression, who has apparently no idea of the difference between
the pronouns 'this' and 'that,' and has as little hesitation in ending
the clause of a sentence with a preposition, as he has in inserting a
parenthesis between a preposition and its object, a mistake of which the
most ordinary schoolboy would be ashamed. And why can not our magazine-
writers use plain, simple English? _Unfriend_, quoted above, is a quite
unnecessary archaism, and so is such a phrase as _With this Borrow could
not away_, in the sense of 'this Borrow could not endure.' 'Borrow's
_abstraction_ from general society' may, I suppose, pass muster. Pope
talks somewhere of a hermit's 'abstraction,' but what is the meaning of
saying that the author of Lavengro _quartered_ Castile and Leon 'in the
most interesting manner, riding everywhere with his servant'? And what
defence can be made for such an expression as 'Scott, and other _black
beasts_ of Borrow's'? Black beast for bete noire is really abominable.
The object of my letter, however, is not to point out the deficiencies of
Mr. Saintsbury's style, but to express my surprise that his article
should have been admitted into the pages of a magazine like Macmillan's.
Surely it does not require much experience to know that such an article
is a disgrace even to magazine literature.
George Borrow. By George Saintsbury. (Macmillan's Magazine, January
1886.)
ONE OF MR. CONWAY'S REMAINDERS
(Pall Mall Gazette, February 1, 1886.)
Most people know that in the concoction of a modern novel crime is a more
important ingredient than culture. Mr. Hugh Conway certainly knew it,
and though for cleverness of invention and ingenuity of construction he
cannot be compared to M. Gaboriau, that master of murder and its
mysteries, still he fully recognised the artistic value of villainy. His
last novel, A Cardinal Sin, opens very well. Mr. Philip Bourchier, M.P.
for Westshire and owner of Redhills, is travelling home from London in a
first-class railway carriage when, suddenly, through the window enters a
rough-looking middle-aged man brandishing a long-lost marriage
certificate, the effect of which is to deprive the right honourable
member of his property and estate. However, Mr. Bourchier, M.P., is
quite equal to the emergency. On the arrival of the train at its
destination, he invites the unwelcome intruder to drive home with him
and, reaching a lonely road, shoots him through the head and gives
information to the nearest magistrate that he has rid society of a
dangerous highwayman.
Mr. Bourchier is brought to trial and triumphantly acquitted. So far,
everything goes well with him. Unfortunately, however, the murdered man,
with that superhuman strength which on the stage and in novels always
accompanies the agony of death, had managed in falling from the dog-cart
to throw the marriage certificate up a fir tree! There it is found by a
worthy farmer who talks that conventional rustic dialect which, though
unknown in the provinces, is such a popular element in every Adelphi
melodrama; and it ultimately falls into the hands of an unscrupulous
young man who succeeds in blackmailing Mr. Bourchier and in marrying his
daughter. Mr. Bourchier suffers tortures from excess of chloral and of
remorse; and there is psychology of a weird and wonderful kind, that kind
which Mr. Conway may justly be said to have invented and the result of
which is not to be underrated. For, if to raise a goose skin on the
reader be the aim of art, Mr. Conway must be regarded as a real artist.
So harrowing is his psychology that the ordinary methods of punctuation
are quite inadequate to convey it. Agony and asterisks follow each other
on every page and, as the murderer's conscience sinks deeper into chaos,
the chaos of commas increases.