"AN INDIAN SUMMER."
We plunged into the action quickly enough. A breakfast-gong--a sip of
coffee--a bite of toast--and _Nigel Parry_ locks up his morning's
love-correspondence; _Helen_, his wife, breaks open the drawer and
peruses the damning letter; _Nigel_ returns and catches her red-handed.
After this we took a long breath and lingered over the moral aspect of
the situation. Indeed, during the next ten years nothing occurred except
the separation of the couple; the reported decease of the other woman
(whom we never saw, dead or alive), and the marriage of the boy _Parry_
with an actress bearing the ascetic name of _Ursula_. We now left the
old trail in pursuit of this red herring; and for the rest of the play,
up to the last moment, our attention was concentrated on the attitude of
the elder heroine to her daughter-in-law, to whom she had taken a
profound dislike at sight.
But something had to happen if the author was to bring about a
reconciliation of the original pair and so justify the symbolic title of
her play. Thinking it out, she seems to have recalled that it is
customary in these cases to let an accident occur to some junior member
of the family, over whose prostrate body the old ones may kiss again
with tears. Accordingly, no sooner had mention been made, quite
arbitrarily, of an automatic pistol, alleged to be unloaded, than old
stagers knew by instinct that _Ursula_ would shoot herself
inadvertently. This occurred with such promptitude that even the author
recognised that we should not be satisfied with so ingenuous an episode.
Complications had therefore to be devised at all costs. Young _Parry_
must be kept in ignorance of the fact that the episode was due to his
stupidity in leaving the weapon loaded. So _Ursula_ invents a story to
show that the wound in her thigh was due to a fall downstairs. It is
true that blood-poisoning--not amongst the more familiar sequelæ of a
fall downstairs--supervened. But the legend served well enough on the
stage. Among other effects it increased the irritation of the
mother-in-law, who felt that the accident indicated a criminal
carelessness in one who was about to make her a grandmother, a condition
of things that had been brought home to us in the course of some female
conversation flavoured with the most pungent candour. When the truth
came out, the proved devotion of the young wife causes an _entente_
between her and her mother-in-law, accompanied--for reasons which I
cannot at the moment recall--by a parallel reconciliation between the
senior couple. Personally, I felt that the threatened "Indian Summer"
was not likely to be much warmer than the ordinary English kind.
Perhaps the most intriguing feature of the play was the author's
attitude toward her own sex. Mrs. HORLICK frankly took the man's point
of view. Never for one moment did she attempt to encourage our sympathy
for _Helen_ as a wronged wife. Commonly in plays it is the woman,
married to a man she never loved, who claims the liberty of going her
own way and getting something out of life. Here it is the man who is the
victim of a marriage not of his own making (as far as love was
concerned), and the author, through the mouthpiece of the woman's
confidante, makes ample excuse for his desire to snatch some happiness
from fate.
[Illustration: CHILLY FORECAST FOR AN "INDIAN SUMMER."
_Nigel Parry_ Mr. ALLAN AYNESWORTH.
_Helen Parry_ Miss EDYTH GOODALL.]
Unhappily Mrs. HORLICK has much to learn in stage mechanism. The motive
of her exits when, as constantly, she wanted to leave any given couple
alone together, was insufficiently opaque. She began very well and held
our interest closely for some time; but long before the end we should
have been worn out but for the childlike charm and attractive
_gamineries_ of Miss DOROTHY MINTO as _Ursula_. Mr. ALLAN AYNESWORTH,
who acted easily in the rather ambiguous part of _Nigel Parry_, seemed
to share our doubts as to the chances of Mrs. HORLICK'S achieving
popularity at her first attempt, for he confided to us, in a brief
first-night oration, that she was engaged on another play which he hoped
to secure.
But no one will question the serious promise of her present comedy, and
I trust that in any future production she may be assisted by as
excellent a cast. For they all played their parts, however trivial in
detail, with great sincerity. Miss GOODALL was the only disappointment,
though the fault was not altogether her own. At first she was very
effective, but later her entries came to be a signal for gloom, like
those of a skeleton emergent from the family cupboard.
"PRINCE IGOR."
All is fair in Love and War, and the only ethical difficulty arises when
they clash. This was the trouble with _Vladimir Igorievich_, heir of
_Prince Igor_. Father and son had been taken in battle, and were held
captive in the camp of the Tartars; but, while _Prince Igor_ felt very
keenly his position (though treated as a guest rather than a prisoner
and supplied every evening with spectacular entertainments), _Vladimir_
beguiled his enforced leisure by falling in love (heartily reciprocated)
with the daughter of his captor, _Khan Konchak_. An opportunity of
escape being offered, _Prince Igor_ seizes it, but _Vladimir's_ dear
heart is divided between passion and patriotism, and before he can make
up his mind the chance of freedom is gone. A study of the so-called
"libretto" showed that this was the only thing in the opera that bore
any resemblance to a dramatic situation. Figure, therefore, my chagrin
when I discovered that the character of _Vladimir Igorievich_ had been
cut clean out of the text of the actual opera. I could much more easily
have dispensed with the buffooneries of a couple of obscure players upon
the _goudok_ (or prehistoric hurdy-gurdy), who wasted more than enough
of such time as could be spared from the intervals.
There was no part of adequate importance for M. CHALIAPINE, so he
doubled the _rôles_ of _Galitsky_, the swaggering and dissolute
brother-in-law that _Prince Igor_ left behind when he went to the wars,
and _Khan Konchak_, most magnanimous of barbarians. Neither character
gave scope for the particular subtlety of which (as he proves in _Boris
Godounov_) M. CHALIAPINE is the sole master among male operatic singers.
But to each he brought that gift of the great manner, that ease and
splendour of bearing, and those superb qualities of voice which, found
together, give him a place apart from his kind.
Of the rest, M. PAUL ANDREEV, as _Prince Igor_, gave his plaint of
captivity with a noble pathos. As for the chorus, it sang with the
singleness and intensity of spirit which are only possible to a
national chorus in national opera, and which (I hope) are the envy of
the cosmopolitans of Covent Garden.
The _clou_ of the evening was the ballet, already well-known, of the
Polovtsy warriors, executed with the extreme of fanatic fervour and
frenzy. The art of M. MICHEL FOKINE can turn his Russians into Tartars
without a scratch of the skin. BORODINE'S music, taking on a more
barbaric quality as the action travelled further East, here touched its
climax, and the final scene, where _Prince Igor_ returns home and
resumes the embraces of his queen, (a model of fidelity), was of the
character of a sedative.
"DAPHNIS ET CHLOË."
Those who complained--I speak of the few whose critical faculties had
not been paralysed by M. NIJINSKI--that in _L'Après-midi d'un Faune_
the limitations of plastic Art (necessarily confined to stationary forms)
were forced upon an art that primarily deals with motion, will have
little of the same fault to find in _Daphnis et Chloë._ Here there is no
fixed or formal posing, if we except the attitude adopted (after a
preliminary and irrelevant twiddle) by certain Nymphs to indicate,
appropriately enough, their grief over the inanimate form of _Daphnis_.
The dances in which, to the mutual suspicion of the lovers, _Chloë_ was
circled by the men and _Daphnis_ by the maidens, were a pure delight.
There was one movement, when heads were tossed back and then brought
swiftly forward over hollowed breasts and lifted knees that had in it an
exquisite fleeting beauty. But memory holds best the grace of the
simpler and more elemental movements, the airy swing and poise of feet
and limbs in straight flight, linked hands outstretched.
In the _pas seul_ competition M. ADOLPH BOLM as _Darkon_ did some
astonishing feats which made the performance of M. FOKINE as _Daphnis_
seem relatively tame and conventional; and if I, instead of _Chloë_, had
been the judge I should have awarded the palm to the former. I am sure
that _Chloë_ was prejudiced, though certainly _Darkon_ was a very rude
and hirsute shepherd, and had none of _Daphnis'_ pretty ways.
The dancing of the brigands was in excellent contrast with the methods
of the pastoral Greeks. I will not, like the programme, distinguish them
as "Brigands with Lances," "Brigands with Bows" and "Young Brigands." To
me they were all alike very perfect examples of the profession; though I
admit that the flight of their spears was not always as deadly as it
should have been, and that one of the arrows refused to go off the
string and had to be thrown by hand into the wings.
It is not easy at a first performance to take in everything with both
eye and ear, and I shall excuse myself from attempting to do justice to
M. RAVEL'S music. But I was free (the curtain being down) to listen to
one long orchestral passage which followed the capture of _Chloë_. It
was of the nature of a dirge, and it seemed to me to suggest very
cleverly the sorrows of a poultry-yard. I suppose _Chloë_ must have been
in the habit of feeding them and they missed her.
I hate to say one word of disparagement about a performance for which I
could never be sufficiently grateful. But I agree with a friend of mine
who complained to me of the way in which _Pan_ was presented. It was
this beneficent god who caused a panic among the brigands and so enabled
_Chloë_ to return to her friends, though I don't know why he ever let
her be captured, for he was there at the time. Well, I agree that he
ought to have been represented by something more satisfactory than a
half-length portrait painted on a huge travelling plank of pasteboard,
which was pushed about from Arcadia to Scythia (if this was the
brigands' address) and back again, appearing in the limelight, when
required, like a whisky sky-sign.