I
One afternoon in the nineties, I called upon my friend Mrs. Chandler
Moulton, the American poet. She had taken a first-floor suite of
rooms in a large house in the west of London, in which other paying
guests were also just then staying. I was shown into the reception
room attached to Mrs. Moulton’s suite, and was told that she would
be with me in a few minutes. Almost immediately after, another of
Mrs. Moulton’s friends, Madame Antoinette Sterling, called, and was
shown into the room where I was waiting. We had met before, and fell
to chatting. Madame Sterling happened to mention the piece in her
repertoire, which was not only her own favourite, but was also that
which, in her opinion, best suited her voice. When I said that by
some chance I had been so unfortunate as to miss hearing her sing it,
she replied quickly:
“If that is so, I will sing it for you now.”
Then she rose, and drew herself up statuesquely--as it were to
“attention”--and to her full height, a striking figure. Grant Allen
once said to me that he suspected she had a strain of Red Indian
blood in her veins. If that be so--I do not know--it showed itself in
a certain proud imperturbability of bearing, and by the fact that
she stood, if not exactly stock-still, at least almost motionless
and gestureless. It showed itself, too, in the high cheek-bones; in
the swarthiness of her complexion, and the snaky smooth coils of
black hair that, parted low and loosely over the brow, toned down,
and softened into womanliness, the almost masculine massiveness
of the strong purposeful features. Throwing back her head, like a
full-throated thrush, and with her hands clasped simply in front of
her, she began to sing, low and flute-like at first, but as she went
on letting her glorious voice swell out in an organ-burst of song.
The effect was singular. The London season was at its height, and
the house was full of visitors, chiefly, I believe, Americans. When
Madame Sterling began to sing, we could distinctly hear the buzz of
conversation coming up from the floor below. Overhead, one could hear
the restless movement of feet, and sounds like those which come from
a kitchen--the chink of china and the clashing together of knives,
forks, and spoons, as if in preparation for a meal--were also audible.
But as the first few notes of the rich, full, noble, and far-carrying
contralto rang out, the chatter of voices below, the shuffle of feet,
or of furniture overhead, even the necessary commonplace, vulgar
sounds that came from the basement and the kitchen, were suddenly
checked, shamed, and silenced; and, as the singer’s voice deepened
into full diapason, one almost fancied that not only the men and
women gathered together in different rooms under that one roof,
but the very house itself, even the dead and inanimate pieces of
furniture, were strained and stilled in listening silence.
I am reminded of this old-time and almost forgotten incident
by an “Impression of Stephen Phillips,” contributed under the
initials “H.W.B.” to the _Outlook_ of December 18, 1915, by Mr.
Horace Bleackley, the distinguished novelist. Just as that noisy
boarding-house was at first surprised, and then, as it were,
frozen into a strange, almost uncanny silence by Madame Sterling’s
marvellous notes, so, by the majesty of spoken words, Stephen
Phillips compelled an unwilling company to a like hushed and awed
reverence.
“It was an evening party in an undergraduate’s rooms at Christ
Church, Oxford, about twenty-seven years ago,” writes Mr. Bleackley.
“It was a decorous gathering--not a ‘wine’--but there had been music
and mirth, and none of us were at all inclined towards serious
things. Suddenly the host announced that a member of the Benson
Company--several of whom were our guests on this occasion--would
give a recitation. A grave and thoughtful young man rose before us,
with the features of a Greek god, whom most of us recognised at a
glance (for we all had been at the theatre that week) as the Ghost in
_Hamlet_. Somewhat resentfully we relapsed into silence, few showing
any signs of enthusiasm, for scarcely any of us had the slightest
doubt that we were going to be bored.
“For twenty minutes the actor held us spellbound. His voice was
musical and his elocution that of a consummate artist. But this
we had realised before. It was not the charm of his diction that
enthralled us, but the melody of his verse--fresh and pure from
the heavenly spring. And when he had finished there were awestruck
whispers--which I seem to hear still--even from the Philistines: ‘It
is his own poem!’ Few of that company can have been surprised when,
about a decade later, all the world had hailed Stephen Phillips as
one of the greatest of living poets.”
Mr. Bleackley’s “Impression” was gathered long before Phillips had
reached the plenitude and the maturity of his power, for the poet
was then a very young man, leaving Cambridge as he did without
taking a degree, and joining his cousin’s Sir F. R. Benson’s touring
theatrical company. Those who heard Phillips at his prime and at
his best, will agree with me that his rendering of poetry cannot be
described by such words as “reading,” “recitation,” or “recital.”
The plain unexaggerated fact is that by mere words his rendering of
poetry cannot be described.
I am not writing of his acting, nor of his public reading, for,
excellent and memorable as were both, I doubt whether those who have
heard and seen Phillips only upon the stage, or the platform, have
any idea what he was like at his best--and at his best he never
was in public. It was in his own or in a friend’s home, and in the
company only of intimates, of whose sympathy and understanding he
was assured, that Phillips was his natural self, and therefore, his
natural self (alas, that he was not always that natural self!) being
inherently noble, at his highest and best. I have heard spiritualists
assert that the presence of one single person of unsympathetic
temperament has made it impossible to attain the necessary trance
condition on the part of the medium, and so has brought a séance to
nought.
Whether that be so or not I cannot say, for I have no knowledge
of spiritualism, but I recall occasions when Stephen Phillips had
been strangely disappointing, and, in explaining his failure to me
afterwards, he said:
“I couldn’t help it. That man or that woman’s very presence spoilt
everything and put me off. I seemed to feel his or her cold and
fish-like eyes fastened upon me as I read. I was all the time as
aware of that person’s boredom as sailors are aware, by the change in
the coldness of the atmosphere, of approaching bergs. Worse, I was
like a skater, fallen into a hole under the ice; who can find no way
out, but is held down and drowned under a roof of solid and unbroken
ice. One man, one woman, like that in my audience, or even in a room,
keeps me self-conscious all the time, and so makes poetry impossible;
for poetry, high poetry, is the sublimation, the exaltation, of the
senses into soul. It is the forgetting of self, the losing, merging
and fusing of one’s very individuality into pure thought, and into
visions and revelations of the Truth and the Loveliness that are of
God.”