LONGFELLOW has commemorated in a beautiful sonnet the
delightful evenings of Mrs. Kemble's readings; and certainly it was a
singular pleasure to see and to hear her. Her historic name associated
her with her uncle John and her aunt Mrs. Siddons, and she had always
the port of one conscious of a famous lineage. She used to say, with a
half-humorous, half-proud emphasis, that she belonged to her majesty's
players, and in her presence it was easy to believe that her majesty's
players were an important body in the state. Her power of identification
with the various characters in the plays, and the skill with which she
maintained the individuality throughout, were always remarkable, and the
symmetry and completeness of the whole performance left nothing to be
criticised. The only observation that suggested itself might be that
the stage traditions were evident in her rendering. But that, in turn,
only suggested the further question whether the traditions were not
worthy of respect. Dramatic and histrionic forms of art, like all
others, are but representations of nature under certain conditions and
limitations. They are not an imitation, a fac-simile, and every man will
be at odds with any work of art in any kind who does not bear this in
mind.
The spectator complains of unnaturalness upon the stage; the substance
of his feeling is that people do not talk and act so in ordinary life.
That is true; but if the theatre should show us men and women doing upon
the stage what they do in ordinary life, the theatre would be no more
attractive than the street or the parlor. It is not the spectacle of
ordinary life that we expect to see in the theatre. It is a view of
human life and nature under ideal conditions, and it is as irrelevant to
require that the player shall seem to us like the man with whom we have
been transacting business as that he should speak plain prose instead
of blank verse. If Mrs. Kemble had read the words of Rosalind or of
Portia, of Shylock or Mercutio, as if they were neighbors of hers and
people whom we were in the habit of meeting, the effect would have been
ludicrous. When she came in--the Fanny Kemble of Talfourd and of the
wild enthusiasm of the grandfathers of to-day, ripened into the comely
and queenly woman--and seated herself at the little table on which the
great volume lay open, she was the magician who was to open to us the
realm of faery, the world of imagination, not to take us back into the
familiar scenes of the world of New York or Chicago. The spell was
resistless. The deep, rich, melodious voice flowed out like an enchanted
singing river, along which we glided seeing visions and dreaming dreams.
To sit and listen to her was like sitting and watching Titian laying on
the canvas the gorgeous tints which before our eyes took on the forms of
men and angels. A rarer, a more refined delight, which of us has known?
Did it ever occur to us that Mrs. Kemble was doing anything improper,
anything unwomanly? In the wonderful picture of Portia that "her voice's
music" drew, was there anything a little repulsive, a little unfeminine?
This question was suggested to the Easy Chair by the remark of one of
the most devoted and delighted of all the listeners at those readings,
that he was very sorry to see that the University of London had decided
to admit women to all its degrees upon precisely equal terms with men.
The secret reason of the regret, of course, is the feeling that there
would be something unwomanly in the act of competing for a degree which
would open the pursuit of professions--especially the medical
profession--which are usually and often exclusively cultivated by men.
Yet, when pressed, the Easy Chair's interlocutor admitted that there was
nothing more essentially unfeminine in the practice of medicine by a
woman than in the recitation of Shakespeare for the entertainment of a
miscellaneous crowd. It is a question of habit, not of instinct, nor of
principle, nor of reason. When the old Greek and Oriental idea of
absolute seclusion and subordination is abandoned, a woman's reading
from Shakespeare for the pleasure of the public is an action not
different in kind from her practising medicine or serving on a school
committee. This generation, however, is more used to the one than to the
other. It is a habit, nothing more.
Charles Lamb regrets in one of his later essays that "we have no
_rationale_ of sauces, or theory of mixed flavors; as to show why
cabbage is reprehensible with roast beef, laudable with bacon; why the
haunch of mutton seeks the alliance of currant jelly, the shoulder
civilly declineth it; why loin of veal (a pretty problem), being itself
unctuous, seeketh the adventitious lubricity of melted butter; and why
the same part in pork, not more oleaginous, abhorreth from it; ... why
oysters in death rise up against the contamination of brown sugar, while
they are posthumously amorous of vinegar; why the sour mango and the
sweet jam by turns court and are accepted by the compilable mutton
hash--she not yet decidedly declaring for either. We are as yet but in
the empirical stage of cookery."
It is not in cookery alone that this mystery is still unsolved. Why, for
instance, should it seem a womanly use of Heaven's gift that Jenny Lind
should sing for the pleasure of a thousand men, and something strange
and unfeminine that Portia should plead with eloquence in a court to
save a hapless woman from prison or the cord? Why is it fitting that
Mrs. Kemble should professionally read Shakespeare, and "queer" that she
should professionally attend women in peril and sickness? Do we not
naturally and logically glide into the part of the citation from Lamb
that we just now omitted?--"why salmon (a strong sapor _per se_)
fortifieth its condition with the mighty lobster sauce, whose embraces
are fatal to the delicater relish of the turbot." Must we not say that
we are as yet but in the rudimentary knowledge of what is and is not
feminine?
When the example of the London University is not singular, but when all
opportunities are opened equally to all talent and vocation, when it is
not forbidden a woman to do any honorable work for which she is by
nature and by study and training properly equipped, unless the laws of
nature fail, will any greater catastrophe befall, will there be any more
signal reversion of the order of things, than if cabbage should come at
last to be eaten with roast beef, and currant jelly cement an alliance
with the mutton's shoulder?