playwrights of France today, what names would you let roll off your
tongue, primed by the best punditic and docile French critics? Henry
Bataille, Paul Hervieu, and Henry Bernstein. Possibly Rostand. Don't
deny this; you know it is true, unless it happens you have been doing
some thinking for yourself. For even in the works of Remy de Gourmont
(to be sure this very clairvoyant mind did not often occupy itself
with dramatic literature) you will find little or nothing relating to
Octave Mirbeau and Georges Feydeau. True, Mirbeau did not do his best
work in the theatre. That stinging, cynical attack on the courts of
Justice (?) of France (nay, the world!), "Le Jardin de Supplice" is
not a play and it is probably Mirbeau's masterpiece and the best piece
of critical fiction written in France (or anywhere else) in the last
fifty years. However Mirbeau shook the pillars of society even in the
playhouse. _Le Foyer_ was hissed repeatedly at the Theatre Francais.
Night after night the proceedings ended in the ejection and arrest of
forty or fifty spectators. Even to a mere outsider, an idle bystander
of the boulevards, this complete exposure of the social, moral, and
political hypocricies of a nation seemed exceptionally brutal. _Le
Foyer_ and "Le Jardin" could only have been written by a man
passionately devoted to the human ideal ("each as she may," as
Gertrude Stein so beautifully puts it). _Les Affaires sont les
Affaires_ is pure theatre, perhaps, but it might be considered the
best play produced in France between Becque's _La Parisienne_ and
Brieux's _Les Hannetons_.
It is not surprising, on the whole, to find the critical tribe turning
for relief from this somewhat unpleasant display of Gallic closet
skeletons to the discreet exhibition of a few carefully chosen bones
in the plays of Bernstein and Bataille, direct descendants of Scribe,
Sardou, _et Cie_, but I may be permitted to indulge in a slight
snicker of polite amazement when I discover these gentlemen applying
their fingers to their noses in no very pretty-meaning gesture,
directed at a grandson of Moliere. For such is Georges Feydeau. His
method is not that of the Seventeenth Century master, nor yet that of
Mirbeau; nevertheless, aside from these two figures, Beaumarchais,
Marivaux, Becque, Brieux at his best, and Maurice Donnay occasionally,
there has not been a single writer in the history of the French
theatre so inevitably _au courant_ with human nature. His form is
frankly farcical and his plays are so funny, so enjoyable merely as
_good shows_ that it seems a pity to raise an obelisk in the
playwright's honour, and yet the fact remains that he understands the
political, social, domestic, amorous, even cloacal conditions of the
French better than any of his contemporaries, always excepting the
aforementioned Mirbeau. In _On Purge Bebe_ he has written saucy
variations on a theme which Rabelais, Boccaccio, George Moore, and
Moliere in collaboration would have found difficult to handle. It is
as successful an experiment in bravado and bravura as Mr. Henry
James's "The Turn of the Screw." And he has accomplished this feat
with nimbleness, variety, authority, even (granting the subject)
delicacy. Seeing it for the first time you will be so submerged in
gales of uncontrollable laughter that you will perhaps not recognize
at once how every line reveals character, how every situation springs
from the foibles of human nature. Indeed in this one-act farce
Feydeau, with about as much trouble as Zeus took in transforming his
godship into the semblance of a swan, has given you a well-rounded
picture of middle-class life in France with its external and internal
implications.... And how he understands the buoyant French _grue_,
unselfconscious and undismayed in any situation. I sometimes think
that _Occupe-toi d'Amelie_ is the most satisfactory play I have ever
seen; it is certainly the most delightful. I do not think you can see
it in Paris again. The Nouveautes, where it was presented for over a
year, has been torn down; an English translation would be an insult
to Feydeau; nor will you find essays about it in the yellow volumes in
which the French critics tenderly embalm their _feuilletons_; nor do I
think Arthur Symons or George Moore, those indefatigable diggers in
Parisian graveyards, have discovered it for their English readers.
Reading the play is to miss half its pleasure; so you must take my
word in the matter unless you have been lucky enough to see it
yourself, in which case ten to one you will agree with me that one
such play is worth a kettleful of boiled-over drama like _Le Voleur_,
_Le Secret_, _Samson_, _La Vierge Folle_, _et cetera_, _et cetera_. In
the pieces I have mentioned Feydeau, in representation, had the
priceless assistance of a great comic artist, Armande Cassive. If we
are to take Mr. Symons's assurance in regard to de Pachmann that he is
the world's greatest pianist because he does one thing more perfectly
than any one else, by a train of similar reasoning we might
confidently assert that Mlle. Cassive is the world's greatest actress.
When you ask a Frenchman to explain why he does not like Mirbeau (and
you will find that Frenchmen invariably do not like him) he will shrug
his shoulders and begin to tell you that Mirbeau was not good to his
mother, or that he drank to excess, or that he did not wear a red,
white, and blue coat on the Fourteenth of July, or that he did not
stand for the French spirit as exemplified in the eating of snails on
Christmas. In other words, he will immediately place himself in a
position in which you may be excused for regarding him as a person
whose opinion is worth nothing, whereas his ratiocinatory powers on
subjects with which he is more in sympathy may be excellent. I know
why he does not like Mirbeau. Mirbeau is the reason. In his life he
was not accustomed to making compromises nor was he accustomed to
making friends (which comes after all to the same thing). He did what
he pleased, said what he pleased, wrote what he pleased. His armorial
bearings might have been a cat upsetting a cream jug with the motto,
"_Je m'en fous_." The author of "Le Jardin de Supplice" would not be
in high favour anywhere; nevertheless I would willingly relinquish any
claims I might have to future popularity for the privilege of having
been permitted to sign this book.
Feydeau is distinctly another story; his plays are more successful
than any others given in Paris. They are so amusing that even while he
is pointing the finger at your own particular method of living you are
laughing so hard that you haven't time to see the application.... So
the French critics have set him down as another popular figure, only a
nobody born to entertain the boulevards, just as the American critics
regard the performances of Irving Berlin with a steely supercilious
impervious eye. The Viennese scorned Mozart because he entertained
them. "A gay population," wrote the late John F. Runciman, "always a
heartless master, holds none in such contempt as the servants who
provide it with amusement."
The same condition has prevailed in England until recently. A few
seasons ago you might have found the critics pouring out their glad
songs about Arthur Wing Pinero and Henry Arthur Jones. Bernard Shaw
has, in a measure, restored the balance to the British theatre. He is
not only a brilliant playwright; he is a brilliant critic as well.
Foreseeing the fate of the under man in such a struggle he became his
own literary huckster and by outcriticizing the other critics he
easily established himself as the first English (or Irish) playwright.
When he thus rose to the top, by dint of his own exertions, he had
strength enough to carry along with him a number of other important
authors. As a consequence we may regard the Pinero incident closed and
in ten years his theatre will be considered as old-fashioned and as
inadept as that of Robertson or Bulwer-Lytton.
Having no Shaw in America, no man who can write brilliant prefaces and
essays about his own plays until the man in the street is obliged
perforce to regard them as literature, we find ourselves in the
condition of benighted France. Dulness is mistaken for literary
flavour; the injection of a little learning, of a little poetry
(so-called) into a theatrical hackpiece, is the signal for a good deal
of enthusiasm on the part of the journalists (there are two brilliant
exceptions). Which of our playwrights are taken seriously by the
pundits? Augustus Thomas and Percy MacKaye: Thomas the dean, and
MacKaye the poet laureate. I have no intention of wrenching the laurel
wreathes from these august brows. Let them remain. Each of these
gentlemen has a long and honourable career in the theatre behind him,
from which he should be allowed to reap what financial and honourary
rewards he may be able. But I would not add one leaf to these
wreathes, nor one crotchet to the songs of praise which vibrate around
them. I turn aside from their plays in the theatre and in the library
as I turn aside from the fictions of Pierre de Coulevain and Arnold
Bennett.
I love to fashion wreathes of my own and if two young men will now
step forward to the lecturer's bench I will take delight in crowning
them with my own hands. Will the young man at the back of the hall
please page Avery Hopwood and Philip Moeller?... No response! They
seem to have retreated modestly into the night. Nevertheless they
shall not escape me!
I speak of Mr. Hopwood first because he has been writing for our
theatre for a longer period than has Mr. Moeller, and because his
position, such as it is, is assured. Like Feydeau in France he has a
large popular following; he has probably made more money in a few
years than Mr. Thomas has made during his whole lifetime and the
managers are always after him to furnish them with more plays with
which to fill their theatres. For his plays do fill the theatres.
_Fair and Warmer_, _Nobody's Widow_, _Clothes_, and _Seven Days_,
would be included in any list of the successful pieces produced in New
York within the past ten years. Two of these pieces would be near the
very top of such a list. An utterly absurd allotment of actors is
sufficient to explain the failures of _Sadie Love_ and _Our Little
Wife_ and it might be well if some one should attempt a revival of one
of his three serious plays, _This Woman and This Man_, in which
Carlotta Nillson appeared for a brief space.
This author, mainly through the beneficent offices of a gift of
supernal charm, contrives to do in English very much what Feydeau does
in French. It is his contention that you can smite the Puritans, even
in the American theatre, squarely on the cheek, provided you are
sagacious in your choice of weapon. In _Fair and Warmer_ he provokes
the most boisterous and at the same time the most innocent laughter
with a scene which might have been made insupportably vulgar. A
perfectly respectable young married woman gets very drunk with the
equally respectable husband of one of her friends. The scene is the
mainstay, the _raison d'etre_, of the play, and it furnishes the
material for the better part of one act; yet young and old, rich and
poor, philistine and superman alike, delight in it. To make such a
situation irresistible and universal in its appeal is, it seems to me,
undoubtedly the work of genius. What might, indeed should, have been
disgusting, was not only in intention but in performance very funny.
Let those who do not appreciate the virtuosity of this undertaking
attempt to write as successful a scene in a similar vein. Even if they
are able to do so, and I do not for a moment believe that there is
another dramatic author in America who can, they will be the first to
grant the difficulty of the achievement. With an apparently
inexhaustible fund of fantasy and wit Mr. Hopwood passes his wand over
certain phases of so-called smart life, almost always with the
happiest results. With a complete realization of the independence of
his medium he often ignores the realistic conventions and the
traditional technique of the stage, but his touch is so light and
joyous, his wit so free from pose, that he rarely fails to establish
his effect. His pen has seldom faltered. Occasionally, however, the
heavy hand of an uncomprehending stage director or of an aggressive
actor has played havoc with the delicate texture of his fabric. There
is no need here for the use of hammer or trowel; if an actress must
seek aid in implements, let her rather rely on a soft brush, a lacy
handkerchief, or a sparkling spangled fan.
Philip Moeller has achieved distinction in another field, that of
elegant burlesque, of sublimated caricature. His stage men and women
are as adroitly distorted (the better to expose their comic
possibilities) as the drawings of Max Beerbohm. Beginning with the
Bible and the Odyssey (_Helena's Husband_ and _Sisters of Susannah_
for the Washington Square Players) he has at length, by way of
Shakespeare and Bacon (_The Roadhouse in Arden_) arrived at the
Romantic Period in French literature and in _Madame Sand_, his first
three-act play, he has established himself at once as a dangerous
rival of the authors of _Caesar and Cleopatra_ and _The Importance of
Being Earnest_, both plays in the same _genre_ as Mr. Moeller's latest
contribution to the stage. The author has thrown a very high light on
the sentimental adventures of the writing lady of the early Nineteenth
Century, has indeed advised us and convinced us that they were
somewhat ridiculous. So they must have appeared even to her
contemporaries, however seriously George took herself, her romances,
her passions, her petty tragedies. A less adult, a less seriously
trained mind might have fallen into the error of making a sentimental
play out of George's affairs with Alfred de Musset, Dr. Pagello, and
Chopin (Mr. Moeller contents himself with these three passions,
selected from the somewhat more extensive list offered to us by
history). Such an author would doubtless have written _Great
Catherine_ in the style of _Disraeli_ and _Androcles and the Lion_
after the manner of _Ben Hur_! Whether love itself is always a comic
subject, as Bernard Shaw would have us believe, is a matter for
dispute, but there can be no alternative opinion about the loves of
George Sand. A rehearsal of them offers only laughter to any one but a
sentimental school girl.
The piece is conceived on a true literary level; it abounds in wit, in
fantasy, in delightful situations, but there is nothing precious about
its progress. Mr. Moeller has carefully avoided the traps expressly
laid for writers of such plays. For example, the enjoyment of _Madame
Sand_ is in no way dependent upon a knowledge of the books of that
authoress, De Musset, and Heine, nor yet upon an acquaintance with the
music of Liszt and Chopin. Such matters are pleasantly and lightly
referred to when they seem pertinent, but no insistence is laid upon
them. Occasionally our author has appropriated some phrase originally
spoken or written by one of the real characters, but for that he can
scarcely be blamed. Indeed, when one takes into consideration the
wealth of such material which lay in books waiting for him, it is
surprising that he did not take more advantage of it. In the main he
has relied on his own cleverness to delight our ears for two hours
with brilliant conversation.
There is, it should be noted, in conclusion, nothing essentially
American about either of these young authors. Both Mr. Hopwood and
Mr. Moeller might have written for the foreign stage. Several of Mr.
Hopwood's pieces, indeed, have already been transported to foreign
climes and there seems every reason for belief that Mr. Moeller's
comedy will meet a similarly happy fate.
_November 29, 1917._
De Senectute Cantorum
_"All'eta di settanta
Non si ama, ne si canta."_
Italian proverb.
De Senectute Cantorum
"I am not sure," writes Arthur Symons in his admirable essay on Sarah
Bernhardt, "that the best moment to study an artist is not the moment
of what is called decadence. The first energy of inspiration is gone;
what remains is the method, the mechanism, and it is that which alone
one can study, as one can study the mechanism of the body, not the
principle of life itself. What is done mechanically, after the heat of
the blood has cooled, and the divine accidents have ceased to happen,
is precisely all that was consciously skilful in the performance of an
art. To see all this mechanism left bare, as the form of a skeleton is
left bare when age thins the flesh upon it is to learn more easily all
that is to be learnt of structure, the art which not art but nature
has hitherto concealed with its merciful covering."
Mr. Symons, of course, had an actress in mind, but his argument can be
applied to singers as well, although it is safest to remember that
much of the true beauty of the human voice inevitably departs with the
youth of its owner. Still style in singing is not noticeably affected
by age and an artist who possesses or who has acquired this quality
very often can afford to make lewd gestures at Father Time. If good
singing depended upon a full and sensuous tone, such artists as
Ronconi, Victor Maurel, Max Heinrich, Ludwig Wullner, and Maurice
Renaud would never have had any careers at all. It is obvious that any
true estimate of their contribution to the lyric stage would put the
chief emphasis on style, and this is usually the explanation for
extended success on the opera or concert stage, although occasionally
an extraordinary and exceptional singer may continue to give pleasure
to her auditors, despite the fact that she has left middle age behind
her, by the mere lovely quality of the tone she produces.
In the history of opera there may be found the names of many singers
who have maintained their popularity and, indeed, a good deal of their
art, long past fifty, and there is recorded at least one instance in
which a singer, after a long absence from the theatre, returned to the
scene of her earlier triumphs with her powers unimpaired, even
augmented. I refer, of course, to Henrietta Sontag, born in 1805, who
retired from the stage of the King's Theatre in London in 1830 in her
twenty-fifth year and who returned twenty years later in 1849. She
had, in the meantime, become the Countess Rossi, but although she had
abandoned the stage her reappearance proved that she had not remained
idle during her period of retirement. For she was one of those artists
in whom early "inspiration" counted for little and "method" for much.
She was, indeed, a mistress of style. She came back to the public in
_Linda di Chaminoux_ and H. F. Chorley ("Thirty Years' Musical
Recollections") tells us that "all went wondrously well. No magic
could restore to her voice an upper note or two which Time had taken;
but the skill, grace, and precision with which she turned to account
every atom of power she still possessed,--the incomparable steadiness
with which she wrought out her composer's intentions--she carried
through the part, from first to last, without the slightest failure,
or sign of weariness--seemed a triumph. She was greeted--as she
deserved to be--as a beloved old friend come home again in the late
sunnier days.
"But it was not at the moment of Madame Sontag's reappearance that we
could advert to all the difficulty which added to the honour of its
success.--She came back under musical conditions entirely changed
since she left the stage--to an orchestra far stronger than that which
had supported her voice when it was younger; and to a new world of
operas.--Into this she ventured with an intrepid industry not to be
overpraised--with every new part enhancing the respect of every real
lover of music.--During the short period of these new performances at
Her Majesty's Theatre, which was not equivalent to two complete Opera
seasons, not merely did Madame Sontag go through the range of her old
characters--Susanna, Rosina, Desdemona, Donna Anna, and the like--but
she presented herself in seven or eight operas which had not existed
when she left the stage--Bellini's _Sonnambula_, Donizetti's _Linda_,
_La Figlia del Reggimento_, _Don Pasquale_; _Le Tre Nozze_, of Signor
Alary, _La Tempesta_, by M. Halevy--the last two works involving what
the French call 'creation,' otherwise the production of a part never
before represented.--In one of the favourite characters of her
predecessor, the elder artist beat the younger one hollow.--This was
as Maria, in Donizetti's _La Figlia_, which Mdlle. Lind may be said to
have brought to England, and considered as her special property....
With myself, the real value of Madame Sontag grew, night after
night--as her variety, her conscientious steadiness, and her adroit
use of diminished powers were thus mercilessly tested. In one respect,
compared with every one who had been in my time, she was alone, in
right, perhaps of the studies of her early days--as a singer of
Mozart's music."
It was after these last London seasons that Mme. Sontag undertook an
American tour. She died in Mexico.
The great Mme. Pasta's ill-advised return to the stage in 1850 (when
she made two belated appearances in London) is matter for sadder
comment. Chorley, indeed, is at his best when he writes of it, his pen
dipped in tears, for none had admired this artist in her prime more
passionately than he. Here was a particularly good opportunity to
study the bare skeleton of interpretative art; the result is one of
the most striking passages in all literature:
"Her voice, which at its best, had required ceaseless watching and
practice, had been long ago given up by her. Its state of utter ruin
on the night in question passes description.--She had been neglected
by those who, at least, should have presented her person to the best
advantage admitted by Time.--Her queenly robes (she was to sing some
scenes from _Anna Bolena_) in nowise suited or disguised her figure.
Her hair-dresser had done some tremendous thing or other with her
head--or rather had left everything undone. A more painful and
disastrous spectacle could hardly be looked on.--There were artists
present, who had then, for the first time, to derive some impression
of a renowned artist--perhaps, with the natural feeling that her
reputation had been exaggerated.--Among these was Rachel--whose bitter
ridicule of the entire sad show made itself heard throughout the whole
theatre, and drew attention to the place where she sat--one might even
say, sarcastically enjoying the scene. Among the audience, however,
was another gifted woman, who might far more legitimately have been
shocked at the utter wreck of every musical means of expression in the
singer--who might have been more naturally forgiven, if some humour of
self-glorification had made her severely just--not worse--to an old
_prima donna_;--I mean Madame Viardot.--Then, and not till then, she
was hearing Madame Pasta.--But Truth will always answer to the appeal
of Truth. Dismal as was the spectacle--broken, hoarse, and destroyed
as was the voice--the great style of the singer spoke to the great
singer. The first scene was Ann Boleyn's duet with Jane Seymour. The
old spirit was heard and seen in Madame Pasta's _Sorgi!_ and the
gesture with which she signed to her penitent rival to rise. Later,
she attempted the final mad scene of the opera--that most complicated
and brilliant among the mad scenes on the modern musical stage--with
its two _cantabile_ movements, its snatches of recitative, and its
_bravura_ of despair, which may be appealed to as an example of vocal
display, till then unparagoned, when turned to the account of frenzy,
not frivolity--perhaps as such commissioned by the superb creative
artist.--By that time, tired, unprepared, in ruin as she was, she had
rallied a little. When--on Ann Boleyn's hearing the coronation music
of her rival, the heroine searches for her own crown on her
brow--Madame Pasta turned in the direction of the festive sounds, the
old irresistible charm broke out;--nay, even in the final song, with
its _roulades_, and its scales of shakes, ascending by a semi-tone,
the consummate vocalist and tragedian, able to combine form with
meaning--the moment of the situation, with such personal and musical
display as form an integral part of operatic art--was indicated: at
least to the apprehension of a younger artist.--'You are right!' was
Madame Viardot's quick and heartfelt response (her eyes were full of
tears) to a friend beside her--'You are right! It is like the
_Cenacolo_ of Da Vinci at Milan--a wreck of a picture, but the
picture is the greatest picture in the world!'"