Henry Arthur Jones; his First Works--His Melodramas--_Saints and
Sinners_--The Puritans and the Theatre--The Two Deacons; The Character of
Fletcher--_Judah_--_The Crusaders_; Character of Palsam; the Conclusion of
the Piece--_The Case of Rebellious Susan_--_The Masqueraders_--Return to
Melodrama. Theories expounded by Mr. Jones in his book: _The Renascence of
the Drama_.
The start of Mr. Henry Arthur Jones was not less difficult than that of
Mr. Sydney Grundy. He could get only short and light pieces accepted at
first. The earliest play of his within the memory of London play-goers was
performed at the Court Theatre, and was entitled, _A Clerical Error_. The
second was an idyll in two short acts, called _An Old Master_.
The young author found it necessary to seek refuge in provincial theatres.
The world remained unwilling to learn his name--a somewhat undistinguished
name, and easily forgotten. When, in 1882, Mr. Archer included him in his
_Dramatists of To-day_, there were many who asked, "_Who_ is this Mr.
Jones?"
It was then he worked at melodrama. He served seven years with Laban, and
married Leah, upheld by the hope of one day obtaining Rachel. This was
his apprenticeship. As Mr. Grundy had learnt his craft by adapting our
French authors, Mr. Jones learnt his by writing great popular dramas. It
was in this _genre_, one which gives full scope to the imagination, that
he came to know his own individual temperament, and developed those
poetical faculties which were to be put to better uses; it was by this
unlikely pathway that he found the road to Shakespearian emotions. His
qualities and his defects date from this time.
The great success of _The Silver King_ set Mr. Jones at liberty. I have
neither seen nor read the piece, which has not been printed. It is a good
melodrama, I understand. People found in it, together with some new types
and _coups de theatre_, observation, gaiety, a rare freedom of handling,
some really moving touches, and, here and there, flashes of imagination
and poetry.
Mr. Jones thought he could now take a step further, and please himself,
having succeeded in pleasing the public. He wrote _Saints and Sinners_.
The little Margate Theatre was the scene of the first performance of the
new play in September 1884, this first performance having for object only
the perfecting of the actors in their parts, and the testing of the
public. The piece passed thence to the Vaudeville, where it held the bills
until the middle of the following year, much talked about and applauded.
It marks an important date, not merely in the career of Mr. Jones, but in
the history of the English drama. It denotes the revival of active
hostility, in that ancient conflict between the Puritans and the stage,
which began in 1580, and will last as long as English literature and
English civilisation. This conflict had assumed a sluggish and inactive
character in the nineteenth century. Shattered by the scorn of the
Puritans, the stage had not dared to raise its arm for a blow. Suddenly it
took the offensive, and carried the war into the enemy's camp. _Saints and
Sinners_ is only the first of a series of dramas and comedies, in which
Mr. Jones has fearlessly attacked the hypocrisies of religion, in their
most characteristic form. He has let fly some darts, indeed, which have
sped even further, and which he has not shot at random. Has he not
declared, in his high-spirited and witty preface to _The Case of
Rebellious Susan_, that the theatre was perhaps destined to succeed to the
tottering pulpit, and to teach morality to the professional moralists?
Already, in 1885, he had claimed energetically for the drama the right to
deal with any subject, even with religious subjects. Elsewhere, he
declared that the theatre was one of the organs of the national life, and
one of its essential organs; that one could no more imagine England
without the theatre, than England without the press and the platform.
He seems to say--and this boldness does not displease in a man of
talent--"We want liberty. Free our hands; give us permission to produce
masterpieces, and the masterpieces will not be delayed."
What Mr. Jones satirised in _Saints and Sinners_, was the money-making
spirit that went hand in hand with bigotry. This combination is incarnated
by Hoggard and Prabble, the two deacons of the dissenting congregation of
Steepleford. Hoggard is a business man on a small scale, and in a small
town; Prabble is an easy-going grocer. The one is repulsive, the other
merely comic; but, at bottom, they represent the same spirit, in different
degrees, and after different fashions. Hoggard is fully aware of his
rascality, and there is nothing sincere about him except his pride. He is
convinced that there is a special moral code for clever men of his own
stamp.
Prabble, on the other hand, is of opinion that the minister would be doing
no more than his duty were he to denounce from the pulpit the co-operative
stores by which his shop is being ruined. "I keep up his chapel. He ought
to keep up my custom." Even in the last scene, in the midst of the tragic
emotions of the _denouement_, when he wishes to express to the minister
they have driven away the remorse of his ungrateful congregation, his one
fixed idea comes out again. If only Mr. Fletcher could manage, without
inconvenience, to slip in a word on Sunday--just one word about the
co-operative stores!
Does this grocer, who would prop up his shop against his chapel, reason
and act otherwise at bottom, than did the great king when he allied his
throne with the pulpit of Bossuet? In both cases the policy proved
successful--at least, for a time.
"You know, my dear Prabble," Hoggard says to his friend, "it is we who are
the greatness of England; it is we who have made her what she is." And
what is so terrible about it is, that he is not wholly wrong. Hoggard and
Prabble represent one of the various types of that Puritan democracy,
which accomplished great things in former days, but which has learnt
nothing for two centuries, except to make money. They belong to what is
called the middle class, and the middle class, so different from our
_Classe Moyenne_, is regarded with real contempt by superior
intelligences. Matthew Arnold congratulated Mr. Jones ten years ago on
having given it, in his admirable picture of these two deacons, one of the
hardest blows it had yet received. What neither Mr. Arnold nor Mr. Jones
took the trouble to point out is, that in ordinary life the minister
cannot belong to a different race of men from those who of their own
accord have placed him at their head. Like flock, like pastor, and--I
shall venture to add--like creed.
In default of prudence, an artistic consideration (which I can understand)
would have strongly impelled Mr. Jones to offer us a pastor differing from
his flock, as the suave tenderness of the New Testament differs from the
harshness of the Old. This minister, who allows himself to be robbed by a
poulterer, and who says such sublime things, has not been taken from real
life, but from _The Vicar of Wakefield_,--Goldsmith's irrational,
delightful work. At times he rises to the height of Myriel, the bishop in
_Les Miserables_, and it is not at these times I like him best. I
acknowledge that he has tried my temper by his blindness, that I have been
aggravated by his meekness, have lost all patience with his patience. He
is very human, very virile, when before his assembled congregation he
makes the confession which is so cruel to him, of his daughter's sin, and
relinquishes the spiritual functions which have been his livelihood. There
is real grandeur in this self-abasement--a dignity full of impressiveness
in this confession of shame. The words are at once plain and delicate,
they come from the depths of his nature, and go straight to the soul of
his hearers. But when he hides his mortal enemy, in order to shield him
from the vengeance he has earned, and shares with him his last piece of
bread, I feel that he is going too far, and that pity, as sometimes
happens, is clashing with justice. Then, when he cries out, "Christians,
will you never learn to forgive?"--the words thrill me, and I change my
mind again--I tell myself that one must sometimes exaggerate beyond the
bounds of reason to bring even a little goodness into the souls of the
pitiless.
Mr. Jones's talent achieved a fresh advance in _Judah_, produced on May
21, 1890. There is no longer any trace of melodrama, either in the
situations or in the characters. The nobility of mind, and the need of
spontaneous confession, which mark the finest scene in _Saints and
Sinners_, are used as motives again in _Judah_, with great power, and
form, so to speak, the mainspring of the play. A young girl named Vashti
Dethic, has been brought up by her father to the role of _clairvoyante_
and miracle-worker. Extreme poverty, extreme youth, moral force carried
perhaps to the point of terrorising,--she has abundant excuses for
adopting this horrible career. Now, her interests, her pride, the
enthusiam of her stupid devotees, constrain her to persevere in an
imposture which she loathes.
We pity her, and are grateful to the author for diverting our scorn to the
wretched Dethic. We are even willing to believe that a high-strung,
nervous girl may imagine herself to be the subject of miraculous
influences. When Vashti is subjected to a fast of three weeks, and when,
by the merciless vigilance of her watchers, this fast threatens to become
too real, the young girl's heroism touches us, in spite of ourselves, as
much as though it were devoted to a better cause. We form the absurd wish
that her father may succeed in smuggling some food to her--we are all for
the miracle against science, for charlatanism against the truth; which is
going as far as can be gone! Or rather, we have developed an interest in a
poor human creature in serious peril, and, without reflecting upon her
character, we hope she may escape. How would it be if we were
passionately in love with her? Thus it is with Judah Llewellyn.
These two names are noteworthy; the author calls our attention by them to
the dual origin of his hero, Celtic and Jewish. This mixed ancestry
explains, doubtless, both the fanatic and the impulsive side of his
nature, and the mastery of the religious instinct in its conflict with the
ardours and passions of the imagination. Judah is endowed with a burning
eloquence, the secret of which he gives in the simple statement, "I
believe what I say." This faith, which carries away the uncultured,
inspires the respect of men of the world. One listens to him without a
smile, when he talks of the voices which have called upon him in the
night; some may not believe that the voices did so call upon him, but all
believe that he heard them calling. Thus his church becomes too small for
the multitudes who come to seek nourishment, or rather intoxication, in
his words.
This man has to pass through various phases of mind before our eyes. At
first, he loves Vashti with a humble, ecstatic love, in which religious
enthusiasm seems to enter more than human passion. In his eyes she is a
superior being--privileged, the elect of God. He dares not defile her with
a carnal thought; it is enough for him to kiss the hem of her robe. But it
chances one evening that he is an involuntary witness of the desperate
efforts of Vashti's father to get some food to her during her fast. At
once, almost without transition, by the force of circumstances that permit
no time for deliberation, he becomes her accomplice, he saves her by a
lie, and a lie which carries the more weight in that his veracity has
never been called in question. A vulgar writer would not have failed to
show us Judah raising himself to his full height, and invoking curses upon
the woman he had protected, and fleeing afterwards to a solitude where he
would be tortured by the visions of lost happiness. Mr. Jones has done
just the opposite. Judah's first sensation is a burst of wholly human joy.
Vashti is not an angel or a saint, but a woman, a frail creature, like to
himself, whom he may love without thought of sacrilege! It is not until
later that remorse makes itself felt in his soul, and that his conscience,
terrible and tempestuous like passion, asserts its rights.
To all appearances Judah and Vashti are triumphant: they are to be united;
Lord Asgarby's daughter, the subject of the imposture, is cured because
she believes herself cured; the world pays its homage at once to Vashti's
miraculous powers, and to the virtue and eloquence of the man she is to
marry. What is lacking? Peace of mind, self-respect. In what poignant
terms Judah recounts to Vashti his mental agony! With what imagination of
poet, or of the lost, does he give voice and form to all the terrors of
the Puritan mind,--those terrors which, for some mere trifle, some shadow
of a sin, so tortured Bunyan, and prostrated Cromwell, pallid, gasping,
on the bare boards of his chamber! Yet love has not gone from Judah's
heart. Better Hell with her than Heaven without!
The champion of science, Dr. Jopp, for his part, has instituted an inquiry
into the whole thing; he is inclined to bracket Dethic and his daughter
together. Judah becomes aware of what is in preparation, is free to
separate his lot from that of Vashti; but he does not do so. Then when
Jopp, on the entreaty of his old friend Lord Asgarby, has consented to
spare Vashti, it would be easy for Judah to maintain silence, and to
accept, together with his wife, the favours with which they are being
overwhelmed. But no, he must speak; he must confess himself! The
confession issues with the explosive violence born of long compression, in
a strange frenzy of humiliation and of repentance, impetuous, vibrating,
almost triumphant, like a blare of trumpets. Beyond the awful but not
impassable ordeal, the guilty man and woman see the divine horizon of
paradise regained.
"You won't? Then hear me, hear me, all of you! I lied! I lied! Take back
my false oath; let the truth return to my lips! Let my heart find peace
and my eyelids sleep again! You all know me now for what I am; let all who
honoured me and followed me know me too. Hide nothing! Let it be blazed
about the city. (_Pause. To_ LORD A.) Take back your gift. (_Gives deed
to_ LORD A.) We will take nothing from you! Nothing! Nothing! (_Goes to_
VASHTI.) It's done. (_Takes her hand._) Our path is straight; now we can
walk safely all our lives."
It is the pride of penitence, and this expression of feeling has never
been given a prouder tone. In the previous play, _Saints and Sinners_, old
Fletcher, on learning of his daughter's shame, had cried out, "How shall I
ever hold up my head again?" To hold up his head, that is an Englishman's
first need. And when Letty Fletcher had effaced her transgression by dint
of heroism and devotion, she said, not, "I have expiated my sin," but, "I
have conquered." By such expressions it is that I can see that the
artificial psychology of the drama is yielding place to a truer and more
real psychology. Hitherto, almost everything that has been written in
England, would seem to have had for object, to conceal and not to make
clear the English mind. A new generation of writers has come forth, whose
work it will be to depict this mind as it really is, and to make its
confession with the fierce sincerity of Judah.
_The Crusaders_, produced on November 2, 1891, is a piece of quite another
stamp. It is not the unfolding of a character contending with
circumstances: it is a satirical representation of a _coterie_, a group, a
social movement. This kind of piece has but a first act, in which the
theme is expounded and a brilliant array of characters presented to the
audience. The plot of _The Crusaders_ is a mere imbroglio, fastened on
somewhat artificially to a satirical and ethical homily; it turns upon an
open window and shut door, which endanger the reputation of a young widow.
Unfortunately, we do not take much interest in this young widow, or in the
two men who love her; one of them is a faded copy of Judah, the other is
nothing at all.
But what is a mere accessory in the view of the ordinary playgoer,
constitutes the essential part of the play for the critic, for the
historian of the drama and of life.
When the time comes for depicting the state of English society during the
last years of the nineteenth century, this curious first act of _The
Crusaders_ will certainly be drawn upon for material. There will be found
in it the confusion of elements that stir and mingle, without uniting, in
the vague social movement of this period: enthusiasm lacking a clear end
in view, devotion lacking a definite object, a pilgrimage which leads no
one knows whither, and on which no single pilgrim will reach his
destination. It deals with the reformation of London; a programme so vast
and complex as to be none at all. This association counts amongst its
members a number of pretty women who play at charity; young idlers for
whom the reformation of London is merely an opportunity for flirting, just
like private theatricals, _tableaux vivants_, and garden parties; pushing
women who turn the occasion to their own profit by bringing about
relations with this "dear Duchess of Launceston," and who raise
themselves thus in the world, step by step. One of these good ladies, Mrs.
Campion Blake, invites an old statesman to dinner, to meet a kind of
apostle whom she defines as a "new variety of inspired idiot--something
between an angel, a fool, and a poet! And atrociously in earnest! a sort
of Shelley from Peckham Rye. He's rather good fun, if you take him in
small doses." After dinner, an American lady gymnast will give a
performance in the dining-room. "She's adorable. She gives drawing-room
gymnastics after dinner. It isn't the least indelicate--after the first
shock." Be sure the Minister will accept the invitation. He is quite ready
to reform London, provided only that no one calls upon him to alter his
own mode of life. He acknowledges that he has no ideals. No ideals! his
hearers exclaim horrified. Alas! no; had he not become a member of the
House of Commons in his twenty-second year! Which of the two is Mr. Jones
turning into ridicule? Idealism, or the House of Commons? Both, I fancy.
Why should there not be a double irony for the clever, just as there is a
_galimatias double_ for the dull?
In this movement there are many who are in earnest. First of all we have
the credulous, ingenuous Ingarfield, dragging in his train Una, the
petticoated apostle of the prison and the house of ill-fame, the young
virgin whose joy it is to attempt the conversion of rogues and
prostitutes. But the most real type is that of Palsam. This individual is
wholly repulsive. A voluntary spy, a detective by his own choice, he is
the incarnation of that spirit of sneaking, which rages so cruelly in
certain sections of English society. Basile, in comparison with him, is a
"good sort," an amiable companion. He stoops to expedients to which an
_agent de moeurs_ would blush to have recourse against an _habituee_ of
Saint Lazare; and it is against women of the world, too, that he resorts
to them! He is so insensible to indignity that a box on the ear has no
effect upon him. How do people put up with him? How is it they let him
into their houses? In France we would throw him out without troubling
about his calumnies, which would be welcomed only by the lowest kind of
newspaper; or rather, a complete Palsam, a perfect Palsam could not be
found in France. In England he is a reality and a power. But is he so vile
as he seems, as at first we are inclined to regard him? No; his conduct
seems mean to the utmost degree; but consider, please, two things: first,
that he acts thus, quite disinterestedly; secondly, that he deprives
himself of those incorrect enjoyments of which he is so bent upon
depriving others. Give him the benefit of these two admissions, and,
little by little, the man will begin to wear for you a different aspect.
The ascetic will rehabilitate the spy, you will be forced to find a kind
of heroism in his meanness, and to admire, while you hate, his hideous
virtue, which is perhaps one of the hundred ways of doing good to men in
their own despite.
Perhaps it was not Mr. Jones's intention to suggest so many reflections by
his Palsam, but whether he wishes it or no, his work is thus suggestive,
and it is the special note of this very straightforward, very masculine,
very generous satire, that it never ridicules the enemy without letting us
see the redeeming traits in his character, and the good motives which he
might plead in self-defence, thus putting the real man before us whole and
entire.
Mr. Jones ridicules the would-be reformers of London, and represents their
efforts as resulting in a pitiable fiasco. But he has not contended, of
course, that London is all right as it is, and that the bringing of the
great city into a state of moral health has ceased to be one of the dark
problems which demand, and baffle, the good intentions of honest folk. He
himself has indicated a solution, and the true solution; "To reform
London, it is necessary, first of all, that each of us should reform
himself." Such is the moral of the piece; and this sermon is worth more
than many others.
Through alternate successes and failures, Mr. Jones's popularity has gone
on increasing during the last four years. _The Tempter_, it is true, gave
the public something of a shock. Despite the intelligently devised
splendours of the _mise en scene_, and the admirable resources of his own
talent, Mr. Tree, who had a special liking for the piece, and was not
wholly unconnected, they say, with its conception, did not succeed in
bringing his audience round to his way of thinking. In the _Triumph of
the Philistines_, Mr. Jones resumed his campaign against Puritanism, but
after a pettier, less vigorous fashion than in his preceding works. The
hero and heroine of this comedy were empty, formless shadows, and the
public would not have known _a quoi se prendre_, had not the piece been
given a fillip quite unexpectedly by the appearance of an inessential
character, that of a whimsical little Frenchwoman, acted to perfection by
Miss Juliette Nesville. The study is a brilliant one, and at moments
really profound. It is the first time, if I mistake not, that an English
dramatist, in introducing a Frenchwoman into his work, has turned out
anything more than a collection of mere external peculiarities, tricks of
facial expression, mistakes in pronunciation and in language, and that he
has penetrated into the very soul, or at least into the _etat d'ame_, of
another nation, differentiating it from his own.
_The Case of Rebellious Susan_ is a very amusing comedy. I know of none
with so lively a beginning. In his ironical dedication to Mrs. Grundy, Mr.
Jones begs of that good lady to find out a moral in his play. There should
be one in it, he tells her--indeed, there should be several; they have but
to be looked for.
I don't know what will be the outcome of Mrs. Grundy's researches. I, for
my part, have searched also, but from a different standpoint, and have
found nothing, unless it be that Susan is Francillon with certain
differences, which transform both the character and the dramatic
situation. The idea of revenging herself against an unfaithful husband, by
paying him back in his own coin, must have taken shape, one thinks, first
of all in the mind of an Englishwoman, for the Englishwoman has in her
nature much more of pride than of love. Susan's grief is not a tearful
grief. She is violent, bitter, vindictive; she carries through her little
exploit with much self-possession and without a sob. How far has her
vengeance carried her? Has she been guilty or merely imprudent? No one
knows, and, lacking information upon the subject, neither Mrs. Grundy nor
I can solve the problem put before us. Her husband has been unfaithful to
her, her lover forgets her, and the last crime is worse than the first.
She returns, but dispassionately, to the domestic hearth. Oh! cries the
repentant husband, how I am going to love you! Yes, love me, she replies;
I need to be loved. But to judge by his hungry glances at her whilst he
helps her off with her opera-cloak, I am afraid we are witnesses of a
fresh misunderstanding. The love that she is offered and the love she
wants are not the same love. An omen full of menace for the future. It is
to the President of the Divorce Court, I fear, that it will fall in the
end to lay down the moral of the whole business.
Very different is the heroine of _The Masqueraders_, who, as impersonated
by Mrs. Patrick Campbell, fascinated London during the season of 1894.
Dulcie Larondie is a coquette, at first ambitious, giddy, keen on
enjoyment, anxious to shine; become a mother, she adores her child; then
love takes possession of her; and then duty reasserts its claims. She is
the plaything of her own feelings, and of the passions she raises up all
round her. She obeys every voice that calls to her, abandons herself with
a kind of gracious pitiful passiveness to these unknown forces and these
mysterious fatalities, within her and without, which break her strength
and oppress her will.
Mr. Jones had taken leave of melodrama in order to write _Judah_; he
returned to it in _The Masqueraders_, not from listlessness or
unwittingly, but deliberately and systematically. A husband staking his
wife at a game of ecarte--is not this melodrama? But what cares the author
of _The Masqueraders_, whether the incidents be improbable and his
situations artificial? Mr. Jones will not hear of the "well-made" piece;
he seems to have recognised that the architecture of a play does not count
for much, and that the science of Scribe and Sardou is a snare. Nor will
he hear of realism or of logic. He defends himself against the charge of
being a realist as though it were a disgrace, and ridicules those who pay
for admission to a theatre to see paper lamp-posts and canvas houses, when
they can see real lamp-posts and real houses in the streets for nothing.
Realism, he contends, is only a vast field of preliminary studies and a
store-room of materials. As for logic, it may be left to the professors
who teach it, and thus make a comfortable living. Why should the drama be
logical when life is not? A drama should contain four principal elements,
amongst which neither logic nor realism finds a place; and these elements
are--Beauty, Mystery, Passion, and Imagination. The drama, he is
convinced, is returning now to the mysterious and imaginative side of
human life.
And if the critic press too hard upon the author of _The Masqueraders_, he
has recourse for his defence--and quite rightly--to the great name which
is worth ten thousand arguments. For it must be again asserted,
Shakespeare's plays, with the exception of four or five, are melodramas,
traversed and fertilised by streams of poetry, lit up by flashes of
thought, and here and there softened, brightened, animated, by some
passing glimpses of real life.
To the lessons of Shakespeare, Mr. Jones has added those of Ibsen. They
are great masters, but there comes a time of life when no one can have any
master, save himself. I do not know whether the theories developed of late
by Mr. Jones will lead him on to works which shall throw _Judah_ and _The
Crusaders_ in the shade. But he is certainly passing through a crisis in
his career, and I cannot refrain from remarking that the structure of his
later plays has been less solid, and that their meaning has been apt to be
obscure and vexing to the mind. Whether or no he issue from behind this
cloud, he has already played a great part in the resuscitation of the
drama, and he is the most English of all the living English dramatists;
the one who expresses most sincerely and most brilliantly the mind of his
generation and of his race.