Two Portraits--Mr. Pinero's Career as an Actor--His Early Works--_The
Squire_, _Lords and Commons_--The Pieces which followed, half Comedy, half
Farce--_The Profligate_; its Success and Defects--_Lady Bountiful_--_The
Second Mrs. Tanqueray_--Character of Paula--Mrs. Patrick Campbell--_The
Notorious Mrs. Ebbsmith_.
Meanwhile, it was to Mr. Pinero that fell the lot of writing the most
human work yet known to modern English dramatic literature,--the work,
too, approaching most nearly to perfection.
I have never gazed on Mr. Pinero in the flesh, but I have seen two
portraits of him which have struck me. In one I seem to discover the
pensive _bonhomie_ of a philosopher, who looks on at the world from afar;
the other suggests rather the frequenter of drawing-rooms--the look in the
eyes is more alive, the smile more knowing, less calculated to leave one
at one's ease. Which of these portraits tells the truth? Both of them
perhaps. There are aspects of Mr. Pinero's work which respond to these
different moods of a single mind. Then, the two physiognomies, which I try
to reconcile with each other, have this trait in common: they both show us
a man who observes and who reflects.
And, in truth, a man must look about him and within him a good deal in
order to be able to pass, like Mr. Pinero, from the formless efforts of
his youth, or even from such pieces as _The Squire_ and _Lord and
Commons_, to a work like _The Second Mrs. Tanqueray_. His career as an
author has been a long-continued ascent, delayed by many incidents and
accidents, but from which the horizon of art has seemed larger at every
stage. To-day he is in the heights, almost at the summit.
In his early youth he had felt his vocation and had written a play, but he
knew nothing of the theatre. He learnt his art, as Dion Boucicault and H.
J. Byron and Tom Robertson before him, by acting in the plays of
others.[13] He maintained a good position upon the Edinburgh stage, and
then came to London, where he became connected first with Irving's company
and then with the Bancrofts'.
After getting some small pieces produced, he tried his hand at the kind of
plays then in vogue,--farces, melodramas, and sentimental comedies. He
adapted some French pieces also; and it was then he realised what was
lacking in his first models, in Robertson and his emulators. A play is a
living organism. Under the flesh one should find organs, muscles, an
articulated skeleton. It was this frame-work that Mr. Pinero wished to
give to his dramatic works; and his ambition did not, perhaps, aspire
beyond sustaining Robertson by means of Scribe. What he himself possessed,
and what was already recognised in his work, was a gift for the writing of
bright and natural dialogues, free from those tricks and artificialities
which until then had served as wit upon the stage. This dialogue was the
language really called for by the plot; but it was the plot, precisely,
that was weak in Mr. Pinero's earliest efforts.
_The Squire_ was an unlifelike story of a case of bigamy, annulled by an
unexpected death. The piece pleased, by reason of its idealised
representation of rural life. There was a breath of the woods in it, and a
smell of hay. But even this attraction the author had borrowed from a
pretty novel, by Thomas Hardy, _Far from the Madding Crowd_.
_Lords and Commons_ carries a degree further the romantic strangeness of
the Swedish drama, by which it is inspired. A great nobleman has married a
young girl of illegitimate birth, in ignorance of her history. He
discovers the fact, and drives her ignominiously from the house. After
some years, she comes across his path again, without his recognising her.
She has a double end in view--to win back her husband's love in her new
guise, and to awaken his remorse in regard to _that other_, thus torturing
him with conflicting emotions. Finally, she sends him, his heart torn in
twain, to a _rendez-vous_ with his former victim to obtain her pardon.
When Mr. Pinero was content to write a _denouement_ of this kind, who
could have divined in him the future creator of _Mrs. Tanqueray_?
But at this very moment he had discovered another vein, which he worked
for a number of years with increasing success. This was a kind of hybrid
production, which partook of farce in regard to plot, and of the comedy of
manners in regard to ideas and to dialogue. In short, it belonged to the
same province of the drama as _Divorcons_, sometimes on a higher plane,
sometimes on a lower. You would say that characters from Dumas and
D'Augier had fallen by accident into a scenario of Labiche. _The
Magistrate_ is thoroughly French in character. A London Magistrate, who
finds it necessary to hide himself under a table in a restaurant of
doubtful reputation, and who, under this table, knocks up against his own
wife, and who, in the following act, having escaped by a miracle from this
fearsome situation, finds himself called upon to pronounce judgment upon
this guilty spouse of his (who, needless to say, is guilty only in
appearance),--this kind of thing does not belong to English life or even
to English humour. In _Dandy Dick_ and in _The Hobby-Horse_, I find, in
the midst of fanciful incidents, a number of delicate and noteworthy
sketches of provincial life, of clerical society, of the racing world, and
those who belong to it, including a queer kind of female centaur,--a
woman jockey,--whom Mr. Pinero has certainly not borrowed from our
_repertoire_. There are many brilliant features really, much ingenuity of
invention, as well as a real sense of fun and fertility of resource in
_The Times_ and _The Cabinet Minister_. I have read these two pieces a
number of times, and found them amusing in their deliberate exaggeration.
But when I look into them closely, I ask myself whether the phase of
social evolution through which we are passing is really like that which
the author holds up to ridicule, and whether his caricatures are not a
generation or two behind the time. And it is always thus. In the matter of
satire, it is the newspaper always that opens the way; the novel comes
after it, and then, after a long interval, the theatre. The manners it
describes have often ceased to exist; the types it portrays have
disappeared, or have become changed. We laugh over Egerton Bompas, the
rich shopkeeper, who wants to marry his daughter to a peer of the realm;
and over Joseph Lebanon, the vulgar little stockbroker, who dreams of
getting invited, through the influence of his sister, the fashionable
modiste, to a shooting-party at a castle in the Highlands. But we know
quite well that nowadays it is the other way about. It is the peers of the
realm who seek to ally themselves with Bompas; and, instead of trembling
before them in Parliament, he imposes his social and political programme
upon them, turning against land, which is in extremity already, the storm
which has been threatening capital. Mr. Joseph Lebanon's part is not to
accept invitations, but to give them. It is he who gives shooting-parties,
and invites the peers; he allows his house to be used for aristocratic
dances, and if he does not appear at them himself, it is from disdain, not
from discretion. If he be distinguishable from his new companions, it is
through his carefulness in aspirating his h's, his punctiliousness in the
matter of etiquette, of his dress, of his servants' livery, of his stud,
and of his table. And then if he does make solecisms, they are thought
delightful. The only failing for which he could not be forgiven would
be--failure. And he is on his guard.
I am afraid, therefore, that Mr. Pinero's comedies, although very
pleasant, are already somewhat aged at their birth. It is in vain to get
them up in the latest fashions; their age is evident, especially when they
are looked at side by side with that first act of _The Crusaders_, in
which the satire is so modern and so full of life.
Mr. Pinero had not renounced the serious drama, and all his theatrical
friends, watching his progress in light comedy, yet expected to see him in
this field in which, so far, he had achieved but half-successes. On April
24, 1889, the Garrick opened its doors with a drama of his, entitled _The
Profligate_. Marvels were expected from the new theatre which John Hare
had erected for himself and his company. As had been the case with the
opening of the Prince of Wales's, it was felt that the first night at the
Garrick ought to mark a date in the history of the drama. The critics,
"old" and "new," were enthusiastic. "At last," exclaimed Mr. Archer, "we
have a real play; a play which has faults, with a third act which has
none!" Those triumphant assertions, made in the heat of the moment, must
unfortunately be taken with a considerable discount. _The Profligate_ is a
melodrama, treated with delicacy and distinction, but incontestably a
melodrama in every aspect and in every part, that wonderful third act
included; it is even one of the most fanciful, most romantic melodramas
that have been written in England for fifteen years.
Whom shall I recognise as an English character, or even as a human type?
Hugh Murray, the sentimental lawyer, who loses his heart at first sight to
a schoolgirl, and who buries this beautiful passion in the depths of his
heart, to disinter it just at the wrong moment? Janet?--who has given
herself, without the temptation of love, to a seducer in the forties, and
who, during the remainder of the piece perseveres in the accomplishment of
acts of delicacy, of renunciation and of self-abnegation without number,
veritable _tours de force_--_morale_. Leslie?--the heroine of the play, a
schoolgirl who giddily exclaims, a quarter of an hour before her wedding,
that she wonders whether the world will seem of the same colour when she
is the wife of Duncan Renshaw; and who, after a month spent _tete-a-tete_
with her husband in a villa near Florence, where a fresco of Michael
Angelo is to be seen, seems to know life better than we do ourselves. I
know, of course, the explanation that is forthcoming: only a single moment
was required to alter this character, to bring light to that one. It is
precisely in this explanation that I find the mark of melodrama. In
serious psychology, it is not so easy to believe in these "moments"--in
these sudden revelations, these flash-like crises, which transform an
individuality completely, annulling nature and education.
And what is one to say of the "Profligate" himself? He is just the
traditional libertine of all the innumerable English novels published
during the last fifty years, nor is he unknown to our own old Boulevard du
Crime. We see him coldly and deliberately cynical up to the moment when
love touches him with its magic ring. That is a kind of conception that
has passed its prime. Nowadays we are inclined to regard Don Juan as a
kind of dupe, the plaything of woman from puberty to decrepitude. We
picture him to ourselves more engaging when he first begins to sin, and
less easy to convert when he has become hardened to it. We find it
difficult to believe that thirty days of wedded bliss suffice to awake a
conscience which has lain dormant for forty years. If the sense of
morality were innate, it must have shown itself earlier; to have been
acquired and to have reached such a degree of perfection and
sensitiveness, it would have needed more time than the average duration
of a honeymoon.
The situation which delighted so the English critics may be thus
described. The seducer's wife has, without knowing it, given shelter to
his victim. She wishes to help her to confront the man who has wronged
her, and her heart breaks when she sees upon whom the penalty has to fall.
I admit that the scenes leading up to this discovery, contrived with great
ability, produce a veritable anguish in the spectator's mind, and that the
scene between the husband and the wife, which follows after it, is on the
same plane of emotion. But by what a number of improbable coincidences had
this precious moment to be bought! Chance had to take Janet to Paddington
station at the same moment as Leslie and her brother; Chance had to give
this same Janet as "companion" to Miss Stonehay, Leslie's school friend;
to send the Stonehays travelling towards the environs of Florence and the
villa of the Renshaws; to synchronise Janet's illness and Dunstan's
departure so that the two women may interest themselves in each other. And
it is Chance again that makes Janet see Dunstan in Lord Dangars' company
in order that the confusion may arise regarding the two men, and that this
Lord Dangars, who is Dunstan's friend, may become engaged to Irene
Stonehay, the friend of Leslie. And even after Chance has made all these
thoughtful arrangements, Renshaw's happiness might yet be saved, and this
terrible danger by which it is threatened be avoided (and this great scene
of Mr. Pinero's never come to pass), if only Janet were allowed to go as
she desires, and as good sense and modesty make it right that she should.
What is it that makes her stay? Who is it that advises her to bring about
this scandal? No one but Leslie, and I cannot but think her ideas on the
subject singularly gross for so refined a person. This advice she gives is
grounded on the slenderest and most irrational of arguments; a score of
conclusive replies could be given to the pitiful considerations she puts
forward. But Janet has to be convinced. Otherwise, what would become of
the crisis of this "Faultless Third Act"?
What surprises me most of all is the number of useless excrescences with
which the author has encumbered his piece. What is the point of this
solicitor who bores us, and who gives himself such important airs
throughout the play without having the slightest influence upon the
development of the plot? When, by a final stroke of chance, Leslie has
come to know of the absurd love of which he is the victim, why should she
let him see that she has heard? All she can find to say to him is,
"Good-night." And "Good-night" is all he has to say in reply. This scene
in four words could only be sublime or grotesque: I am inclined towards
the latter view of it.
Had I been present at one of the first performances of _The Profligate_, I
should have imagined myself in the presence of a talent that had lost its
way, turning its back on the goal to which it should direct its steps,
seeking beyond the confines of reality for some imaginative source of
tears. I should have been wrong. Mr. Pinero is of a reflective turn of
mind; he learns from his mistakes, and is not blinded by his successes.
Before the echoes of the applause which greeted _The Profligate_ in London
had yet died out in the provinces and abroad, Mr. Pinero was at work upon
another drama, conceived after a fashion quite different--quite contrary,
in fact--a drama in half tints, with realistic touches; a sort of novel in
dialogue. This was _Lady Bountiful_, produced on March 7, 1891.
In _Lady Bountiful_ there is no question of any great fundamental truth,
no great human interest. It is a very unequal piece of work, in turn very
moving and very irritating, for of the two women in whom its interest
centres, it happens unfortunately that one has the sympathy of the author
and the other that of the public. But it showed, at least, that its author
had found its way into the domain of psychological observation.
It was on May 27, 1893, that _The Second Mrs. Tanqueray_ was performed for
the first time at the St. James's Theatre. It must be said, to the credit
of the public, that its success was immediate, universal, and continued.
The critic whom I have quoted so often exclaimed in a burst of joy, that
here was a piece "which Dumas might sign without a blush." No one is
entitled to speak in the name of our greatest dramatist; but quite
recently, when I re-read _The Second Mrs. Tanqueray_, I said to myself
that if the greatest gift of M. Alexandre Dumas was that of embodying deep
psychological and social observation in splendid eloquence or dazzling
wit, this rare faculty is to be found almost in an equal degree in
Pinero's masterpiece.
"The limitations of _Mrs. Tanqueray_," Mr. Archer goes on to say, "are
really the limitations of the dramatic form." I would go further still,
and say that such a piece enlarges the province of the theatre. Minute
details are to be found in it, brought out by intelligent and carefully
thought-out acting, which one would have regarded as too small to attract
attention on the stage, shades that the theatre had left to the novel up
till then. _The Second Mrs. Tanqueray_ is, like _Lady Bountiful_, an acted
novel, but a novel excellently constructed. Its four acts are its four
chief chapters, and it should be noticed that the first two of these
chapters are purely analytical; but emotion is introduced imperceptibly
into the play, and we step from psychology into drama without being
conscious of the passage.
It is not the old, old subject of the courtesan in love, but that of the
mistress raised to the dignity of wife. One of Mr. Pinero's clever notions
is that of having in a sense left passion out of the question. It is
clear, of course, that Tanqueray is very sensible of Paula's personal
attractions. Who would not be, in the presence of so charming a woman?
But there is another feeling mingled with this. He is neither a satyr nor
a stoic, he assures his friend Cayley; he has a quite rational affection
for "Mrs. Jarman"; hitherto she has never met a man who has been good to
her; he, Tanqueray, will be good to her, that is all. Is he absolutely
sincere? Is his affection quite so rational as he asserts? Cayley has his
own ideas upon the subject, and so have we. Mr. Pinero has been charged
with not having told us to what extent philanthropy--the craze for
redeeming--entered into Tanqueray's marriage, to what extent the desire to
have a pretty woman all to himself. But after all, was it incumbent on the
author to give us Tanqueray's psychology? Was it not rather an indication
of his aesthetic sense to keep the husband in the background, to leave him
in half-tints so as not to mar the effect of the principal figure? That
excellent actor, Mr. Alexander, seems to have felt this, for he effaced
himself in the presence of Mrs. Campbell, though quite capable of filling
the stage unassisted, as he showed in _The Masqueraders_ and many other
pieces. In regard to Tanqueray's character, this, however, should be
noted, that, being rich and young enough to keep a mistress without
looking ridiculous, he might, if he chose, have become Paula's lover. If
he decided to make her his wife, it was first of all to give her pleasure,
but also to satisfy a sense of devotion and of virtue in himself. This I
believe to be quite true to life. He was born to believe in women--not to
be deceived by them, but to deceive himself in their regard: which is a
different thing, and perhaps more serious. His first wife was like a nun.
He ends with a courtesan. The law of moral oscillation requires that he
should go from the iceberg (it is thus the first Mrs. Tanqueray is
described to us) to a volcano. Like all weak men, he would play the part
of _un homme fort_. With Paula's arm passed through his, he is ready to
look the world in the face; but when on the eve of their wedding she comes
to see him at eleven o'clock at night, his first remark is, "What will
your coachman say?" This remark lights up his whole character, and for my
part I require nothing more.
But Paula! What a complex character is hers, and how true in all its
aspects! How important to the delineation of this character, and how
suggestive, is everything she says--even her most trifling remarks; with
what tact and cleverness are her very silences contrived! And with what an
infinity of deft and delicate touches has the masterpiece been brought to
perfection! She is a courtesan, but with an elegance of manners which
imparts to her an air of poetry, and which makes her more akin to a Gladys
Harvey than to a Marguerite Gautier. There are women who traverse muddy
ways with so light a step that they do not sink in them, and that one but
guesses where they have passed from little stains upon the tips of their
shoes. One or two traits reveal to us the irregularity of Paula's life;
the mobility of her impressions, the manner at once fanciful and passive
in which she allows chance to regulate her actions. She has forgotten to
order her dinner; her cook, a "beast" who "detests" her, has pretended to
believe that she was not dining at home, and has given himself an evening
out. So she has got herself up in _grande toilette_ and has taken up her
position in her dining-room, her feet on the fender. Here she has fallen
asleep and dreamt. She tells us her dream later, the while she sups off
the dessert of the farewell dinner Tanqueray had given to three old
bachelor friends. To sup instead of dining, does not this in itself
suggest a whole conception of life? Whoever gets into the way of it will
never be able to reconcile himself to the respectable regularity of the
family joint.
Thus it is with her in everything. She has acquired a certain _ton_, now
brusque, now bewitching, an air of Bohemianism, and a whole host of
opinions which could never tally with the role of married woman; and these
characteristics have become embedded in her nature. Her irregularity of
word and deed goes with a like incoherence of thought and feeling. Sombre
moods succeed suddenly to extreme gaiety and vanish as suddenly again. The
idea of suicide comes to her; next moment she bursts into laughter at the
sight of the mournful expression she has evoked on Aubrey's countenance.
She has so serious a way of saying the wildest things, and says the most
serious things so frivolously, that you don't know what to believe; her
every word leaves you under her spell, and this effect is intensified more
and more. She is a really "good" woman, Tanqueray will declare just now to
his friend. It is neither an illusion on his part nor even an
exaggeration. Paula is "good" and loyal; she has kept back from Aubrey
nothing of her past. Better still, she has spent this last day writing out
a general confession, with a precision and scrupulousness in which there
is a touch of childishness, a touch of cynicism, and a touch, I think, of
heroism. She weighs the letter with a smile. It is heavy! She wonders if
the post would take all that for a penny! She says to Aubrey, quite
simply, without affectation of any kind, without any airs of tragedy about
her, that she wants him to read this letter and to think over it; and
then, on the morrow, at the last moment, if he changes his mind, let him
send her a line before eleven o'clock, and--"I--I'll take the blow!"
Aubrey puts the letter into the fire and she throws her arms round his
neck; she tells him quite frankly she had counted upon his doing so, an
admission which would quite spoil her "effect," had she sought one.
Has the question ever been better set? Think of the _Mariage d'Olympe_.
The insolent and hypocritical _gueuse_ stood revealed before she had
uttered half a dozen words. We knew she could never become acclimatised to
that family of honest folk, amongst whom fortune had thrown her. Where,
then, was the problem? All Augier's wonderful cleverness hardly sufficed
to make us await during two hours the punishment of the wretched woman.
Paula is sincere; she is a woman of heart and brain; she is as good as the
women of that world in which she hopes to take her place. In the absence
of a _grande passion_, she feels a grateful tenderness for the gallant
fellow who would lift her up; she is fully resolved to be faithful to him
and to make him happy. We desire ardently her success. Why should she not
succeed?
We learn in the second act. First of all, because, once she is married,
Paula gets bored. The world will not visit her, and custom does not permit
of her taking the initiative. She is a kind of prisoner in the beautiful
country-house in Surrey. The monotonous tranquillity of "home" oppresses
her after the feverish, exciting existence she has led; the quiet wearies
her to death. Here is her account of her day's occupations from hour to
hour.
"In the morning, a drive down to the village, with the groom, to give my
orders to the tradespeople. At lunch, you and Ellean. In the afternoon, a
novel, the newspapers; if fine, another drive--_if_ fine! Tea--you and
Ellean. Then two hours of dusk; then dinner--you and Ellean. Then a game
of Besique, you and I, while Ellean reads a religious book in a dull
corner. Then a yawn from me, another from you, a sigh from Ellean, three
figures suddenly rise--'Good-night! good-night! good-night!' (_Imitating
a kiss._) 'God bless you!' Ah!"
With Cayley she speaks out more strongly. He asks her how she is.
_Paula_ (_walking away to the window_): "Oh, a dog's life, my dear Cayley,
mine."
_Drummle_: "Eh?"
_Paula_: "Doesn't that define a happy marriage? I'm sleek, well-kept,
well-fed, never without a bone to gnaw and fresh straw to lie upon.
(_Gazing out of the window._) Oh, dear me!"
_Drummle_: "H'm, well, I heartily congratulate you on your kennel. The
view from the terrace is superb."
_Paula_: "Yes, I can see London."
_Drummle_: "London! Not quite so far, surely?"
_Paula_: "I can. Also the Mediterranean on a fine day. I wonder what
Algiers looks like this morning from the sea? (_Impulsively_) Oh, Cayley!
do you remember those jolly times on board Peter Jarman's yacht, when we
lay off"--(_Stopping suddenly, seeing Drummle staring at her_).
Has she ceased to love her husband and to appreciate the sacrifice he has
made for her? By no means. When he asks her tenderly what he can do for
her, she tells him he can do nothing more. He has done all he could do. He
has married her. She accuses herself. Fool that she was, why did she ever
want to be married? Because the other women of her world were _not_. The
title of married woman looked so fine, seen from afar. Instead of trying
to make her way into a circle of people who would have nothing to say to
her, why not have lived happily with Aubrey in her own sphere, in which
she would have experienced neither the cold insolences of well-bred people
nor the inexorable uniformity of well-to-do, respectable life?
But these are Paula's least serious trials. There is another woman in the
house--the daughter by the first marriage. She has shut herself up in a
convent, but just when her father is marrying again she decides to resume
her place in his household. This young girl inspires in Paula a double
jealousy. Paula envies her the tenderness shown her by Tanqueray; she
feels that this tenderness is very different from the love she herself
inspires. Then she would fain win the love of this child, who, warned by
some instinct, draws away from her and shrinks from her caresses. It is a
shame, she cries, for after all the girl knows nothing--she ought to love
her. Then, forgetting that love does not come to order, that advice cannot
produce it, that it is begged for in vain, she exclaims to Tanqueray, that
he should command Ellean to love her. This love would do her so much good.
It would expel from her nature that mischievous feeling which carries her
into deeds of rashness and folly.
A neighbour, a lady who has for long been a family friend of the
Tanquerays, comes to call on her at last, but it is only to take her
step-daughter to some extent from under her care. What is it intended to
do? To find some distractions for Ellean and get her married if possible
(it being obvious that Paula cannot take her into society), and thus to
bring about a freer and quieter time for Paula and her husband. But Paula
can see in all this nothing but a conspiracy formed behind her back, and
in which her husband is mixed up. Then ensues a passionate scene in which
bursts out all the terrible violence of this spoilt-child-like character,
embittered by a false position. Now there remains nothing more for us to
learn about her.
When we see Ellean again in the third act, a great change has come over
her. On her travels she has come across a man whom she loves and who wants
her to marry him. Paula is overwhelmed with delight. She sees an
opportunity of playing the part of a mother. She will help on this
love-affair, and Ellean will love her out of gratitude. Already the ice in
which the young girl's heart has been locked is beginning to melt. She is
to be found acknowledging to Paula the feeling of repulsion she at first
had entertained for her, and trying to explain away, and express her
sorrow for, her conduct. But the man who has gained the love of the girl
is one of the former lovers of the woman!
This is the situation which forms the subject of the last two acts, and
which leads Paula in the end to suicide. The circumstance which brings her
face to face with a man whom she had known before her marriage is likely
enough; that which makes of him a suitor for the hand of Ellean is less
natural, but not impossible, and it would be ungracious--after the author
has so richly catered for our psychological curiosity by his rare gifts of
analysis--to carp at the means he has employed of stirring our
sensibility. He has made it clear to us from out the close of the second
act that the domestication of the courtesan is an impossible dream; and
the appearance of Captain Ardale, bringing things to a crisis, does but
render the antagonism between Past and Present, visible, palpable,
crushing. And the Future, what of it? We are to be shown it; for nothing
has been overlooked by the stern logic which informs this play, underlying
and disguising itself, but not altogether hidden, under the aspect of
humour and emotion. Paula, her mind already full of those thoughts of
death she had, as it were, flirted with in the first act, replies to her
husband, who has suggested as a remedy their migration to some distant
land:--She sees her beauty, she tells him, fading little by little, her
beauty that was her one strength, her one unfailing excuse; she sees
herself _tete-a-tete_ with this cruel and insoluble problem, with the
bitter memory of her misdeeds, with the consciousness of the harm she had
suffered and had wrought.... I shall never forget this scene. How her
hoarse voice vibrated, and its accents of despair! How her every word went
to the heart and sank in it! The actress had her share in this great
triumph, and it was one of the strokes of luck attending this fortunate
play that it was the means of revealing a great artist.
Mrs. Patrick Campbell is a woman of Society who was led by circumstances
and an unusually strong vocation to embrace the stage. She is said to have
Italian blood in her veins; hence, no doubt, that nervous delicacy of
hers, that _morbidezza_ which shades, veils, tempers, refines her talent
no less than her beauty. She has neither the originality, nor the
knowledge, nor the voice of Sarah Bernhardt, but she possesses that
magnetic personality of which I have spoken with reference to Irving, and
with which there is no such thing as a bad part. If this personality must
be described, I would say that Mrs. Campbell's province as an actress is
more particularly that of dangerous love. That voice of hers, though it
has but little sonorousness, power, or richness, produces in one a sense
of disquiet and distress, straitens the heart with a kind of fascinating
delicious fear that I would describe as the _curiosite de souffrir_. You
feel that if you love her you are lost, but once you have seen her it is
too late to attempt resistance. The generations which believed in the
human will, which asked for simple tenderness, pert coquetry or imperious
passion in a heroine, would never have understood her. She has come just
in time to lull our dolorous philosophy, to show incarnate in woman the
victim and the instrument of destiny.
It was with the same ally that Mr. Pinero risked his next battle, in
January 1895, at the Garrick. I shall not analyse _The Notorious Mrs.
Ebbsmith_. I acknowledge that the piece is full of charming traits, and
that the melodramatic element has been carefully eliminated from it. But I
am obliged also to say that the author has seized one of the serious
questions of the time, the emancipation of woman, and her revolt,
justified in some respects, against marriage, and that this great subject
has been allowed to slip through his fingers. Agnes Ebbsmith is on the
point of seeking consolation in free love for the troubles and
humiliations of her married life. She has rejected a copy of the Bible
which a friend has offered as a last resource. She has thrown it into the
fire, then in a sudden reaction she rushes to the fireplace, plunges her
arm into the flame, rescues the sacred book, and falls upon her knees. The
scene is a very fine one, and Mrs. Patrick Campbell never failed in it to
bring down the house. But the conversion of Agnes is a _denouement_,--not
a solution, unless Mr. Pinero would have us believe that the modern woman
will find in the Bible a response to all her anxieties, a remedy to all
her ills. It is a delicate thesis, and not wishing to discuss it I shall
remain silent. I prefer to bring my account of his talent to a stop,
provisionally, with this admirable _Mrs. Tanqueray_, which submits and
solves a moral problem at the same time that it sets forth and brings to
its natural close a drama of domestic life.