TŌKYŌ, March, 1899.
DEAR McDONALD,--I don't know what to say about "Cyrano de Bergerac" as a
poem, except that as for fine workmanship, it is what we should expect
the best dramatic French prosody of this sort to be. The verse-smith
is certainly a great craftsman. But was the subject worth the labour
spent upon it? I have no doubt that upon the French stage the effect
would be glorious,--exciting,--splendid: all that sort of thing; and
the story is "Frenchy,"--wrap-me-up-in-the-flag-of-honour style of
extravagance. It isn't natural--that is a great fault. Why it should
please English and American readers I can't quite see: I don't believe
the approbation is quite genuine,--any more than the admiration for
Bernhardt was genuine on the part of those who went to see her without
knowing a word of her language. I can understand why Frenchmen should
enthusiastically praise the book, but not why Americans should. The
heroine is a selfish, uninteresting little "chit;" the other characters
are without any sympathetic quality that I can find. Cyrano wanting to
fight with everybody about his nose--to impose his nose on the world
at the point of the sword, while perpetrating rhymes the while--surely
is not a very grand person. No poet could make such a nose attractive.
We can forget the nose of Mephistopheles because his wit and force
dazzle us; but Mephistopheles has no weaknesses,--not at least in the
first part of "Faust." Cyrano has many; and one even suspects that his
virtues are the outgrowth of his despair about his nose. But I am glad
to have read the wonderful thing; and I shall prize the book as long as
I live,--because it came up here in your coat-pocket, and was given me
with a smile and a twinkle of the eye that were (in my poor judgement)
incomparably more beautiful than the writer's best lines; for these
latter are not quite out of the heart, you know.
Speaking of an ugly subject for heroic treatment, I was thinking to-day
about something that you would have done better than the man who did
it,--the ugly subject being a hairy caterpillar in a salad at a banquet.
The lady of the palace had ladled the salad and the caterpillar into
the plate of some admiral or commodore, and saw what she had done when
it was too late. The seaman caught her horrified eye, held it, and,
smiling, swallowed the caterpillar unseen by the other guests. After
the banquet, the beauty came to thank him--out of the innermost rosy
chamber of her heart--when he is reported to have said: "Why, Madam,
did you think that I would permit your pleasure of the evening to be
spoiled by a miserable G--d d--d caterpillar!" Yes, you would have
consumed the caterpillar; but you would not have "cussed" in the closing
scene--though that was a lovable profanity in a man of the older school.
Well, I think that commodore, or whatever his title may have been, a
better man out and out than Cyrano. He would have done just as much, and
made no fuss at all about it. Affectionately,