We have all been reading Mr. Buckle’s concluding volumes, and when we
have recovered from the fascination of the great man and the splendid
historical pageant they present to us, we dip into them again in search
of trifles agreeable to our own individual taste. And I shall make no
apology for turning for a moment from Disraeli in robes of ceremony, the
friend of Sovereigns, the hero of Congresses, the great statesman and
great Parliament man, to Disraeli the playgoer. That dazzling figure is
not readily thought of as a unit in the common playhouse crowd. Yet it
is with a feeling of relief from the imposing spectacle of great mundane
affairs that you find Disraeli, after receiving in the afternoon the
“awful news” of the Russian ultimatum to Turkey (October, 1876), going
in the evening with his Stafford House hosts to see _Peril_ at the
Haymarket, and pleased with the acting of Mrs. Kendal. The play, he tells
his correspondent, Lady Bradford, is—
“An adaptation from the French _Nos Intimes_—not over-moral, but fairly
transmogrified from the original, and cleverly acted in the chief part—a
woman whom, I doubt not, you, an _habituée_ of the drama, know very
well, but quite new to me. Now she is married, but she was a sister
of Robertson, the playwright. She had evidently studied in the French
school. The whole was good and the theatre was ventilated; so I did not
feel exhausted, and was rather amused, and shd. rather have enjoyed
myself had not the bad news thrown its dark shadow over one’s haunted
consciousness....”
Mrs. Kendal’s training was, I fancy, entirely English, but her acting
was on a level with the best of “the French school.” Disraeli was an old
admirer of French acting, as we know from “Coningsby,” and I think it is
pretty clear from the same source that he particularly liked Déjazet. For
he had Déjazet in mind, I guess, in the member of Villebecque’s troop of
French comedians engaged for the delectation of Lord Monmouth, “a lady
of maturer years who performed the heroines, gay and graceful as May.”
This was the lady, it will be remembered, who saved the situation when
Mlle. Flora broke down. “The failure of Flora had given fresh animation
to her perpetual liveliness. She seemed the very soul of elegant frolic.
In the last scene she figured in male attire; and in air, fashion,
and youth beat Villebecque out of the field. She looked younger than
Coningsby when he went up to his grandpapa.” This is Déjazet to the life.
The whole episode of the French players in “Coningsby” shows Disraeli
as not only an experienced playgoer but a connoisseur of the theatre.
His description of the company is deliciously knowing—from the young
lady who played old woman’s parts, “nothing could be more garrulous and
venerable,” and the old man who “was rather hard, but handy; could take
anything either in the high serious or the low droll,” to the sentimental
lover who “was rather too much bewigged, and spoke too much to the
audience, a fault rare with the French; but this hero had a vague idea
that he was ultimately destined to run off with a princess.”
In “Tancred” there is another, and an entirely charming, glimpse of
French strolling players or strollers who played in French, the Baroni
family—“Baroni; that is, the son of Aaron; the name of old clothesmen in
London, and of Caliphs in Baghdad.” There is no more engaging incident
in the romantic career of Sidonia than his encounter with this family
in a little Flanders town. They played in a barn, to which Sidonia had
taken care that all the little boys should be admitted free, and Mlle.
Josephine advanced warmly cheered by the spectators, “who thought they
were going to have some more tumbling.” It was Racine’s “Andromaque,”
however, that she presented, and “it seemed to Sidonia that he had never
listened to a voice more rich and passionate, to an elocution more
complete; he gazed with admiration on her lightning glance and all the
tumult of her noble brow.” Sidonia played fairy godmother to the whole
family, and “Mlle. Josephine is at this moment [1849] the glory of the
French stage; without any question the most admirable tragic actress
since Clairon, and inferior not even to her.” If for Josephine we read
Rachel, we shall not be far wrong.
Anyhow, it is evident that, when Disraeli thought Mrs. Kendal must have
studied in the French school, he was paying her the highest compliment
at his disposal. It is disappointing that we have no criticism from
Disraeli of Sarah Bernhardt. Matthew Arnold said that Sarah left off
where Rachel began. Disraeli says nothing, which is perhaps significant,
for he did see Sarah. He was first asked to see her play at a party at
Lord Dudley’s, but declined, as he “could not forgo country air.” A
few weeks later, however, he was at the Wiltons’, where “the principal
saloon, turned into a charming theatre, received the world to witness
the heroine of the hour, Sarah Bernhardt.” And that is all. A playgoer
of seventy-five is hardly disposed to take up with new favourites—which
accounts, perhaps, for Disraeli’s verdict on Irving. “I liked the
_Corsican Brothers_ as a melodrama,” he writes to Lady Bradford
(November, 1880), “and never saw anything put cleverer on the stage.
Irving whom I saw for the first time, is third-rate, and never will
improve, but good eno’ for the part he played, tho’ he continually
reminded me of Lord Dudley....” Why “though”?
On another popular favourite he was even harder. Writing again to
Lady Bradford, he says:—“Except at Wycombe Fair, in my youth, I have
never seen anything so bad as _Pinafore_. It was not even a burlesque,
a sort of provincial _Black-eyed Susan_. Princess Mary’s face spoke
volumes of disgust and disappointment, but who cd. have told her to
go there?” Staying later at Hatfield, however, he found all the Cecil
youngsters singing the _Pinafore_ music. A few years earlier he tells
Lady Bradford a story he had just heard from a friend of a visit paid
by a distinguished Opposition party to _The Heir at Law_ at the old
Haymarket. “Into one of the stalls came Ld. Granville; then in a little
time, Gladstone; then, at last, Harty-Tarty! Gladstone laughed very
much at the performance; H.-T. never even smiled. 3 conspirators....”
Another remarkable trio figures in another story. Disraeli had been to
the Aquarium to see a famous ape and the lady who used to be shot out
of a cannon. “Chaffed” (if the word is not improper) about this by the
Queen at the Royal dinner table, Disraeli said, “There were three sights,
madam; Zazel, Pongo, and myself.”
It will be seen that there are few records of Disraeli’s playgoing or
show-going in his old age. Gladstone, we know, was to the last a frequent
playgoer—and, I believe, an enthusiastic admirer of Irving. Disraeli, I
take it, had become rather the book-lover than the playgoer. The humblest
of us may share that taste with the great man, and even take refuge
in his illustrious example for the habit, denounced by the austere, of
reading over solitary meals. Mr. Buckle tells us that “over his solitary
and simple dinner he would read one of his favourite authors, mostly
classics of either Latin, Italian Renaissance, or English eighteenth
century literature, pausing for ten minutes between each course.” That
passage will endear Disraeli to many of us, simple, home-keeping people,
unacquainted with Courts and Parliaments, who feel, perhaps, a little
bewildered amid the processional “drums and tramplings” and the gorgeous
triumphs of his public career.