Fifty years ago to-morrow (February 3rd, 1871) died Thomas William
Robertson, a great reformer of the English drama in his day, but now,
like so many other reformers, little more than a name. His plays have
ceased to hold the stage. Very few of them still allow themselves to be
read. To-day their matter seems, for the most part, poor, thin, trivial,
and their form somewhat naïve. “Robertsonian” has become for the present
generation a meaningless epithet, and “teacup and saucer school” an
empty gibe. Even within a few years of Robertson’s death George Meredith
could only say of him: “In a review of our modern comedies, those of the
late Mr. Robertson would deserve honourable mention.” As the old tag
says, times change and we in them. Robertson is now a “back number.” His
comedies are not classics, for classics are live things; they are merely
historical documents. Yet you have only to turn to such a record as “The
Bancrofts’ Recollections” to see how live these comedies once were, how
stimulating to their time, how enthusiastically they were hailed as a new
birth, a new portent, a new art. Indeed, for my part, when I read the
glowing eulogies of John Oxenford and Tom Taylor and the other critics
of that time I am filled with something like dismay. All that warm (and
rather wordy—it was the way of the ’sixties) appreciation gone dead and
cold! I wonder how many of our own judgments will stand the test of fifty
years. Br—r—r!
Well, to understand Robertson’s success, we have to think ourselves back
into his time. We have to ignore what followed him and to see what he
displaced. Up to his date the theatre, under the great French influence
of the ’thirties, still remained romantic. But that influence was
wearing out. A new influence was making itself felt in France, through
the dialectics of Dumas _fils_ and Augier’s commonsense, though the new
influence still bore trace of the old romanticism, as we can see at
least to-day. _La Dame aux Camélias_, so romantic to-day, was greeted in
1855 as a masterpiece of realism! And it _was_ comparatively realistic,
realistic for its time. But the English theatre, a second-hand theatre,
still stuck to the old French romantic tradition. It lived largely on
adaptations from Scribe. Robertson himself adapted a Scribe play (and not
a bad one), _Bataille de Dames_. He had, however, come under the newer,
the realistic, or romantico-realistic influence. He adapted Augier’s
_L’Aventurière_. Tom Stylus’s pipe in the ballroom (in _Society_) had
previously been dropped by Giboyer in _Les Effrontés_. I cannot help
thinking that the new French reaction had a good deal to do with the
Robertsonian reaction, certainly as much as the influence of Thackeray to
which Sir Arthur Pinero traces it.
But I must let Sir Arthur speak for himself. In a letter in which he has
been so good as to remind me of to-morrow’s date he says:—
“I look upon Robertson as a genius. Not that he wrote anything very
profound, or anything very witty, but because, at a time when the
English stage had sunk to even a lower ebb than it is usually credited
with reaching; when the theatres stank of stale gas and orange-peel and
the higher drama was represented mainly by adaptations from Scribe by
Leicester Buckingham; he had the vision to see that a new public could
be created, and an old and jaded one refreshed, by invoking for dramatic
purposes the spirit, and using some part of the method, of Thackeray.”
This is admirable, and I only wish our dramatists would more often be
tempted into the region of dramatic criticism. All the same I confess
that (after going through all Robertson’s plays) it seems to me to
overrate the Thackerayan influence. There is a little sentimental
cynicism in Robertson and there is much in Thackeray. There is a tipsy
old reprobate in _Pendennis_ and there is another in _Caste_. Tom Stylus
helped to found a newspaper and so did George Warrington. Esther D’Alroy
tried vainly to buckle on her husband’s sword-belt when he was ordered on
service, and Amelia Osborne hovered helplessly about her husband with
his red sash on the eve of Waterloo. But such matters as these are common
property, _communia_, and the artist’s business, which Horace said was
so difficult, is _proprie communia dicere_, to give them an individual
turn. Drunkenness apart I don’t think Eccles is a bit like Costigan. As
to the Thackerayan spirit, would that Robertson had “invoked” it! His
plays might then be classics still, as Thackeray is, instead of merely
documents.
If we are to connect Robertson with some typical Victorian novelist, I
would myself, with all deference to Sir Arthur, suggest Trollope. His
young women, his Naomi Tighes and Bellas, his Polly and Esther Eccles,
strike me as eminently Trollopean. There are traces of Mrs. Proudie in
both Mrs. Sutcliffe and Lady Ptarmigant. But, probably, these also are
only instances of _communia_. Probably the young ladies (and, for all I
know, the old ones, too) were real types of the ’sixties, as we see them
in Leech’s drawings. Bless their sweet baby-faces and their simple hearts
and their pork-pie hats!
The Robertsonian way is often spoken of as a “return to nature.” It is,
in fact, a common eulogy of most reactions in art. “Don Quixote” was a
return to nature, compared with the romances of chivalry, and “Tom Jones”
was a return to nature, compared with “Don Quixote.” The world gradually
changes its point of view and sees the facts of life in a new light.
Artists change with the rest of the world, and give expression to the
new vision. They are hailed as reformers until the next reformation;
they seem to have returned to nature, until the world’s view of “nature”
again changes. I think, as I have said, that Robertson’s work is to be
related to the general anti-romantic reaction that started in France in
mid-nineteenth century. But all reactions keep something of what they
react against, and Robertson’s reaction retains a good deal of romance.
_School_ is as romantic as the German Cinderella-story, on which it was
founded. The central situation of _Caste_—the return home of the husband
given up for dead—is essentially romantic, not a jot less romantic than
in _La joie fait peur_. The scenes at the “Owl’s Roost” in _Society_,
applauded for their daring realism, are realistic presentations of the
last stronghold of the romantic Murger tradition, literary “Bohemia.”
Robertson’s dialogue was often the high-flown lingo of the old romance.
(In dialogue we have “returned to nature” several times over since
his day.) But more often it was not. He astonished and delighted his
contemporaries by making many of his people speak in the theatre as they
spoke out of it. He invented sentimental situations that were charming
then and would be charming now—love-passages in London squares and over
milk-jugs in the moonlight. He had been an actor and a stage manager
and knew how to make the very most of stage resources. Take the scene
of George’s return in _Caste_. There is a cry of “milkaow” and a knock
at the door. “Come in,” cries Polly to the milkman—and in walks with
the milk-can one risen from the dead! This thrilling _coup de théâtre_
is followed, however, by something much better, the pathetic scenes of
Polly’s hysterical joy and her tender artifice in breaking the news to
Esther. I confess that I cannot read these scenes without tears. There
was a quality of freshness and delicate simplicity in Robertson’s work at
its best that was a true “return to nature.” No need, is there? to speak
of the luck his work had in finding such interpreters as the Bancrofts
and their company or of the luck the actors had in finding the work to
interpret—the Bancrofts themselves have already told that tale. But it
all happened half a century ago and I suppose we are not to expect a
future Robertson revival. The past is past. Life is perpetual change. The
more reason for not neglecting occasions of pious commemoration. Let us,
then, give a friendly thought to “Tom” Robertson to-morrow.