No. XXIX.--A LADY DRAMATIST.
"YOU must do it at a _Matinee_," said her little crowd of five o'clock
tea-visitors, "and get Mr. ELLISTON DRURY to play the Roman Poet."
One of the company was in earnest. Miss ELMIRA JENKS believed in her
hostess and friend. The others thought it "fun" to "egg on" Miss DE
GONCOURT to make herself ridiculous.
[Illustration]
"And why not take the part of the heroine yourself, dear?--nobody in all
your intellectual set recites so well. Why not act in your own
Tragedy--how delightful it would be!"
"But you forget," said the Lady Dramatist, pouring out for her friend a
fresh cup of tea from a delicious specimen of Nankin blue into an
equally artistic cup of Oriental white. "You forget that I am thirty."
On the contrary, their memories were excellent.
"Thirty-five, if she's a day," was the silent verdict; aloud, it ran
thus:--"My dear, a woman is no older than she looks. You are
twenty-five, and, in the classic dress of the Roman Maiden, you will
appear twenty--not a day older."
"You are very kind," she said; "but flattery is pleasant when it
encourages one's dearest hopes."
"We do not flatter--we speak as critics, and friends," they replied.
Mr. ELLISTON DRURY, the new Tragedian of the Parthenon Theatre, who had
come from the Provinces to astonish London, was the only Actor who had
given Miss DE GONCOURT any real encouragement to persevere in the
direction to which her ambition pointed; but he was full of sympathy,
and knew what it was himself to fight against prejudice, not to say
conspiracy. He had literally hewn his way through the ranks of his
opponents to the position he now held at the Parthenon. It was not a
very high position, it was true, but he had been seen and heard; and the
future was before him.
Similarly, he had argued, in the interests of Dramatic Art, Miss DE
GONCOURT must fight her way. He used the aggressive verb metaphorically,
of course, and in its moral sense; but he meant it to imply all that was
fearless in the conduct of an earnest woman conscious of her literary
and dramatic power--she must fight her way! It had fallen to his lot to
read many original Dramas, but among all the unacted works of his time,
none were so full of promise as Miss DE GONCOURT'S _Before the Dawn_. He
could wish himself no better fortune than the opportunity of creating
the leading _role_ at a West End Theatre.
Miss DE GONCOURT hung upon the music of his words. At least such was her
confession to Miss ELMIRA JENKS, her admirer and satellite, (every
dramatic student has a human satellite, or a confiding dog, and the
latter is generally the most constant) who agreed with her that in Art,
sympathy is everything.
Miss DE GONCOURT may be said to have served an amateur apprenticeship to
the art of the playwright; it had begun at school with Charades; it had
progressed through several seasons of amateur theatricals; it had
culminated in five Acts of blank verse; and apart from the epistolary
appeals that had been made to London Managers, to save the reputation of
native modern dramatists by its immediate production, Miss ELMIRA JENKS
had discussed the work in a certain lady's journal, to which she
contributed, assuring the world that _Before the Dawn_ was worthy of the
noblest efforts of dramatic poetry. Miss DE GONCOURT was also put
forward as an honour to womanhood, having preferred the higher life of
Art to the lower mission of Matrimony; and all that she and her friends
now desired, was a fitting opportunity for the demonstration of the
integrity of her ambition, which was to follow in the footsteps of Mrs.
INCHBALD, JOANNA BAILLIE, and other distinguished lady dramatists. Miss
DE GONCOURT was a spinster and an orphan, with a settled income of three
hundred and fifty pounds a year; and she sat in her little Bedford Park
study from day to day, with a pen in her hand, and a smile on her lips,
a smile of hope and confidence.
It was a dainty room, with a grey dimity dado, that marked off a few old
engravings of poetic and dramatic subjects. The over-mantel was green
and white, with busts of SHAKSPEARE, SHELLEY, JOAN OF ARC, and FLORENCE
NIGHTINGALE, upon its little shelves. There were bookcases and cabinets
here and there, containing favourite authors and relics of great
actresses, such as hair-pins used by HELEN FAUCIT, a shoestring
belonging to RACHEL, and a brooch which had been worn by Mrs. SIDDONS.
Had not these geniuses, watched, waited and suffered? Then what right
had she to be impatient? It must have been a sweet nature that could
philosophise thus in face of an entire cabinet of rejected plays, bound
in white morocco, emblematic of their purity, though destined, it might
be, to revolutionise the present frivolous stage as soon as the
production of _Before the Dawn_ should send both actors and managers to
their author's door ravenous for the right to give her other works to an
astonished and delighted public.
This day of triumph might be nearer than either friends or scoffers
anticipated. Mr. ELLISTON DRURY had taken a warm interest in her work;
had indorsed the advice she had received to try _Before the Dawn_ at a
_Matinee_; had consented to play the leading character; and, what was
more interesting still, had volunteered to coach her in the part of the
heroine, if she was willing to impersonate that poetic and
self-sacrificing creation. Miss DE GONCOURT was willing to place herself
in the hands of Mr. ELLISTON DRURY; Miss DE GONCOURT did place herself
in his hands; and oh the rapture of hearing her words read to the
assembled company of "Artistes" in the Green Room of the Parthenon
Theatre on the day when the parts were distributed! The delight of those
first rehearsals! She felt so much at home on the Stage, that she began
to dream of a pre-existence in which she had been a priestess of Art,
somewhat after the manner of her Roman girl who, crowned with a poisoned
diadem, was sacrificed in the Temple, but to live again with the gods in
a sublimated world of song. Mr. ELLISTON DRURY accompanied her to the
train after each rehearsal, and paid her so much homage, that she began
to associate him in her tender feminine mind with the Roman youth for
whose love she was martyred at the shrine; and, long before the eventful
morning came, Mr. ELLISTON DRURY (who had received a fortnight's notice
at the Parthenon, but still had the future all before him) had made up
his mind to hang up his hat, for good, in the aesthetic little hall of
the DE GONCOURT inside the blue-and-white palings of the Bedford Park
Estate.
"Was it not a success, then, _Before the Dawn_?" Ask the ring of
authors, the conspirators, the tribe of envy, hatred, and malice
assembled on that memorable occasion to crush the new authoress. Ask the
leading actors, who had always dreaded the day when Mr. ELLISTON DRURY
should play a star part in a Metropolitan Theatre. No, Ladies and
Gentlemen, _Before the Dawn_ was a failure. Certain prominent critics
were suborned to say so; and one of them, more cruel than the rest,
declared that all the humorous range of modern Burlesque did not supply
a reminiscence so positively comic as the scene in which the Roman
Maiden, staggering under her poisoned crown (which would fall into an
irresistibly funny angle with the Actress's un-Roman nose), hurled back
upon TIBERIUS CAESAR the curse of the avenging gods.
But they have a consolation, the Lady Dramatist and her illustrious
husband (he did hang up his hat, and his coat, he had little else to
move from his garret in the Strand), in having possibly found a more
useful field of duty than that of an active participation in the work
before the footlights. It has been sarcastically, and we believe
wrongfully asserted by a Tory Earl that critics are men who have failed
as authors; but a similar calumny has been perpetrated by Miss ELMIRA
JENKS (whose satelliteship came to a violent end with the marriage of
her bright particular star to Mr. ELLISTON DRURY) who has not hesitated
to declare in her unscrupulous paper that the modern teachers of
elocution are ladies and gentlemen who have failed as actors and
actresses. Mr. and Mrs. ELLISTON DRURY nevertheless pursue the even
tenor of their way; their elocution classes are well attended; Mrs.
DRURY'S afternoons never lack interesting visitors; and her husband's
occasional Shakspearian recitals at Hammersmith and Putney, inspire the
local critics with eloquent expressions of regret that the degenerate
condition of the stage should condemn so rare an actor to the
drawing-room and the platform.
Mr. ELLISTON DRURY finds this a sufficient balm for his bruised soul;
and his admiring wife declares that walking along the vale of life hand
in hand with ELLISTON, is after all bliss enough, without the added and
questionable joy of being a popular Lady Dramatist.
* * * * *
"THE SATURDAY REVIEW" AT SPITHEAD.--Our Special's account is too late
for this week. He went away on Friday last, and was last seen on board
the new P. & O. ship _Victoria_. Wire just received says, "Steamed
through Fleet in tug. Tender reminiscences. Big guns everywhere. We're
the biggest. Salutations." That's all!
* * * * *
MRS. R. says she is glad her nephew became a good horseman before he was
called to the Bar, as he is always now going on Circus.
* * * * *
[Illustration: FELINE AMENITIES.