for the past five years been a source of genuine delight to me,
charming little May Wirth, of Australian origin, with her lovely dark
eyes, and captivating English accent. If you have a genuine sympathy
for this sort of expression, it is but natural that you want to get
inside the ring, and smell the turf with them, and so it was the
representative of this gifted little woman who brought us together. It
is, in the first place, a pity that there is so little written of the
history of these people, so little material from which to gather the
development of the idea of acrobatics in general, or of any one phase
in particular. It would be impossible to learn who was the first
aerial trapezist, for instance, or where high wire performing was
brought from, just when the trick of adjusting the body to these
difficult and strenuous rhythms was originated. They cannot tell you
themselves. Only if there happens to be more than two generations in
existence can you trace the development of this form of athletic
entertainment. It may have begun with the Egyptians, it may have begun
with the first gypsies.
These people do not write their history, they simply make it among
themselves, and it is handed down through the generations. When I
asked May Wirth for information, she said she knew of none on the
subject, save that she herself sprang from five generations of
acrobats and equestrians, and that it is terrifically hard labour from
beginning to end, equestrianism in particular, since it requires a
knowledge of several if not all the other physical arts combined, such
as high wire walking, handspring and somersault, trapeze work, bars,
ballet dancing, etc.; that she herself had begun as a child, and had
run the entire gamut of these requirements, coming out the finished
product, so to speak, in all but ballet dancing, which she disliked,
and wept always when the time came for her lesson in this department.
When one sees the incomparable brilliancy of this little woman of the
horse, watching her marvellous ground work, which is in itself an
example of virtuosity, one realizes what accomplishment alone can do,
for she is not yet twenty-five, and the art is already in the
condition of genius with her. Five handsome side-wheels round the
ring, and a flying jump on the horse, then several complete
somersaults on the horse's back while he is in movement round the
ring, is not to be slighted for consideration, and if, as I have said,
you have a love or even a fancy for this sort of entertainment, you
all but worship the little lady for the thrill she gives you through
this consummate mastery of hers.
"I always wanted to do what the boys could do, and I was never
satisfied until I had accomplished it." This was the strongest
assertion the little lady of the horse was moved to make while in
conversation, and that the ring is more beautiful to work in than on a
mat upon a stage, for it is in the ring that the horse is most at
home, it is easier for him, and gives him greater muscular freedom,
with the result naturally, that it is easier on the muscles of the
human body while in action. I have never tired of this species of
entertainment. It has always impressed me as being the most natural
form of transposed physical culture, esthetically speaking. It does
for the eye, if you are sensitive, what music does for the ear. It
gives the body a chance to show its exquisite rhythmic beauty, as no
other form of athletics can, for it is the beautiful plastic of the
body, harmonically arranged for personal delight.
It is something for so young a woman to have walked away with first
honours in her chosen field, yet like the true artist that she is, she
is thinking always of how she can beautify her accomplishment to a
still greater degree. She is mistress of a very difficult art, and yet
the brilliancy of her performance makes it seem as if it were but the
experiment of an afternoon, in the out-of-doors. Like all fine
artists, she has brushed away from sight all aspects of labour, and
presents you, with astounding ease, the apparent easiness of the
thing. She is powerfully built, and her muscles are master of
coordination, such as would be the envy of multitudes of men, and
with all this power, she is as simple in her manner and appearance as
is the young debutante at her coming out function. You are impressed
with her sweetness and refinement, first of all, and the utter lack of
show about her, as also with her brother who is a dapper young man of
the very English type, who works with her, and acts as the
dress-suited gentleman in this acrobatic ringplay of theirs. Three
other members of her family take part also with her, the
ring-mistress, a woman of possibly forty, acting as host, looking
exceptionally well, handsome indeed, in grey and silver evening dress,
with fine dark eyes and an older sister who opens the performance with
some good work. This seems to me to be the modern touch, for there was
a time when it was always the very well groomed ringmaster, with top
hat and monocle, who acted as host of the ring.
It will likewise be remembered by those who saw the Hannafords at the
circus, that they were also possessed of a very handsome
ring-mistress, elegantly gowned, both of these older ladies lending
great distinction, by their presence, to already brilliant
performances. I would be very pleased to make myself historian for
these fine artists, these esthetes of muscular melody. I should like
very much to be spokesman for them, and point out to an enforcedly
ignorant public, the beauties of this line of artistic expression, and
to give historical account of the development of these various
picturesque athletic arts. Alas, that is not possible, for it must
remain forever in the limbo of tradition.
We shall have to be grateful beyond expression for the beautiful art
of May Wirth, and devote less enthusiasm to asking of when and how it
came about. To have established one's art at the perfect point in
one's girlhood, is it not achievement, is it not genius itself?
Charming little May Wirth, first equestrienne of the world, I
congratulate you for your beautiful presentation, for the excellence
of its technique, and for the grace and fascination contained therein.
Triumph in youth, victory in the heroic period of life, that surely is
sufficient. Let the bays fall upon her young head gleefully, for she
earned them with patience, devotion, intelligence, and very hard
labours. Salutations, little lady of the white horse! How charming,
how simple she was, the little equestrienne as she rode away from the
door of the huge theatre, in her pale blue touring car. "I love the
audiences here in this great theatre, but O, I love the circus so much
more!" These were the sentiments of the little performer as she rode
away. She is now touring, performing under the huge canvases in the
open areas of the middle West, and the little traveling circus is on
its way over the mountains. Fascinating people, and a fascinating life
for whom there is not, and probably never will be, a written history;
the story of whose origin lies almost as buried as that of the
primitive peoples. Charming rovers, content with life near to the
bright sky, charming people, for whom life is but one long day in
which to make beautiful their bodies, and make joyful the eyes of
those who love to look at them!
JOHN BARRYMORE IN PETER IBBETSON
The vicissitudes of the young boy along the vague, precarious way, the
longing to find the reality of the dream--the heart that knew him
best--a study in sentimentality, the pathetic wanderings of a "little
boy lost" in the dream of childhood, and the "little boy found" in the
arms of his loved mother, with all those touches that are painful and
all that are exquisite and poignant in their beauty--such is the
picture presented by John Barrymore, as nearly perfect as any artist
can be, in "Peter Ibbetson." Certainly it is as finished a creation in
its sense of form, and of color, replete with a finesse of rare
loveliness, as gratifying a performance, to my notion, as has been
seen on our stage for many years. Perhaps if the author, recalling
vain pasts, could realize the scum of saccharinity in which the play
is utterly submerged, and that it struggles with great difficulty to
survive the nesselrodelike sweetness with which it is surfeited, he
would recognize the real distinction that Barrymore lends to a rôle so
clogged by the honeyed sentimentality covering most of the scenes.
Barrymore gives us that "quickened sense" of the life of the young
man, a portrayal which takes the eye by "its fine edge of light," a
portrayal clear and cool, elevated to a fine loftiness in his
rendering.
The actor has accomplished this by means of a nice knowledge of what
symbolic expression means to the art of the stage. He is certainly a
painter of pictures and moods, the idea and his image perfectly
commingled, endowing this mediocre play with true charm by the
distinction he lends it, by sheer discretion, and by a power of
selection. All this he brings to a play which, if it had been written
nowadays, would certainly have convicted its author, and justly too,
of having written to stimulate the lachrymal effusions of the
shop-girl, a play about which she might telephone her girl friend, at
which she might eat bon bons, and powder her nose again for the
street. No artist, no accepted artist, has given a more suggestive
rendering than has Barrymore here. It would be difficult to say where
he is at his best, except that the first half of the play counts for
most in point of strength and opportunity.
A tall frail young man, we find him, blanched with wonder and with awe
at the perplexity of life, seeking a solution of things by means of
the dream, as only the dreamer and the visionary can, lost from first
to last, seemingly unloved in the ways boys think they want to be
loved; that is, the shy longing boy, afraid of all things, and mostly
of himself, in the period just this side of sex revelation. He is the
neophyte--the homeless, pathetic Peter, perplexed with the strangeness
of things real and temporal--vision and memory counting for all there
is of reality to him, with life itself a thing as yet untasted. Who
shall forget (who has a love for real expression) the entrance of
Peter into the drawing-room of Mrs. Deane, the pale flowery wisp of a
boy walking as it were into a garden of pungent spices and herbs, and
of actions so alien to his own? We are given at this moment the
keynote of mastery in delicate suggestion, which never fails
throughout the play, tedious as it is, overdrawn on the side of
symbolism and mystical insinuation.
One sits with difficulty through many of the moments, the literary
quality of them is so wretched. They cloy the ear, and the mind that
has been made sensitive, desiring something of a finer type of
stimulation. Barrymore has evoked, so we may call it, a cold
method--against a background of what could have been overheated acting
or at least a superabundance of physical attack--the warmth of the
play's tender sentimentalities; yet he covers them with a still
spiritual ardor which is their very essence, extracting all the
delicate nuances and arranging them with a fine sense of proportion.
It is as difficult an accomplishment for a man as one can imagine. For
it is not given to many to act with this degree of whiteness, devoid
of off colorings or alien tones. This performance of Barrymore in its
spiritual richness, its elegance, finesse, and intelligence, has not
been equaled for me since I saw the great geniuses Paul Orleneff and
Eleonora Duse.
It is to be at once observed that here is a keen pictorial mind, a
mind which visualizes perfectly for itself the chiaroscuro aspects of
the emotion, as well as the spiritual, for Barrymore gives them with
an almost unerring felicity, and rounds out the portrayal which in any
other hands would suffer, but Barrymore has the special power to feel
the value of reticence in all good art, the need for complete
subjection of personal enthusiasm to the force of ideas. His art is
akin to the art of silver-point, which, as is known, is an art of
directness of touch, and final in the instant of execution, leaving no
room whatever for accident or untoward excitement of nerve.
We shall wait long for the silver suggestiveness such as Barrymore
gives us when Peter gets his first glimpse of Mary, Duchess of Towers.
Who else could convey his realization of her beauty, and the quality
of reminiscence that lingers about her, of the rapt amaze as he stands
by the mantel-piece looking through the door into the space where he
sees her in the midst of dancers under a crystal chandelier somewhere
not very distant? Or the moment when he finds her bouquet neglected on
the table in the drawing-room, with her lace shawl not far from his
hands? Or when he finds himself alone, pressing his lips into the
depth of the flowers as the curtain gives the finale to the scene with
the whispered "l'amour"! These are moments of a real lyrist, and
would match any line of Banville, of Ronsard, or of Austin Dobson for
delicacy of touch and feeling, for freshness, and for the precise
spiritual gesture, the "intonation" of action requisite to relieve the
moments from what might otherwise revert to commonplace
sentimentality.
Whatever the prejudice may be against all these emotions glacé with
sugary frosting, we feel that his art has brought them into being with
an unmistakable gift of refinement coupled with superb style. How an
artist like Beardsley would have revelled in these moments is easy to
conjecture. For here is the quintessence of intellectualized
aquarelle, and these touches would surely have brought into being
another "Pierrot of the Minute"--a new line drawing out of a period he
knew and loved well. These touches would have been graced by the hand
of that artist, or by another of equal delicacy of appreciation,
Charles Conder--unforgettable spaces replete with the essence of
fancy, of dream, of those farther recesses of the imagination.
Although technically and historically Barrymore has the advantage of
excellent traditions, he nevertheless rests entirely upon his own
achievements, separate and individual in his understanding of what
constitutes plastic power in art. He has a peculiar and most sensitive
temper, which can arrange points of relation in juxtaposition with a
keen sense of form as well as of substance. He is, one might say, a
masterly draftsman with a rich cool sense of color, whose work has
something of the still force of a drawing of Ingres with, as well, the
sensitive detail one finds in a Redon, like a beautiful drawing on
stone. An excellent knowledge of dramatic contrasts is displayed by
the brothers Barrymore, John and Lionel, in the murder scene, one of
the finest we have seen for many years, technically even, splendid,
and direct, concise in movement. Every superfluous gesture has been
eliminated. From the moment of Peter's locking the door upon his uncle
the scene is wrapped in the very coils of catastrophe, almost
Euripedean in its inevitability. All of this episode is kept strictly
within the realm of the imagination. It is an episode of hatred, of
which there is sure to be at least one in the life of every young
sensitive, when every boy wants, at any rate somewhere in his mind, to
destroy some influence or other which is alien or hateful to him. The
scene emphasizes once again the beauty of technical power for its own
sake, the thrill of discarding all that is not immediately essential
to simple and direct realization.
Little can be said of the play beyond this point, for it dwindles off
into sentimental mystification which cannot be enjoyed by anyone under
fifty, or appreciated by anyone under eighteen. It gives opportunity
merely for settings and some rare moments of costuming, the lady with
the battledore reminding one a deal of a good Manet. This and, of
course, the splendid appearance of the Duchess of Towers in the first
act--all these touches furnish more than a satisfying background for
the very shy and frail Peter.
This performance of Barrymore holds for me the first and last
requisite of organized conception in art--poise, clarity, and perfect
suggestibility. Its intellectual soundness rules the emotional
extravagance, giving form to what--for lack of form--so often perishes
under an excess of energy, which the ignorant actor substitutes for
the plastic element in all art. It has the attitude, this performance,
almost of diffidence to one's subject-matter, except as the intellect
judges clearly and coolly. Thus, in the sense of esthetic reality, are
all aspects clarified and made real. From the outward inward, or from
the inward outward, surface to depth or depth to surface--it is
difficult to say which is the precise method of approach. John
Barrymore has mastered the evasive subtlety therein, which makes him
one of our greatest artists. The future will surely wait for his riper
contributions, and we may think of him as one of our foremost artists,
among the few, "one of a small band," as the great novelist once said
of the great poet.
PART THREE
LA CLOSERIE DE LILAS
Divine Tuesday! I had wondered if those remarkable evenings of
conversation in the rue de Rome with Mallarmé as host, and Henri de
Regnier as guest, among many others, had been the inspiration of the
evenings at the Closerie de Lilas, where I so often sat of an evening,
watching the numbers of esthetes gather, filling the entire café, rain
or shine, waiting unquestionably, for it pervaded the air always, the
feeling of suspense, of a dinner without host, of a wedding without
bridegroom, in any event waiting for the real genius of the evening,
le grand maitre prince de poètes, Paul Fort. The interesting book of
Amy Lowell's, "Six French Poets," recalls these Tuesday evenings
vividly to my mind, and a number of episodes in connection with the
idea of poetry in Paris.
Poetry an event? A rather remarkable notion it would seem, and yet
this was always so, it was a constituent of the day's passing, there
was never a part of the day in this arrondissement, when you would not
find here, there, everywhere, from the Boul-Mich up, down Montparnasse
to Lavenue's, and back to the Closerie, groups of a few or of many,
obviously the artist or poet type, sometimes very nattily dressed,
often the reverse, but you found them talking upon one theme, art,
meaning either poetry or painting, cubistes, futuristes, orphistes and
doubtless every "iste" in poetry from the symboliste period up to the
"unanimistes" of the present time, or the then present time nearly two
years before the war. It was a bit novel, even for a sensitive
American, sitting there, realizing that it was all in the name of art,
and for the heralding of genius--a kind of sublimated recruiting
meeting for the enlistment in the army of expression of personality,
or for the saving of the soul of poetry.
It was a spectacle, edifying in its purport, or even a little
distressing if one had no belief in a sense of humour, for there were
moments of absurdity about it as there is sure to be in a room filled
with any type of concerted egotism. But you did not forget the raison
d'etre of it all, you did not forget that when the "prince" arrived
there was the spirit of true celebration about it, the celebration not
only of an arrived artist, but of an idea close to the hearts and
minds of those present, and you had a sense, too, of what it must have
been like in that circle of, no doubt, a higher average of adherents,
in the drawing room of the genius Mallarmé, who, from all accounts,
was as perfected in the art of conversation, as he was in expression
in art. When I read Miss Lowell's chapter on Henri de Regnier, I find
myself before the door of the Mallarmé house in the rue de Rome,
probably the only American guest, on that Sunday morning in June, just
one given a privilege that could not mean as much as if I had been
more conversant with the delicacies of the language.
It was the occasion of the placing of a tablet of homage to the great
poet, at which ceremony Henri de Regnier himself was the chief
speaker: a tall, very aristocratic, very elegant looking Frenchman,
not any more to be called young, nor yet to be called old, but
conspicuously simple, dignified, dressed in a manner of a gentleman of
the first order, standing upon a chair, speaking, as one would
imagine, with a flow of words which were the epitome of music itself
to the ear. I had been invited by a poet well known in Paris, with
several volumes to his credit and by a young literary woman, both of
whom spoke English very creditably. After the ceremonies, which were
very brief, and at which Madame Mallarmé herself was present, standing
near the speaker, de Regnier, the entire company repaired to a
restaurant near the Place Clichy, if I remember rightly. My hostess
named for me the various guests as they appeared, Madame Rachilde,
Reynaldo Hahn, André Gide, and a dozen other names less conspicuous,
perhaps, excepting one, Léon Dierx, who was an old man, and whose
death was announced about the city some days later. It was, needless
to say, a conspicuous company and the dinner went off very quietly,
allowing of course for the always feverish sound of the conversation
of many people talking in a not very large room.
But all these suggestions recall for me once more what such things
mean to a people like the French, or, let one say, Europeans as well.
I wonder what poetry or even painting will do, if they shall rise to
such a state in this country that we shall find our masters of
literature holding audience with this degree of interest like Fort, or
as did all the great masters of literature in Paris, hold forth in the
name of art, a divine Tuesday set apart for the admirable worship of
poetry, or of things esthetic. I can imagine Amy Lowell doing
something of this sort after the custom of those masters she so
admires, with her seemingly quenchless enthusiasms for all that is
modern in poetry. I think we shall wait long for that, for the time
when we shall have our best esthetics over the coffee, at the curbside
under the trees with the sun shining upon it, or the shadow of the
evening lending its sanction, under the magnetic influence of such a
one as Paul Fort or Francis Jammes, or Emile Verhaeren--as it was once
to be had among such as Verlaine, Baudelaire and that high company of
distinguished painters who are now famous among us.
The studio of Gertude Stein, that quiet yet always lively place in the
rue de Fleurus, is the only room I have ever been in where this spirit
was organized to a similar degree, for here you had the sense of the
real importance of painting, as it used to be thought of in the days
of Pissarro, Manet, Degas, and the others, and you had much, in all
human ways, out of an evening there, and, most of all, you had a fund
of good humour thrust at you, and the conversation took on, not the
quality of poetic prose spoken, as you had the quality of yourself and
others, a kind of William James intimacy, which, as everyone knows, is
style bringing the universe of ideas to your door in terms of your own
sensations. There may have been a touch of all this at the once famed
Brook Farm, but I fancy it was rather chill in its severity.
There is something of charm in the French idea of taking their
discussions to the sunlight or the shadow under the stars, either
within or outside the café, where you feel the passing of the world,
and the poetry is of one piece with life itself, not the result of
stuffy studios, and excessively ornate library corners, where books
crowd out the quality of people and things. You felt that the café was
the place for it, and if the acrobat came and sang, it was all of one
fabric and it was as good for the poetry, as it was for the eye and
the ear that absorbed it. Despite the different phases of the
spectacle of Tuesday, at the Closerie de Lilas, you had the feeling of
its splendour, its excellence, and, most of all, of its reality, its
relationship to every other phase of life, and not of the
hypersensitivity of the thing as we still consider it among ourselves
in general; and if you heard the name of Paul Fort, or Francis Jammes,
it was a definite issue in daily life, equal with the name of the
great statesmen in importance, you were being introduced into a
sphere of activities of the utmost importance, _that_ poetry was
something to be reckoned with.