Kitabı oku: «Theodore Watts-Dunton: Poet, Novelist, Critic», sayfa 7

 
And he the walking lord of gipsy lore!
How often ’mid the deer that grazed the park,
Or in the fields and heath and windy moor,
Made musical with many a soaring lark,
Have we not held brisk commune with him there,
While Lavengro, there towering by your side,
With rose complexion and bright silvery hair,
Would stop amid his swift and lounging stride
To tell the legends of the fading race —
As at the summons of his piercing glance,
Its story peopling his brown eyes and face,
While you called up that pendant of romance
To Petulengro with his boxing glory,
Your Amazonian Sinfi’s noble story!
 

In the ‘Encyclopædia Britannica’ and in Chambers’ ‘Cyclopædia of English Literature,’ and scattered through scores of articles in the ‘Athenæum,’ I find descriptions of Borrow and allusions to him without number. They afford absolutely the only portrait of that wonderful man that exists or is ever likely to exist. But, of course, it is quite impossible for me to fill my pages with Borrow when there are so many more important figures waiting to be introduced. Still, I must find room for the most brilliant little Borrow scene of all, for it will flush these pages with a colour which I feel they need. Mr. Watts-Dunton has been described as the most picturesque of all living writers, whether in verse or in prose, and it is not for me to gainsay that judgment; but never, I think, is he so picturesque as when he is writing about Borrow.

I am not quite clear as to where the following picture of gypsy life is to be localized; but the scenery seems to be that of the part of England where East Anglia and the Midlands join. It adds interest to the incident to know that the beautiful gypsy girl was the prototype of Rhona Boswell, and that Dereham is George Borrow. This also is a chapter from the unpublished story before mentioned, which was afterwards modified to be used in an introductory essay to another of Borrow’s books: —

“It was in the late summer, just before the trees were clothed with what Dereham called ‘gypsy gold,’ and the bright green of the foliage showed scarcely a touch of bronze – at that very moment, indeed, when the spirits of all the wild flowers that have left the commons and the hedgerows seem to come back for an hour and mingle their half-forgotten perfumes with the new breath of calamint, ground ivy, and pimpernel. Dereham gave me as hearty a greeting as so shy a man could give. He told me that he was bound for a certain camp of gryengroes, old friends of his in his wandering days. In conversation I reminded him of our previous talk, and I told him I chanced at that very moment to have in my pocket a copy of the volume of Matthew Arnold in which appears ‘The Scholar-Gypsy.’ Dereham said he well remembered my directing his attention to ‘The Scholar-Gypsy.’ After listening attentively to it, Dereham declared that there was scarcely any latter-day poetry worth reading, and also that, whatever the merits of Matthew Arnold’s poem might be, from any supposed artistic point of view, it showed that Arnold had no conception of the Romany temper, and that no gypsy could sympathise with it, or even understand its motive in the least degree. I challenged this, contending that howsoever Arnold’s classic language might soar above a gypsy’s intelligence, the motive was so clearly developed that the most illiterate person could grasp it.

‘I wish,’ said Dereham, ‘you would come with me to the camp and try the poem upon the first intelligent gypsy woman we meet at the camp. As to gypsy men,’ said he, ‘they are too prosaic to furnish a fair test.’

We agreed, and as we were walking across the country Dereham became very communicative, and talked very volubly upon gentility-nonsense, and many other pet subjects of his. I already knew that he was no lover of the aristocracy of England, or, as he called them, the ‘trumpery great,’ although in other regards he was such a John Bull. By this time we had proceeded a good way on our little expedition. As we were walking along, Dereham’s eyes, which were as longsighted as a gypsy’s, perceived a white speck in a twisted old hawthorn-bush some distance off. He stopped and said: ‘At first I thought that white speck in the bush was a piece of paper, but it’s a magpie,’ – next to the water-wagtail, the gypsies’ most famous bird. On going up to the bush we discovered a magpie couched among the leaves. As it did not stir at our approach, I said to him: ‘It is wounded – or else dying – or is it a tamed bird escaped from a cage?’ ‘Hawk!’ said Dereham laconically, and turned up his face and gazed into the sky. ‘The magpie is waiting till the hawk has caught his quarry and made his meal. I fancied he has himself been ‘chivvied’ by the hawk, as the gypsies would say.’

And there, sure enough, beneath one of the silver clouds that speckled the dazzling blue, a hawk – one of the kind which takes its prey in the open rather than in the thick woodlands – was wheeling up and up, trying its best to get above a poor little lark in order to swoop at and devour it. That the magpie had seen the hawk and had been a witness of the opening of the tragedy of the lark was evident, for in its dread of the common foe of all well-intentioned and honest birds, it had forgotten its fear of all creatures except the hawk. Man, in such a crisis as this, it looked upon as a protecting friend.

As we were gazing at the bird a woman’s voice at our elbows said, —

‘It’s lucky to chivvy the hawk what chivvies a magpie. I shall stop here till the hawk’s flew away.’

We turned round, and there stood a fine young gypsy woman, carrying, gypsy fashion, a weakly child that in spite of its sallow and wasted cheek proclaimed itself to be hers. By her side stood a young gypsy girl. She was beautiful – quite remarkably so – but her beauty was not of the typical Romany kind. It was, as I afterwards learned, more like the beauty of a Capri girl.

She was bareheaded – there was not even a gypsy handkerchief on her head – her hair was not plaited, and was not smooth and glossy like a gypsy girl’s hair, but flowed thick and heavy and rippling down the back of her neck and upon her shoulders. In the tumbled tresses glittered certain objects, which at first sight seemed to be jewels. They were small dead dragonflies, of the crimson kind called ‘sylphs.’

To Dereham these gypsies were evidently well known. The woman with the child was one of the Boswells; I dare not say what was her connection, if any, with ‘Boswell the Great’ – I mean Sylvester Boswell, the grammarian and ‘well-known and popalated gypsy of Codling Gap,’ who, on a memorable occasion, wrote so eloquently about the superiority of the gypsy mode of life to all others, ‘on the accont of health, sweetness of air, and for enjoying the pleasure of Nature’s life.’

Dereham told me in a whisper that her name was Perpinia, and that the other gypsy, the girl of the dragon-flies, was the famous beauty of the neighbourhood – Rhona Boswell, of whom many stories had reached him with regard to Percy Aylwin, a relative of Rosamond’s father.

After greeting the two, Dereham looked at the weakling child with the deepest interest, and said to the mother: ‘This chavo ought not to look like that – with such a mother as you, Perpinia.’ ‘And with such a daddy, too,’ said she. ‘Mike’s stronger for a man nor even I am for a woman’ – a glow of wifely pride passing over her face; ‘and as to good looks, it’s him as has got the good looks, not me. But none on us can’t make it out about the chavo. He’s so weak and sick he don’t look as if he belonged to Boswell’s breed at all.’

‘How many pipes of tobacco do you smoke in a day?’ said I, looking at the great black cutty pipe protruding from Perpinia’s finely cut lips, and seeming strangely out of place there.

‘Can’t say,’ said she, laughing.

‘About as many as she can afford to buy,’ interrupted ‘the beauty of the Ouse,’ as Rhona Boswell was called. ‘That’s all. Mike don’t like her a-smokin’. He says it makes her look like a old Londra Irish woman in Common Garding Market.’

‘You must not smoke another pipe,’ said I to the mother – ‘not another pipe till the child leaves the breast.’

‘What?’ said Perpinia defiantly. ‘As if I could live without my pipe!’

‘Fancy Pep a-living without her baccy!’ laughed Rhona.

‘Your child can’t live with it,’ said I to Perpinia. ‘That pipe of yours is full of a poison called nicotine.’

‘Nick what?’ said Rhona, laughing. ‘That’s a new kind of nick. Why, you smoke yourself!’

‘Nicotine,’ said I. ‘And the first part of Pep’s body that the poison gets into is her breast, and – ’

‘Gets into my burk,’ ¹¹ said Perpinia. ‘Get along wi’ ye.’

‘Yes.’

‘Do it pison Pep’s milk?’ said Rhona.

‘Yes.’

‘That ain’t true,’ said Perpinia – ‘can’t be true.’

‘It is true,’ said I. ‘If you don’t give up that pipe for a time, the child will die, or else be a ricketty thing all his life. If you do give it up, it will grow up to be as fine a gypsy as ever your husband can be.’

‘Chavo agin pipe, Pep!’ said Rhona.

‘Lend me your pipe, Perpinia,’ said Dereham, in that hail-fellow-well-met tone of his, which he reserved for the Romanies – a tone which no Romany could ever resist. And he took it gently from the woman’s lips. ‘Don’t smoke any more till I come to the camp and see the chavo again.’

‘He be’s a good friend to the Romanies,’ said Rhona, in an appeasing tone.

‘That’s true,’ said the woman; ‘but he’s no business to take my pipe out o’ my mouth for all that.’

She soon began to smile again, however, and let Dereham retain the pipe. Dereham and I then moved away towards the dusty high-road leading to the camp, and were joined by Rhona. Perpinia remained, keeping guard over the magpie that was to bring luck to the sinking child.

It was determined now that Rhona was the very person to be used as the test-critic of the Romany mind upon Arnold’s poem, for she was exceptionally intelligent. So instead of going to the camp, the oddly assorted little party of three struck across the ferns, gorse, and heather towards ‘Kingfisher brook,’ and when we reached it we sat down on a fallen tree.

Nothing, as afterwards I came to know, delights a gypsy girl so much, in whatever country she may be born, as to listen to a story either told or read to her, and when I pulled my book from my pocket the gypsy girl began to clap her hands. Her anticipation of enjoyment sent over her face a warm glow.

Her complexion, though darker than an English girl’s, was rather lighter than an ordinary gypsy’s. Her eyes were of an indescribable hue; but an artist who has since then painted her portrait for me, described it as a mingling of pansy purple and dark tawny. The pupils were so large that, being set in the somewhat almond-shaped and long-eyelashed lids of her race, they were partly curtained both above and below, and this had the peculiar effect of making the eyes seem always a little contracted and just about to smile. The great size and deep richness of the eyes made the straight little nose seem smaller than it really was; they also lessened the apparent size of the mouth, which, red as a rosebud, looked quite small until she laughed, when the white teeth made quite a wide glitter.

Before three lines of the poem had been read she jumped up and cried, ‘Look at the Devil’s needles! They’re come to sew my eyes up for killing their brothers.’

And surely enough a gigantic dragon-fly, whose body-armour of sky blue and jet black, and great lace-woven wings, shining like a rainbow gauze, caught the sun as he swept dazzling by, did really seem to be attracted either by the wings of his dead brothers or by the lights shed from the girl’s eyes.

‘I dussn’t set here,’ said she. ‘Us Romanies call this ‘Dragon-fly Brook.’ And that’s the king o’ the dragon-flies: he lives here.’

As she rose she seemed to be surrounded by dragon-flies of about a dozen different species of all sizes, some crimson, some bronze, some green and gold, whirling and dancing round her as if they meant to justify their Romany name and sew up the girl’s eyes.

‘The Romanies call them the Devil’s needles,’ said Dereham; ‘their business is to sew up pretty girls’ eyes.’

In a second, however, they all vanished, and the girl after a while sat down again to listen to the ‘lil,’ as she called the story.

Glanville’s prose story, upon which Arnold’s poem is based, was read first. In this Rhona was much interested. But when I went on to read to her Arnold’s poem, though her eyes flashed now and then at the lovely bits of description – for the country about Oxford is quite remarkably like the country in which she was born – she looked sadly bewildered, and then asked to have it all read again. After a second reading she said in a meditative way: ‘Can’t make out what the lil’s all about – seems all about nothink! Seems to me that the pretty sights what makes a Romany fit to jump out o’ her skin for joy makes this ’ere gorgio want to cry. What a rum lot gorgios is surely!’

And then she sprang up and ran off towards the camp with the agility of a greyhound, turning round every few moments, pirouetting and laughing aloud.

‘Let’s go to the camp!’ said Dereham. ‘That was all true about the nicotine – was it not?’

‘Partly, I think,’ said I, ‘but not being a medical man I must not be too emphatic. If it is true it ought to be a criminal offence for any woman to smoke in excess while she is suckling a child.’

‘Say it ought to be a criminal offence for a woman to smoke at all,’ growled Dereham. ‘Fancy kissing a woman’s mouth that smelt of stale tobacco – pheugh!’”

After giving these two delightful descriptions of Borrow and his environment, I will now quote Mr. Watts-Dunton’s description of their last meeting: —

‘The last time I ever saw Borrow was shortly before he left London to live in the country. It was, I remember well, on Waterloo Bridge, where I had stopped to gaze at a sunset of singular and striking splendour, whose gorgeous clouds and ruddy mists were reeling and boiling over the West End. Borrow came up and stood leaning over the parapet, entranced by the sight, as well he might be. Like most people born in flat districts, he had a passion for sunsets. Turner could not have painted that one, I think, and certainly my pen could not describe it; for the London smoke was flushed by the sinking sun and had lost its dunness, and, reddening every moment as it rose above the roofs, steeples, and towers, it went curling round the sinking sun in a rosy vapour, leaving, however, just a segment of a golden rim, which gleamed as dazzlingly as in the thinnest and clearest air – a peculiar effect which struck Borrow deeply. I never saw such a sunset before or since, not even on Waterloo Bridge; and from its association with ‘the last of Borrow’ I shall never forget it.’

A TALK ON WATERLOO BRIDGE

The Last Sight of George Borrow

 
We talked of ‘Children of the Open Air,’
Who once on hill and valley lived aloof,
Loving the sun, the wind, the sweet reproof
Of storms, and all that makes the fair earth fair,
Till, on a day, across the mystic bar
Of moonrise, came the ‘Children of the Roof,’
Who find no balm ’neath evening’s rosiest woof,
Nor dews of peace beneath the Morning Star.
 
 
We looked o’er London where men wither and choke,
Roofed in, poor souls, renouncing stars and skies,
And lore of woods and wild wind-prophecies —
Yea, every voice that to their fathers spoke:
And sweet it seemed to die ere bricks and smoke
Leave never a meadow outside Paradise.
 

While the noble music of this double valediction in poetry and prose is sounding in our ears, my readers and I, ‘with wandering steps and slow,’ may also fitly take our reluctant leave of George Borrow.

Chapter X
THE ACTED DRAMA

It was during the famous evenings in Dr. Marston’s house at Chalk Farm that Mr. Watts-Dunton was for the first time brought into contact with the theatrical world. I do not know that he was ever closely connected with that world, but in the set in which he specially moved at this time he seems to have been almost the only one who was a regular playgoer and first-nighter, for Rossetti’s playgoing days were nearly over, and Mr. Swinburne never was a playgoer. Mr. Watts-Dunton still takes, as may be seen in his sonnet to Ellen Terry, which I shall quote, a deep interest in the acted drama and in the acting profession, although of late years he has not been much seen at the theatres. When, after a while, he and Minto were at work on the ‘Examiner’ Mr. Watts-Dunton occasionally, although I think rarely, wrote a theatrical critique for that paper. The only one I have had an opportunity of reading is upon Miss Neilson – not the Miss Julia Neilson who is so much admired in our day; but the powerful, dark-eyed creole-looking beauty, Lilian Adelaide Neilson, who, after being a mill-hand and a barmaid, became a famous tragedian, and made a great impression in Juliet, and in impassioned poetical parts of that kind. The play in which she appeared on that occasion was a play by Tom Taylor, called ‘Anne Boleyn,’ in which Miss Neilson took the part of the heroine. It was given at the Haymarket in February 1876. I do not remember reading any criticism in which so much admirable writing – acute, brilliant, and learned – was thrown away upon so mediocre a play. Mr. Watts-Dunton’s remarks upon Miss Neilson’s acting were, however, not thrown away, for the subject seems to have been fully worthy of them; and I, who love the acted drama myself, regret that the actress’s early death in 1880, robbed me of the pleasure of seeing her. She was one of the actresses whom Mr. Watts-Dunton used to meet on Sunday evenings at Marston’s, and I have heard him say that her genius was as apparent in her conversation as in her acting. Miss Corkran has recently sketched one of these meetings, and has given us a graphic picture of Mr. Watts-Dunton there, contrasting his personal appearance with that of Mr. Swinburne. They must indeed have been delightful gatherings to a lover of the theatre, for there Miss Neilson, Miss Glyn, Miss Ada Cavendish, and others were to be met – met in the company of Irving, Sothern, Hermann Vezin, and many another famous actor.

That Mr. Watts-Dunton had a peculiar insight into histrionic art was shown by what occurred on his very first appearance at the Marston evenings, whither he was taken by his friend, Dr. Gordon Hake, who used to tell the following story with great humour; and Rossetti also used to repeat it with still greater gusto. I am here again indebted to his son, Mr. Hake – who was also a friend of Dr. Marston, Ada Cavendish, and others – for interesting reminiscences of these Marston evenings which have never been published. Mr. Watts-Dunton at that time was, of course, quite unknown, except in a very small circle of literary men and artists. Three or four dramatic critics, several poets, and two actresses, one of whom was Ada Cavendish, were talking about Irving in ‘The Bells,’ which was a dramatization by a writer named Leopold Lewis of the ‘Juif Polonais’ of Erckmann-Chatrian. They were all enthusiastically extolling Irving’s acting; and this is not surprising, as all will say who have seen him in the part. But while some were praising the play, others were running it down. “What I say,” said one of the admirers, “is that the motif of ‘The Bells,’ the use of the idea of a sort of embodied conscience to tell the audience the story and bring about the catastrophe, is the newest that has appeared in drama or fiction – it is entirely original.”

“Not entirely, I think,” said a voice which, until that evening, was new in the circle. They turned round to listen to what the dark-eyed young stranger, tanned by the sun to a kind of gypsy colour, who looked like William Black, quietly smoking his cigarette, had to say.

“Not entirely new?” said one. “Who was the originator, then, of the idea?”

“I can’t tell you that,” said the interrupting voice, “for it occurs in a very old Persian story, and it was evidently old even then. But Erckmann-Chatrian took it from a much later story-teller. They adapted it from Chamisso.”

“Is that the author of ‘Peter Schlemihl’?” said one.

“Yes,” replied Mr. Watts-Dunton, “but Chamisso was a poet before he was a prose writer, and he wrote a rhymed story in which the witness of a murder was the sunrise, and at dawn the criminal was affected in the same way that Matthias is affected by the sledge bells. The idea that the sensorium, in an otherwise perfectly sane brain, can translate sights and sound into accusations of a crime is, of course, perfectly true, and in the play it is wonderfully given by Irving.”

“Well,” said Dr. Marston, “that is the best account I have yet heard of the origin of ‘The Bells.’”

Then the voice of one of the disparagers of the play said: “There you are! The very core of Erckmann-Chatrian’s story and Lewis’s play has been stolen and spoilt from another writer. The acting, as I say, is superb – the play is rot.”

“Well, I do not think so,” said Mr. Watts-Dunton. “I think it a new and a striking play.”

“Will you give your reasons, sir?” said Dr. Marston, in that old-fashioned courtly way which was one of his many charms.

“Certainly,” said Mr. Watts-Dunton, “if it will be of any interest. You recollect Coleridge’s remarks upon expectation and surprise in drama. I think it a striking play because I cannot recall any play in which the entire source of interest is that of pure expectation unadulterated by surprise. From the opening dialogue, before ever the burgomaster appears, the audience knows that a murder has been committed, and that the murderer must be the burgomaster, and yet the audience is kept in breathless suspense through pure expectation as to whether or not the crime will be brought home to him, and if brought home to him, how.”

“Well,” said the voice of one of the admirers of the play, “that is the best criticism of ‘The Bells’ I have yet heard.” After this the conversation turned upon Jefferson’s acting of Rip Van Winkle, and many admirable remarks fell from a dozen lips. When there was a pause in these criticisms, Dr. Marston turned to Mr. Watts-Dunton and said, “Have you seen Jefferson in ‘Rip van Winkle,’ sir?”

“Yes, indeed,” was the reply, “many times; and I hope to see it many more times. It is wonderful. I think it lucky that I have been able to see the great exemplar of what may be called the Garrick type of actor, and the great exemplar of what may be called the Edmund Kean type of actor.”

On being asked what he meant by this classification, Mr. Watts-Dunton launched out into one of those wide-sweeping but symmetrical monologues of criticism in which beginning, middle, and end, were as perfectly marked as though the improvization had been a well-considered essay – the subject being the style of acting typified by Garrick and the style of acting typified by Robson. As this same idea runs through Mr. Watts-Dunton’s criticism of Got in ‘Le Roi s’Amuse’ (which I shall quote later), there is no need to dwell upon it here.

“As an instance,” he said, “of Jefferson’s supreme power in this line of acting, one might refer to Act II. of the play, where Rip mounts the Catskill Mountains in the company of the goblins. Rip talks with the goblins one after the other, and there seems to be a dramatic dialogue going on. It is not till the curtain falls that the audience realizes that every word spoken during that act came from the lips of Rip, so entirely have Jefferson’s facial expression and intonation dramatized each goblin.”

Between Mr. Watts-Dunton and our great Shakespearean actress, Ellen Terry, there has been an affectionate friendship running over nearly a quarter of a century. This is not at all surprising to one who knows Miss Terry’s high artistic taste and appreciation of poetry. Among the poems expressing that friendship, none is more pleasing than the sonnet that appeared in the ‘Magazine of Art’ to which Mr. Bernard Partridge contributed his superb drawing of Miss Terry in the part of Queen Katherine. It is entitled, ‘Queen Katherine: on seeing Miss Ellen Terry as Katherine in King Henry VIII’: —

 
Seeking a tongue for tongueless shadow-land,
Has Katherine’s soul come back with power to quell
A sister-soul incarnate, and compel
Its bodily voice to speak by Grief’s command?
Or is it Katherine’s self returns to stand
As erst she stood defying Wolsey’s spell —
Returns with those vile wrongs she fain would tell
Which memory bore to Eden’s amaranth strand?
 
 
Or is it thou, dear friend – this Queen, whose face
The salt of many tears hath scarred and stung? —
Can it be thou, whose genius, ever young,
Lighting the body with the spirit’s grace,
Is loved by England – loved by all the race
Round all the world enlinked by Shakespeare’s tongue!
 

With one exception I do not find any dramatic criticisms by Mr. Watts-Dunton in the ‘Athenæum.’ Indeed, I should not expect to find him trenching upon the domain of the greatest dramatic critic of our time, Mr. Joseph Knight. No one speaks with greater admiration of Mr. Knight than his friend of thirty years’ standing, Mr. Watts-Dunton himself; and when an essay on ‘King John’ was required for the series of Shakespeare essays to accompany Mr. Edwin Abbey’s famous illustrations in ‘Harper’s Magazine,’ it was Mr. Knight whom Mr. Watts-Dunton invited to discuss this important play. The exception I allude to is the criticism of Victor Hugo’s ‘Le Roi s’Amuse,’ which appeared in the ‘Athenæum’ of December 2, 1882.

The way in which it came about that Mr. Watts-Dunton undertook for the ‘Athenæum’ so important a piece of dramatic criticism is interesting. In 1882 M. Vacquerie, the editor of ‘Le Rappel,’ a relative of Hugo’s, and a great friend of Mr. Swinburne and Mr. Watts-Dunton, together with other important members of the Hugo cenacle, determined to get up a representation of ‘Le Roi s’Amuse’ on the jubilee of its first representation, since when it had never been acted. Vacquerie sent two fauteuils, one for Mr. Swinburne and one for Mr. Watts-Dunton; and the two poets were present at that memorable representation. Long before the appointed day there was on the Continent, from Paris to St. Petersburg, an unprecedented demand for seats; for it was felt that this was the most interesting dramatic event that had occurred for fifty years.

Consequently the editor of the ‘Athenæum’ for once invited his chief literary contributor to fill the post which the dramatic editor of the paper, Mr. Joseph Knight, generously yielded to him for the occasion, and the following article appeared: —

“Paris, November 23, 1882.

“I felt that the revival, at the Theatre Français, of ‘Le Roi s’Amuse,’ on the fiftieth anniversary of its original production, must be one of the most interesting literary events of our time, and so I found it to be. Victor Hugo was there, sitting with his arms folded across his breast, calm but happy, in a stage box. He expressed himself satisfied and even delighted with the acting. The poet’s appearance was fuller of vitality and more Olympian than ever. Between the acts he left the theatre and walked about in the square, leaning on the arm of his illustrious poet friend and family connection, Auguste Vacquerie, to whose kindness I was indebted for a seat in the fauteuils d’orchestre, which otherwise I should have found to be quite unattainable, so unprecedented was the demand for places. It is said that a thousand francs were given for a seat. Never before was seen, even in a French theatre, an audience so brilliant and so illustrious. I did not, however, see any English face I knew save that of Mr. Swinburne, who at the end of the third act might have been seen talking to Hugo in his box. Among the most appreciative and enthusiastic of those who assisted at the representation was the French poet, who perhaps in the nineteenth century stands next to Hugo for intellectual massiveness, M. Leconte de Lisle. And I should say that every French poet and indeed every man of eminence was there.

Considering the extraordinary nature of the piece, the cast was perhaps as satisfactory as could have been hoped for. Fond as is M. Hugo of spectacular effects, and even of coups de théâtre, no other dramatist gives so little attention as he to the idiosyncrasies of actors. It is easy to imagine that Shakespeare in writing his lines was not always unmindful of an actor like Burbage. But in depicting Triboulet, Hugo must have thought as little about the specialities of Ligier, who took the part on the first night in 1832, as of the future Got, who was to take it on the second night in 1882. And the same may be said of Blanche in relation to the two actresses who successively took that part. This is, I think, exactly the way in which a dramatist should work. The contrary method is not more ruinous to drama as a literary form than to the actor’s art. To write up to an actor’s style destroys all true character-drawing; also it ends by writing up to the actor’s mere manner, who from that moment is, as an artist, doomed. On the whole, the performance wanted more glow and animal spirits. The François I of M. Mounet-Sully was full of verve, but this actor’s voice is so exceedingly rich and emotional that the king seemed more poetic, and hence more sympathetic to the audience, than was consistent with a character who in a sense is held up as the villain of the piece. The true villain, here, however, as in ‘Torquemada,’ ‘Notre Dame de Paris,’ ‘Les Misérables,’ and, indeed, in all Hugo’s characteristic works, is not an individual at all, but Circumstance. Circumstance placed Francis, a young and pleasure-loving king, over a licentious court. Circumstance gave him a court jester with a temper which, to say the least of it, was peculiar for such times as those. Circumstance, acting through the agency of certain dissolute courtiers, thrust into the king’s very bedroom the girl whom he loved and who belonged to a class from whom he had been taught to expect subservience of every kind. The tragic mischief of the rape follows almost as a necessary consequence. Add to this the fact that Circumstance contrives that the girl Maguelonne, instead of aiding her more conscientious brother in killing the disguised king at the bidding of ‘the client who pays,’ falls unexpectedly in love with him; while Circumstance also contrives that Blanche shall be there ready at the very spot at the very moment where and when she is imperatively wanted as a substituted victim; – and you get the entire motif of ‘Le Roi s’Amuse’ – man enmeshed in a web of circumstance, the motif of ‘Notre Dame de Paris,’ the motif of ‘Torquemada,’ and, in a certain deep sense, perhaps the proper motif in romantic drama. For when the vis matrix of classic drama, the supernatural interference of conscious Destiny, was no longer available to the artist, something akin to it – something nobler and more powerful than the stage villain – was found to be necessary to save tragedy from sinking into melodrama. And this explains so many of the complexities of Shakespeare.

In the dramas of Victor Hugo, however, the romantic temper has advanced quite as far as it ought to advance not only in the use of Circumstance as the final cause of the tragic mischief, but in the use of the grotesque in alliance with the terrible. The greatest masters of the terrible-grotesque till we get to the German romanticists were the English dramatists of the sixteenth and the early portion of the seventeenth century, and of course by far the greatest among these was Shakespeare. For the production of the effect in question there is nothing comparable to the scenes in ‘Lear’ between the king and the fool – scenes which seem very early in his life to have struck Hugo more than anything else in literature. Outside the Elizabethan dramatists, however, there can be no doubt that (leaving out of the discussion the great German masters in this line) Hugo is the greatest worker in the terrible-grotesque that has appeared since Burns. I need only point to Quasimodo and Triboulet and compare them not merely with such attempts in this line as those of writers like Beddoes, but even with the magnificent work of Mr. Browning, who though far more subtle than Hugo is without his sublimity and amazing power over chiaroscuro. Now, the most remarkable feature of the revival of ‘Le Roi s’Amuse,’ and that which made me above all other reasons desirous to see it, was that the character of Triboulet was to be rendered by an actor of rare and splendid genius, but who, educated in the genteel comedy of modern France and also in the social subtleties of Molière, seemed the last man in Paris to give that peculiar expression of the romantic temper which I have called the terrible-grotesque.

That M. Got’s success in a part so absolutely unsuited to him should have been as great as it was is, in my judgment, the crowning success of his life. It is as though Thackeray, after completing ‘Philip,’ had set himself to write a romance in the style of ‘Notre Dame de Paris,’ and succeeded in the attempt. Yet the success of M. Got was relative only, I think. The Triboulet was not the Triboulet of the reader’s own imaginings, but an admirable Triboulet of the Comédie Française. Perhaps, however, the truth is that there is not an actor in Europe who could adequately render such a character as Triboulet.

This is what I mean: all great actors are divisible into two groups, which are by temperament and endowment the exact opposites of each other. There are those who, like Garrick, producing their effects by means of a self-dominance and a conservation of energy akin to that of Goethe in poetry, are able to render a character, coldly indeed, but with matchless verisimilitude in its every nuance. And there are those who, like Edmund Kean and Robson, ‘live’ in the character so entirely that self-dominance and conservation of energy are not possible, and who, whensoever the situation becomes very intense, work miracles of representation by sheer imaginative abandon, but do so at the expense of that delicacy of light and shade in the entire conception which is the great quest of the actor as an artist. And if it should be found that in order to render Triboulet there is requisite for the more intense crises of the piece the abandon of Kean and Robson, and at the same time, for the carrying on of the play, the calm, self-conscious staying power of Garrick, the conclusion will be obvious that Triboulet is essentially an unactable character. I will illustrate this by an instance. The reader will remember that in the third act of ‘Le Roi s’Amuse,’ Triboulet’s daughter Blanche, after having been violated by the king at the Louvre, rushes into the antechamber, where stands her father surrounded by the group of sneering courtiers who, unknown both to the king and to Triboulet, have abducted her during the night and set her in the king’s way. When the girl tells her father of the terrible wrong that has been done to her, he passes at once from the mood of sardonic defiance which was natural to him into a state of passion so terrible that a sudden and magical effect is produced: the conventional walls between him, the poor despised court jester, and the courtiers, are suddenly overthrown by the unexpected operation of one of those great human instincts which make the whole world kin: —

Triboulet (faisant trois pas, et balayant du geste tous les seigneurs inter dits).

Allez-vous-en d’ici!

Et, si le roi François par malheur se hasarde

A passer près d’ici, (à Monsieur de Vermandois) vous êtes de sa garde,

Dites-lui de ne pas entrer, – que je suis là.

M. de Pienne. On n’a jamais rien vu de fou comme cela.

M. de Gordes (lui faisant signe de se retirer). Aux fous comme aux enfants on cède quelque chose.

Veillons pourtant, de peur d’accident.

[Ils sortent.

Triboulet (s’asseyant sur le fauteuil du roi et relevant sa fille.) Allons, cause.

Dis-moi tout. (Il se retourne, et, apercevant Monsieur de Cossé, qui est resté, il se lève à demi en lui montrant la porte). M’avez-vous en tendu, monseigneur?

M. De Cossé (tout en se retirant comme subjugué par l’ascendant du bouffon). Ces fous, cela se croit tout permis, en honneur!

[Il sort.

Now in reading ‘Le Roi s’Amuse,’ startling as is the situation, it does not seem exaggerated, for Victor Hugo’s lines are adequate in simple passion to effect the dramatic work, and the reader feels that Triboulet was wrought up to the state of exaltation to which the lines give expression, that nothing could resist him, and that the proud courtiers must in truth have cowered before him in the manner here indicated by the dramatist. In literature the artist does not actualize; he suggests, and leaves the reader’s imagination free. But an actor has to actualize this state of exaltation – he has to bring the physical condition answering to the emotional condition before the eyes of the spectator; and if he fails to display as much of the ‘fine frenzy’ of passion as is requisite to cow and overawe a group of cynical worldlings, the situation becomes forced and unnatural, inasmuch as they are overawed without a sufficient cause. That an actor like Robson could and would have risen to such an occasion no one will doubt who ever saw him (for he was the very incarnation of the romantic temper), but then the exhaustion would have been so great that it would have been impossible for him to go on bearing the entire weight of this long play as M. Got does. The actor requires, as I say, the abandon characteristic of one kind of histrionic art together with the staying power characteristic of another. Now, admirable as is M. Got in this and in all scenes of ‘Le Roi s’Amuse,’ he does not pass into such a condition of exalted passion as makes the retirement of the courtiers seem probable. For artistic perfection there was nothing in the entire representation that surpassed the scenes between Saltabadil and Maguelonne in the hovel on the banks of the Seine. It would be difficult, indeed, to decide which was the more admirable, the Saltabadil of M. Febvre or the Maguelonne of Jeanne Samary.

AT THE THÉÂTRE FRANÇAIS

November 22, 1882

 
Poet of pity and scourge of sceptred crime —
Titan of light, with scarce the gods for peers —
What thoughts come to thee through the mist of years,
There sitting calm, master of Fate and Time?
Homage from every tongue, from every clime,
In place of gibes, fills now thy satiate ears.
Mine own heart swells, mine eyelids prick with tears
In very pride of thee, old man sublime!
 
 
And thou, the mother who bore him, beauteous France,
Round whose fair limbs what web of sorrow is spun! —
I see thee lift thy tear-stained countenance —
Victress by many a victory he hath won;
I hear thy voice o’er winds of Fate and Chance
Say to the conquered world: ‘Behold my son!’
 

I may mention here that Mr. Watts-Dunton has always shown the greatest admiration of the actor’s art and the greatest interest in actors and actresses. He has affirmed that ‘the one great art in which women are as essential as men – the one great art in which their place can never be supplied by men – is in the acted drama, which the Greeks held in such high esteem that Æschylus and Sophocles acted as stage managers and show-masters, although the stage mask dispensed with much of the necessity of calling in the aid of women.’