Belford's Magazine, Vol. II, No. 3, February 1889

Another fact is overlooked that has a decided bearing on the question. In all matters of art we are such a set of snobs that we cannot recognize any merit in our artists until after they have been indorsed by English critics and English audiences. If any law can be enacted to correct this miserable condition, let us have it at an early day. We know that the greatest actress known to the English-speaking world – our Clara Morris – has failed to secure the fame and fortune to which her genius entitled her simply because she neglected to secure English approbation – which would have been heartily given her had she ever appeared in London.

Nor is it true that English stock is preferred to the American product because of its superior excellence. Mr. Daly has shown the absurdity of this claim by taking his admirable company to London and carrying off the honors. In the face of this and every other fact, we are told that the English comedian doing the society drama is superior to ours because of his superior social position. That is something to be relegated to the things which amuse. There is an adaptability about the American that makes him at home in all conditions. It is possible for an American actor to wear a dress suit with an ease that is rivalled only by the French. What is the good of calling on an Englishman to do on the stage what no Englishman can accomplish in private life? If there is a John Bull on earth who can wear a dress suit with ease and elegance, he has not yet been discovered.

There now, we have given both sides.

Mr. Edwin Booth offered his brother-actors a much better kind of protection when, on New Year's Eve, he presented to them "The Players'" club-house, with its fine library and its treasures of dramatic art. After all, education and self-development are the only legitimate means of attaining success; and he who offers his fellow-beings facilities for improvement and self-help is a far greater benefactor to them than he who endeavors to apply restrictive methods. Such an institution has been Mr. Booth's dream for years. It is a spacious house at No. 16 Gramercy Place, adjoining the residence of the late Samuel J. Tilden. Mr. Booth purchased it for $75,000, and spent $125,000 in alterations. The library is probably the finest collection of dramatic literature in the world. Twelve hundred volumes were presented by Mr. Booth, and two thousand by Lawrence Barrett, besides a large number of rare works given by Augustin Daly, T. B. Aldrich, Laurence Hutton, and others. It was a touching scene when, a few moments before the old year died, Mr. Booth placed in the hands of Augustin Daly for the Players' Club the title-deeds to this magnificent property, and blushing like a girl before the assembled actors, listened awkwardly to the simple words which Mr. Daly spoke in reply. Then just after the midnight bells had rung he turned and lit the Yule log, and the players began the enjoyment of their new home.

A few days afterwards Mr. Booth closed his very successful metropolitan engagement at the Fifth Avenue Theatre with "The Fool's Revenge," Lawrence Barrett appearing in "Yorick's Love," and both the tragedians started on a Southern tour.

Miss Mary Anderson appears in a late issue of a sensational publication as a severe censor of society ladies addicted to attempts upon the stage. We say Mary Anderson; for her name appears at the end of the article, and as she is a woman, we will not venture to say that the property claimed is not her own. Some rude critics have charged that Mary did not make this up out of her own fair head; and throughout the profession a state of mind exists that is not complimentary to the would-be authoress.

The queerest part of the business, however, is, that such strictures should come from Miss Anderson. She raided the stage as a society woman, and struck at once for the honors. There was, if we remember rightly, no long, weary preparation and laborious training for the footlights. She went from the parlor to the greenroom, and she went in with a flourish. She was of Kentucky birth, and Henry Watterson, whose bright intellect is only surpassed by his good heart, not only indorsed the ambitious society girl, but made up his mind to put Mary down the American throat whether the people would or not. Mary was not unpalatable to the American taste, but Watterson is her father – that is, dramatically speaking.

Then Stepfather Griffin came in. Stepfather Griffin was born a theatrical advance and advertising agent. He did not know this. If we were to dwell on what Stepfather Griffin does not know, we should fill all the space of this magazine for the year.

P. Griffin "caught on" to the provincial condition of our artistic, literary, and dramatic life, which makes the approval of England necessary to American success. So Poppy G. transported his American star to London. He found the Prince of Wales necessary; and Labouchere, M. P. and proprietor of Truth, taught the paternal agent how to work the oracle. The Prince of Wales is a corpulent, good-natured son of Her Gracious Majesty who rules all the earth save Ireland. He is ever open to the advances and blandishments of an American woman, or African woman, or any sort of woman, provided she is lovely; and being approached, he expressed his desire to know the star of Columbia. "Now," said Labouchere, "having got that far, the thing to startle England and capture Americans is for Mary to decline an introduction on high moral and republican grounds." This was done, and Great Britain was startled and the Yankee Doodles were captured. She returned to her native land with an English troupe, and made Yankee Doodle go wild.

Now Mary is absolutely the worst actress ever sent sweeping from the drawing-room to the footlights. Possessed of a tall, angular figure, and blessed with a sonorous and in some respects pliable voice, she has the fatal gift of imitation. No actor can win the highest honors of his exalted profession who is a mimic. The actor capable of giving expression to the thought of his author really assists that author in the creation of a character. He or she is the creator. Now the mimic is one who reproduces second-hand the work of others. We are cursed with a traditionary assortment of characters that have come down to us from the Kembles; and any one capable of filling what Shakspere or Bacon or somebody called the rôle of "a poor player who struts and frets his hour upon the stage, and then is heard no more" can win applause through mimicry, but never be great. We first saw Mary as Meg Merrilies, and the reproduction of Cushman was something marvellous. And so we have had it ever since. As Fechter said of Booth's Hamlet, that "he played everybody's Hamlet but his own," so it may be said of Miss Anderson, that she reproduces in an acceptable way the wearisome line of old characters that have come to be stage properties.

Mrs. James Brown Potter, who has been playing to New York and Brooklyn audiences in Tom Taylor's heavy drama, "'Twixt Axe and Crown," shows considerable improvement over her acting of one year ago, but she chose a very inappropriate piece for her reappearance. Mrs. Potter reads her lines very well, is a very beautiful woman, and possesses that indispensable adjunct of the modern actress, a very handsome wardrobe. But she is not fitted for the part of Lady Elizabeth, who in her youthful prison exhibits the same wilful capriciousness and headstrong pride that she afterwards showed on England's throne. Mr. Kyrle Bellew as Edward Courtenay, the romantic lover of Elizabeth, played his rôle quite well. Mrs. Potter is naturally better suited to fragile, feminine, girlish parts than she is to the heroic, and there is plenty of room for improvement; but she is painstaking, persistent, and has time before her.

Edward Harrigan's drama of "The Lorgaire," the only new play of the month, is a passable sketch of Irish life. It is much more ingeniously devised than any of his previous efforts in this line, and since it was first put upon the stage has been much improved, many offensive lines being eliminated.

Adolph Müller's new comic opera, "The King's Fool," was first witnessed by an American audience in Chicago at the Columbia Theatre on Christmas Eve. Its scene is laid at the court of Pampeluna, and the plot is the development of a conspiracy to secure the succession to the throne, the rightful heir being brought up as a girl, the Salic law forbidding the accession of females. The king's fool discovers the imposition, the young prince regains his throne, and the conspirators are punished.

A very enjoyable selection of pieces has been put on the boards at Daly's Theatre, including "The Lottery of Love," "Needles and Pins," "She Would and She Wouldn't," and "Rehearsing a Tragedy." Ada Rehan scored her usual successes. Daly's Theatre is one where the spectator is always sure of a pleasant evening's entertainment. At the Standard "Miss Esmeralda" replaced "Monte Cristo, Jr." The new play was in every way brighter and wittier, and offered more opportunities to the talents of Nellie Farren and the admirable Gaiety Company. Margaret Mather in her repertoire produced at Niblo's Garden shows steady improvement. She makes a lovely Juliet, but in the difficult part of Peg Woffington she is a failure. The "Yeomen of the Guard" is withdrawn from the Casino, not from any lack of popular favor, but because Manager Aronson has been obliged by a contract to restore "Nadjy" to the stage. Herr Junkermann has been giving several very creditable presentations at the new Amberg Theatre, to the delight of our German citizens.

Most admirable, yet most difficult and incomplete, was the first production in America of Wagner's "Rheingold" at the Metropolitan Opera House early in January. The stage machinery was very complicated, and the illusions were perfect. As the curtain rose the depths of the Rhine waters appeared to fill the scene, the sun's struggling rays caused the precious gold to gleam; and the three Rhine maidens appointed by Wotan to watch it were seen gracefully swimming about the treasure. From this novel opening to the close, when the gods cross the rainbow bridge that leads to Walhalla, the scenery was a marvel of spectacular effect, but it did not rise to the excellence of the displays at the Bayreuth festivals. The orchestra was in best form, and the singing was the best that has been presented this season – much better, for instance, than in the previous performance of "Siegfried," where Herr Alvary's voice showed signs of wear, and Emil Fischer actually became hoarse before the close.

"Faust," "The Huguenots," "L'Africaine," and "Fidelio" were among the musical triumphs of the Metropolitan. Handel's "Messiah" was beautifully given at the same theatre by the Oratorio Society, with the Symphony Society's orchestra, under the direction of Walter Damrosch; while concerts by the Boston Symphony orchestra, by Theodore Thomas, and by Anton Seidl complete the list of delightful musical entertainments of the season.

REVIEWS

The Cloven Hoof under Petticoats: The Quick or the Dead; Eros; Miss Middleton's Lovers. – The characteristic American novel of the day might be described as an episode clothed in epigram. It is commonly little more than an incident, slight as to plot, startling in contrasts of light and shade, and too often avowedly immoral in tone – a fragment of canvas, with ragged edges, cut at random from a picture by Gérôme, with figures questionably suggestive, and volcanic in color. It affects a myopic realism in details, not seldom of the sort which, with non-committal suavity, we have agreed to call "improper." It is nothing if not erotic. It deals with humanity from the anatomist's standpoint, and describes, with insistence and reiteration, the physical attributes of its characters, leaving the spiritual to be inferred from their somewhat indefinite actions, and that sort of mental sauntering which is termed analysis, for want of a better name. It sets its women before you in the language of the slave-market. It leaves no doubt in your mind that they are female – female to a fault. "You could not help feeling in her presence that she was a woman; the atmosphere was redolent with her. You never so much as thought of her as a human being, a sentient, reasoning personage like yourself. She was born to be a woman solely, and she fulfilled her destiny." "She was sensuous and voluptuous. You received from her a powerful impression of sex." "She was a naked goddess – a pagan goddess, and there was no help for it." Realistic this may indeed be, but it is hardly chivalrous, or consistent with that respect which well-bred and sound-hearted men feel, or, for the convenience of social intercourse, affect to feel toward that half of human nature to which the mothers, sisters, and wives of the race belong. A woman must be philosophical indeed who can accept as a flattering testimony to her personal graces such a phrase as "She is the most appetizing thing I have seen." To be regarded in the light of a veal cutlet may possess the charm of gastronomic reminiscence, but as a metaphor it is scarcely poetic.

In reading this class of fiction one is constrained to wonder what these ingenious weavers of verbal tapestries would have done for plot and incident – such as they are – had the Seventh Commandment been eliminated from the Tables of the Law. It is a never-failing well-spring, a Fortunatus' pocket, a theme more rich in variations than the Carnival of Venice; and it is amazing as well as instructive to the uninitiated to discover in how many original and striking ways a wife may be unfaithful to her husband, and what startling and dramatic situations may be evolved out of the indiscretions of a too confiding society-girl. But even the unmentionable has limits: the glacial smile of the nimblest ballet-dancer may lose somewhat of its fascination in the course of time; and in the overheated atmosphere of the "passionate" novel may lurk the faintest intimations of a yawn.

The fact is, this multiform, many-worded element in current fiction is not true passion at all. It is a theatrical presentation, often well set and brilliantly costumed; but too frequently you see the paint and hear the prompter calling forgotten cues from the wings. It is keen, witty, cynical; but it is not real. It is daring, flippantly defiant, paroxysmal, and redundant in explosive adjectives; but it is not true to nature. It is as different from the genuine, living human emotion as the impetuous, fervid, and unpremeditated love-making of a youth is from the cold-blooded, carefully-rounded, and artificial gallantries of an aged suitor. Real passion is always poetic; there is a delicacy in its very vehemence, and if reprehensible from the moralist's point of view, it is never contemptible. Simulated passion, on the other hand, is always coarse and undignified – even when, as in the case with many of these novels, expressed in graceful and smoothly-flowing sentences; often absurd and flavored with covert cynicism, as if it despised itself and its object. Actual passion is almost entirely wanting in American fiction. The purer school of James and Howells makes no pretence of it, – ignoring its existence in human nature, as if men and women were sentient shapes of ice, – and wisely, too; for though the lack of it in romance is a fatal defect, it is better than a poor imitation. Nathaniel Hawthorne, that isolated giant, drew from the mysterious depths of his own great soul almost the only example of true passion in the literature of this country. "The Scarlet Letter" towers aloft like the Olympian Jove among terra-cotta statuettes, perhaps the noblest work of fiction ever written. Here is passion, almost awful in its intensity; suppressed, confined; struggling like a chained Titan, and at length breaking loose and overwhelming itself beneath its own agony and despair – passion, beautiful with youth and hope, star-eyed, crowned with amaranth and clad in blood-red garments; led onward by his dark brothers, Sin and Death, in swift tumultuous flight, toward his unknown goal in the land of eternal shadows.

Compared with this lordly poem, the erotic novel of the day, with its prurient platitudes, is as a satyr to Hyperion. Putting aside all question of the moral law in the relation of the sexes, is there not something foolishly undignified in these gasping, gurgling adjectives? "Soul-scorching, flesh-melting flame of his eyes." "Flammeous breath, sweeping her cheek, stirred her nature with a fierce, hungerous yearning." "Ignescent passion." "Gloating upon her hungerly." "Gives her whole body a comprehensive voluptuous twist." "All entangled in her sweet sinuous embrace." "Languorously inviting." – But we pause upon the verge of the unquotable, daunted, stifled, in this mephitic atmosphere.

This is called Realism! – this affected posturing, at which good-taste veils the face to hide the smile of contempt or the blush of common decency – these ale-house stories transplanted to the drawing-room! Is there —is there nothing in that love, whose very name lingers upon the lips like a song – that love which has inspired all poetry, all romance from the beginning of time; which has thrown down embattled walls, taken strong cities, changed the boundaries of empires, marshalled armed thousands upon memorable fields of blood; which in every age has nerved men to great deeds and rewarded them for great sacrifices; the sunrise hope of youth, the evening meditation of the old, the spirit of home, the tender light which gleams about the hearth-stone, the glory of the world; – is there nothing, then, in this but the blind impulse which draws animal to animal – which attracts the groping inhabitants of the mire and the shapeless swimming lumps of the sea? If it be so, then thrice sacred is that art which has power to throw a mist of glamour about this hideous reality, and make it seem beautiful to our eyes! Far better the divine lie than such truth! But it is not true: for real love, even though it pass the pale of the law, and real passion, though it tempt to sin, have about them always an inexpugnable dignity; and if condemned, it is not with laughter or disgust.

The erotic in American fiction is a recent and exotic growth, not native to the soil. It is therefore unhealthy and unwholesome. It is out of place in this cold northern air. In its own climate it is a gaudy flower; in this temperate zone it is a poisonous, spotted lily, rank of smell and blistering to the touch. The licentiousness of Théophile Gautier is elevated by the power of his transcendent genius to the plane of true art. In America it sinks into a denizen of the gutter.

A remarkable feature of this noxious development is the prominent part taken in it by women. It is somewhat startling to find upon the title-page of a work whose cold, deliberate immorality and cynical disregard of all social decency have set the teeth on edge, the name of a woman as the author. We are so accustomed to associate modesty of demeanor, delicacy of thought and word, and purity of life with woman, that a certain set of adjectives, expressive of virtue and morality, have come to include the idea of femininity in their signification. It is certainly surprising, if not repellent, to find women the most industrious laborers in the work of tearing down the structure of honor and respect for their sex, which has so long been regarded as the basis of social existence. If this breaking of the holy images be but another manifestation of the revolt of women against the too narrow limits of ancient prejudice, it is only additional proof that misguided revolution easily becomes mere anarchy. While the dispensation which would confine women to the nursery and kitchen, and exclude them from broader fields of action, is happily a dead letter, it is quite certain that no condition of civilization, however liberal, will ever justify loose principles or lax manners, or what is almost as reprehensible and much more despicable, the cynicism which sneers at virtue while it prudently keeps its own skirts unsoiled. But it is probable that the women who write this kind of fiction are misled by vanity, rather than actuated by evil impulses. They imagine that in thus throwing off all restraint they are giving evidence of originality of thought and force of character; whereas they are, in fact, courting unworthy suspicion and winning only that sort of applause which is thinly veiled contempt.

In America social licentiousness is not inherent as a national characteristic, nor inherited from a profligate ancestry. Whatever his practice may be, the ordinary American is theoretically moral. He recognizes moral turpitude, at least to the extent of dreading exposure of his own backslidings. If he break the law, he nevertheless insists upon the sanctity of the law. In a word, the social atmosphere is pure and wholesome, though perhaps a little chilly; and if anyone happens to be the proprietor of a nuisance, he is very careful to keep it well concealed from his neighbors, and neutralize the evil odor with lavish sprinklings of perfumery.

With us Licentiousness is not a gayly-clad reveller, a familiar figure at feasts and pleasure parties, taking his share in the festivities, dancing, laughing, and frisking as bravely as any. He is not a jovial Bohemian, of too free life perhaps, but not half a bad fellow – a careless, reckless, roaring blade. On the contrary, he is a dark, shadowy, saturnine personage: a loiterer in lonely places, a lover of the night, skulking around corners and hiding his face in a ready mask. He dreads the law, for he knows that if detected his companions of yesterday will bear witness against him to-day, and lend their aid to set him in the stocks, to be jeered at by all the world. He is thin-blooded and pale; he shudders at the sound of his own footsteps, and shrinks from his own shadow. He knows no songs in praise of Gillian and the wine-cup, and if he did he would never dare sing them. He dresses in the seedy remains of a once respectable suit; he is an outcast, a beggar, a vagabond, down at the heels and owned by nobody. Altogether, he is as miserable and forlorn a wretch as one would care to see, and his alter ego is hypocrisy.

For this reason the licentious in American literature is and must be cold, artificial, and repugnant. The erotic becomes mere bald immorality, without grace, gayety, color, or warmth to lend it dignity or render it tolerable. In the opulent, fervid period of the Renaissance, art was born of passion and inspired by it to greatness. The erotic was a legitimate element of all works of the imagination, because it was a part of the social life of the day, and because, being genuine, it could be made beautiful. When, after the Revolution in England and the spread of Calvinism on the Continent, the minds and manners of men were brought under closer restraint, licentiousness in art began to be no longer natural and spontaneous, and therefore no longer legitimate, until in the last century it degenerated into simple indecency. When the erotic ceased to be quite as much a matter of course, in fiction or poetry, as hatred, jealousy, or revenge, and the reader learned to pass it over with a frown or pick it out with a relish, according to his natural disgust of or morbid craving for the impure, it became a blemish. It was no longer real, but an indecent imitation. Compare "Romeo and Juliet," that divine poem of passion, with the abominations of Waters and Rochester, popular in their day, but now happily forgotten, or even Wycherly, not yet quite forgotten, and mark how wide the difference between the true and the false, the natural and the unnatural.

To-day, in America at least, the physical is subordinate to the spiritual. The mind is master, and the body in its bondage, if not enfeebled, has at least become trained to passive obedience. All impulses are submitted to the severe scrutiny of reason. Categories of right and wrong, or perhaps the politic and the impolitic, are strictly adhered to. Caution is largely in the ascendant. The world's opinion is an ever-present restraining element. All these are results, or at any rate concomitants of a loftier civilization. A society guided by moral and intellectual forces is unquestionably upon higher ground than one dominated by the physical. The world is, moreover, a more comfortable place to live in than it used to be when, on account of the color of the feather in one's hat, one must unsheathe and go at it, hammer and tongs, to save one's skin.

Passion does still exist in the human heart, but it is restrained and modified by the necessities and conditions of the social life of the day. To be a fit element of fiction it must be depicted in its nineteenth-century guise – in other words, decently. To be a truthful picture it can be depicted in no other way. To exhibit it posturing, writhing, and gasping in mere hysteria is to lower it beneath the standard of wholesome and worthy art. License without love, and immorality without passion, are as unpardonable in a novel as they are in human nature.