In this same _Play_, Mrs. Kin peck soliloquizes thus: “I fell into a most unquiet sleep. I thought I saw Cliqueteaux, the old croupier, who died of love for me–of that and a complication of other disorders. A man that was a genius, with a wart on his nose. It was hereditary–the genius, not the wart,” etc. Now this may be “funny,” but it is not dramatic. It reminds one of the most forced passages of Artemas Ward’s generally fresh and unforced humor. But perhaps the worst instance in all Robertson’s play of this pitiful sacrifice of situation and character to a petty “joke” is found in _Caste_. Sam Gerridge, a gas-fitter and plumber, desiring to marry Polly, the daughter of Eccles, a drunken old brute, tells him so, casually mentioning that to prove his affection he will do anything he can in “the way of spirituous liquor or tobacco.” This captivates the heart of old Eccles, who joins the hands of the young couple, saying with a drunken leer, “Samuel Gerridge, she is thine. Samuel Gerridge, you shall be ‘er ‘usband! I don’t know a gas_fitter_ man!” (The italics are in the original).
These are but minor errors, however. The great fault in Robertson’s comedies is the lack of strong dramatic interest. There is no human passion. There is no exhibition of human strength and human weakness. There is little of that clash of character against character from which results true comedy. But even if his characters are mere empty-headed automata, even if his plays have not the literary value of Mr. W.S. Gilbert’s, even if his pieces have not the situations of Sardou or the wit of Sheridan, he has a simple sweetness all his own. And perhaps, after all, the greatest objection to him is the weakness of his imitators. Success is always a schoolmaster. But it is not just to hold Robertson responsible for the faults of Alberry or the failings of the tea-cup-and-saucer school of comedy-writers.
J.B.M.
THE LETTERS OF A PRINCESS.
It is the fashion to decry French memoirs of court-life, and, considering the quaint freedom of style which characterizes much of this voluminous literature, it is not strange. Many of these memoirs, original letters, etc. are exceedingly interesting, because of their merciless unmasking of some of the sublime figure-heads of history; notably the letters of Madame Charlotte Elizabeth of Bavaria, widow of Monsieur, the only brother of Louis XIV. She always hated the French manners, and longed for her native _sauer-kraut_ and sausages, which to her taste were finer than all the luxuries and dainties of the French cuisine. She was counted a severe moralist, and her tongue was more dreaded than a bayonet-charge. To be sure, her enemies more than hinted that her extraordinary virtue was trebly guarded by her ugliness. On the latter subject she says herself, “I must be cruelly ugly: I never had a passable feature. My eyes are little, my nose short and big, my lips long and flat, my cheeks hanging, my face long, my waist and my legs large, my stature short: sum-total, a little old fright.” But she was intelligent and witty, and that, in France at least, goes a long way with a woman. She was also loyal and truthful. No one doubted her word when once she had spoken. This makes her testimony valuable, though many incidents circumspectly narrated by her seem incredible. Of the young duchesse de Bourgogne, second daughter of Louis XIV., she says: One of her amusements was to make her lackeys drag her over the floor by her feet. It is to be presumed that the duchess was a _very_ young person at this time.
Madame Charlotte’s portrait of Marie Therese, queen of _Le Grand Monarque_, is not very flattering: “Her teeth were black and broken, and she ate immoderately of garlic and chocolate. She was very fond of basset, but she never won, for she could never learn to play any game. She ate long and very slowly, taking mouthfuls for a canary.” The diagnosis of the disease of which the queen died displays the popular pathological lore of those times. Madame says: “She died of an abscess on the arm, for which Fagon bled her. The humor entered and fell on the heart: he then gave her an emetic to remove the humor, and this suffocated her.” La Valiere, according to Madame Charlotte, was the only woman who ever really loved the king. She limped a little, had lovely eyes, irregular teeth, and was very neat in her person, while Madame de Montespan was just the reverse.
Of Cardinal Richelieu we have a glimpse in madame’s letters which his biographers, generally at least, omit. She tells us that he used to have violent fits of insanity, during which he would imagine that he was a horse, jump over a billiard-table, kick his servants, neigh, and make a fearful noise for an hour. His domestics would then get him into bed, and after much sweating he would wake without the least memory of what had passed. As “jumping over a billiard-table” might appear an incredible feat, at least for an aged cardinal, it is proper to remark that the billiard-tables of those times bore about the same relation in size to our modern billiard-tables that the ancient spinnet did to a grand pianoforte.
JAPANESE ART.
Some of our young ladies have a pretty art of constructing miniature landscapes out of pebbles and mosses, strips of glistening paper for brooks, little fuzzy pine sticks painted green for trees, and animals and Swiss cottages from the toy-shop. Could these amateur artists once see how the Japanese do this thing, they would abandon their mosses and pebbles in despair. A late traveler in Japan says of one of these: “It was a fairy-like landscape seen through a spy-glass reversed.” Some of the details were real trees dwarfed to pigmies by the art of the Oriental florist. There were limpid lakes peopled with gold-fish; grottos and summer-houses of exquisite finish draped with growing verdure and large enough to shelter a small company of rabbits: lovely walks winding through groves, lawns and by miniature parterres of flowers, and finally, liliputian canals, spanned by elegant bridges wide enough for the passage of a large rat.
* * * * *
Among the “Notes” in the New York _Nation_ of May 6th is the following:
“In the new edition of Prescott’s complete works (Lippincott) we have remarked that the introduction to _Charles V._, so admirable for the time when it was written, is left untouched by the editor, not even the notes giving any intimation of the great progress made in the knowledge of the Middle Ages within the last hundred years. The editor may have chosen to regard the work as a literary monument to be preserved as it stands, and certainly it would require very extensive if not entire recasting.”
There would seem to be some misapprehension at the bottom of these statements. No one, we believe, has ever undertaken to edit Robertson’s _History of Charles the Fifth_. Prescott appended to it a long “Account of the Emperor’s Life after his Abdication,” and for that reason it has been included in all subsequent editions of his works. But no intimation has ever been given that the editor of Prescott’s histories had assumed the same office for Robertson. If any one be engaged in editing _Charles the Fifth_, we can only wish him joy of the task. We trust, however, he will not proceed on the plan suggested by the _Nation_, of “recasting” the work in whole or in part. Such a process could hardly be considered as proper treatment of any literary production, which, whatever its demerits, should at least be subjected to no worse perversions than those of dishonest or incompetent criticism.
LITERATURE OF THE DAY.
Macready’s Reminiscences, and Selections from his Diaries and Letters. Edited by Sir Frederick Pollock, Bart., one of his Executors. New York: Macmillan & Co.
It is probable that this book will excite a degree of disappointment in many readers, who, knowing Macready’s position outside his profession, may naturally have expected to find in the record of his life ample and interesting details of his intercourse, often amounting to intimacy, with a great number of notable persons. This expectation would without doubt have been gratified had the autobiography, which occupies a third of the volume and covers about the same proportion of the writer’s theatrical career, been carried to its close. Macready was not one of those men who spring to eminence at a bound: his powers were gradually and slowly developed, and owing partly to this fact, but partly also to unfavorable circumstances, the recognition of them was tardy and grudging. For many years after his _debut_ on the London boards he, who at a later period was almost disparaged as a pre-eminently intellectual actor, owed his chief successes to his performance of melodramatic parts like Rob Roy and William Tell, for which his mental as well as physical endowments were considered especially to qualify him. When at length he had reached his full maturity, he stood without a living rival as the representative of leading Shakespearian characters; and maintaining this supremacy down to his retirement from the stage, closed the line of great tragedians and left a place which after the lapse of a quarter of a century still remains unfilled. His high personal worth and his efforts to exalt and purify the drama won him golden opinions from all sorts of men; and, with the exception of Garrick, no actor probably ever mingled as largely or came into as close relations with persons distinguished in other and alien walks of life. Mere fashionable society he seems never to have frequented, and his labors were too pressing and onerous to allow of that continuous companionship with a chosen circle in which men of letters or of science, however industrious, are generally able to find relaxation. But he came in contact, at one time or another, with most of the celebrated people of his day on both sides of the Atlantic, his friendship was sought and prized by many of them, and the occasional glimpses we get of them in his _Diaries_ are of a kind to deepen our regret that the _Reminiscences_, in which the power of skillfully elaborating his material is sufficiently evidenced, should close abruptly just when the sources of its interest were becoming wider and fuller.
But any loss from this cause of amusing anecdotes or graphic descriptions of persons or scenes is more than made good by the far higher value and stronger attraction of the book as the portraiture of a striking character and a remarkable career. In this view the _Diaries_ are not inferior in interest to the expanded narrative that precedes them. Indeed, terse and concise as they generally are, they have the advantage of presenting freshly and vividly the impressions and reflections of the moment, and thus exhibiting the writer’s mind both in its habitual and exceptional states without reservation or deliberate purpose. They do not, however, reveal any different image from that which is presented in the autobiography: on the contrary, they confirm the truthfulness and frank fidelity of the more conscious self-delineation which is there attempted. There breathes, indeed, through the whole book a tone of unaffected sincerity, the charm of which cannot be overrated. Not only does every statement bear the stamp of veracity, but there is an utter absence of artifice, of any design, so to speak, upon the reader, which is as rare as it is beautiful. Admiration and sympathy were needs of Macready’s nature, but he will have no jot of them beyond what he can fairly and honorably claim. Least of all, will he exalt himself at the expense of others. He pays no idle compliments, pours out no fulsome or insidious eulogies, but he speaks of his rivals and his predecessors with the warm appreciation of one who had felt the full influence of their power, and who could never look on merit with an oblique eye. His worship of Mrs. Siddons, as unparalleled in her genius, was life-long, and his descriptions of her acting convey a more vivid idea of its peculiar qualities and matchless effect than any others we can remember to have read. Talma comes next in his regard as “the most finished artist of his time, not below Kean in his most energetic displays, and far above him in the refinement of his taste and the extent of his research–equaling Kemble in dignity, unfettered by his stiffness and formality.” He says acutely of Kean that “when under the impulse of his genius he seemed to _clutch_ the whole idea of the man, … but if he missed the character in his first attempt at conception he never could recover it by study.” Of Kean, if of any actor, we might have feared that his notices would be tinged with jealousy; but not only does he render justice to his originality and “burning energy,” but his account of the only evening he ever spent in private with “this extraordinary man” brings into full relief the charm of his manners and personal qualities at a time when he was still unspoilt by flattery and unenfeebled by dissipation. Sketches and criticisms more or less complete are given of many other great performers, whom, it is to be remembered, Macready had less opportunity of seeing in a variety of parts than if he had not himself been a busy member of the profession. He can censure as well as praise–less warmly, but not less candidly. His verdict on Ristori, whom he saw after his retirement, may not improbably appear harsh to her admirers, but we should recommend them to ponder well before endeavoring to controvert it.
It would, however, be difficult if not impossible to name a volume of memoirs in which there is so little dispraise of individuals, such an absence of what can be characterized as depreciation either in the way of direct remark or of insinuation. There will be no call for contradiction of any slurs upon character through perversion of facts or the repetition of hearsay calumny in its pages. Nor does this seem to proceed from either a mere distaste for the chatter of gossips or an unwillingness to wound the feelings of survivors, though both these traits are discernible enough. The strong and more pervading cause lay in an instinctive nobility of nature which sought only what was excellent and had no keen scent for blemishes or meannesses. There are in his _Diaries_ many bitter reproaches and vehement denunciations, but they are all directed against his own conduct. Like Orlando, he will chide no breather in the world but himself, against whom he knows most faults. He had the defects incidental to a sensitive organization, an irritable temperament and an aspiring mind. He was apt to suspect hostility where none existed, and to resent indignities that were never intended. He confesses on one occasion at least to an unworthy elation at the inferiority of a rival. Above all, he was unable to curb the outbreaks of impatience and anger excited by negligence or stupidity–outbreaks which were often sufficiently amusing to the bystanders from the contrast between the old-fashioned violence of the language and the refined tones and lofty bearing of the speaker. In fact, so foreign were such displays to the dominant qualities of his character, while yet so closely connected with the fine sense and exacting spirit of the artist, that one is tempted to wish that he could himself have viewed them with more indifference, accepting this thorn in the flesh as a slight but irremediable misfortune, instead of making it the constant subject of penitence and self-abasement. But such a course would have been still more foreign to his nature, ever aiming at perfection, moral and artistic, ever summoning his faculties and actions to the stern inquest of conscience, and refusing to accept the verdict of any lower tribunal. And the struggle had its reward in a real if not complete victory. The weeds, if never wholly eradicated, could not choke the nobler growth; the stream, if it retained its turbid coloring, increased always in volume and majesty. The fine qualities which might so easily have deteriorated remained unscathed. His keen sense of justice and honor, his inborn candor and generosity, his fervent love of virtue and goodness in their simplest and least obtrusive exhibitions, his cordial admiration of true greatness,–these and kindred traits never lost their freshness or force. Above all, he retained throughout life that deep and exquisite tenderness of feeling which formed the supreme charm of his character, as it did of his acting, and to which it would not, we think, be easy to find a parallel in a person of his own sex. It was not alone in his ardent family affections–his fond recollections of the mother he lost in boyhood, his devotion to his sister, wife and brother, his passionate love of his children, or his anguish and abiding sorrow at every severance of such ties–that this quality displayed itself. His sympathy with all suffering, especially if conjoined with innocence and patient endurance, was not only quick but strong. His eyes fill with tears at the sight of a fellow-passenger in a mail-coach, a poor deformed boy, who is carrying a basket of toys from one town to another, and he shakes his hand at parting with a “God bless thee!” that comes direct from the heart. It was strikingly characteristic of him that, with all his intense ambition, his resolute desire–to use a phrase which we have heard him apply to himself–“to rise above the crowd, and stand when others fall,” he chose for his wife a young provincial actress, whom he had once chided for her inattention or inability, but whose artlessness of manner, purity and sweetness of nature and aptness for improvement so enlisted his sympathies that he constituted himself her friend and guide until the death of her father and brother awakened a still warmer solicitude, bringing with it the discovery that “love had been the inspiration of all the counsel and assistance he had rendered her.” Nor is the noble frankness less noticeable with which he tells of his sister’s unconcealed disappointment on her first introduction to the _fiancee_, whose person as well as mind he had so extolled in his descriptions and whom happily she learned ere long to look at with his eyes, so that the happiness and serenity of his home were destined to be pure and undisturbed.
Within a few years after his marriage he fixed his abode at a short distance from London, where the sight of open fields, of trees and flowers, never failed to exercise its soothing and restorative influence upon him. The love of Nature was a passion with him, and in the record of his journeys–whether the few which he was able to make for the sole purpose of pleasure or his many professional tours–his notices of the scenery show how large was the enjoyment he derived from this healthful source. When, too, he withdrew from public life, it was to the neighborhood of a small town, remote from the former scenes of his struggles and triumphs, but commanding a wide view over a pleasing landscape. Here, as the friend who has edited this volume tells us, “he devoted himself almost exclusively to labors of kindness and usefulness; his charity was so extensive that, although his left hand knew not what his right hand did, it was impossible that it should escape observation even beyond the sphere of the recipients of his bounty; and while thus engaged in relieving distress in the neighborhood of his new home, he continued to remit money to old pensioners elsewhere up to the day of his death…. But his great interest was in the cause of education, especially among the poorer classes, which he developed at the cost of incessant personal exertion, and mainly at his own expense. He established a night-school, which he conducted himself, and in which he was assisted by voluntary teachers from among the gentlemen and tradesmen of the town, who attended in turns, but he was himself never absent from his post, except under very urgent necessity. After a time some of his friends raised a subscription in order to relieve Macready of a part of the burden which his own zeal in the cause had brought upon himself. Yet, although his own contribution to it had not been ever less than one hundred pounds a year [about a twelfth of his whole income], he was so fond of the night-school that he accepted this aid as a proof of the estimation in which his work was held, and as an additional fund, but not in ease of his own payments.” Such a close to such a life will seem either a lame and impotent conclusion or a most fitting and harmonious cadence, according to the point of view.
We have spoken chiefly of Macready’s character as a man, which was so attractive in itself, and is so faithfully and lucidly mirrored in this record of his life, that the work may be commended to readers of every class and ranked with the choicest specimens of biography. As the record of an artistic career its interest is of course more limited. Yet in this respect also its excellence is very great, and if the art which Macready practiced with such assiduity and devotion, though with no undue estimate of its value or importance, held a higher place in the world’s regard, the light which is here thrown on its processes and requirements would be received as an inestimable boon. But at least his example, the spirit in which he worked, is worthy of the study and emulation of those who cultivate any art. In none has excellence ever been achieved by deeper thought or more unremitting labor. It would be absurd to question Macready’s real eminence, based on the judgment of critical audiences with whom great acting was not a mere matter of tradition. But we may readily concede that in natural endowments he fell short of the most illustrious of his predecessors, that he lacked the intuitive grasp which he ascribes to Mrs. Siddons and to Kean, and that he never reached the intensity and complete _abandon_ which gave an overwhelming effect to their highest performances. We may apply to his acting what Carlyle has so justly said of the poetry of Schiller, that it “shows rather like a partial than a universal gift–the labored product of certain faculties rather than the spontaneous product of his whole nature.” There was always the perception of the natural limit of his qualifications, instead of any suggestiveness of a boundless capacity. His voice, though rich and musical and of extraordinary compass, had not the sonorous roundness and the penetrating sweetness of the rarest organs, and was subject to a tremulousness which, though often pleasing, could not but be considered as a defect. His features, though capable of great expression, had neither the beauty nor the extraordinary mobility so desirable in an actor. His attitudes and walk were graceful, picturesque, often superb, but not absolutely free from conventionalism. Instead of bursting away, as Kean had done, from the meshes of tradition, he had only expanded and attenuated them to the utmost, and if they did not really cramp, they still appeared to circumscribe Nature and truth. It is evident that without the most persistent efforts he could never have triumphed over obstacles and gained the highest rank in his profession. How ardent and conscientious was the struggle a thousand details in this volume bear testimony. Perhaps the most curious is the description given in a letter written after his retirement of the methods he had practiced for repressing exaggeration in gesture, utterance or facial expression. “I would lie down on the floor, or stand straight against a wall, or get my arms within a bandage, and, so pinned or confined, repeat the most violent passages of _Othello, Lear, Hamlet, Macbeth_, or whatever would require most energy and emotion; I would speak the most passionate bursts of rage under the supposed constraint of _whispering them_ in the ear of him of her to whom they were addressed, thus keeping both voice and gesture in subjection to the real impulse of the feeling…. I was obliged also to have frequent recourse to the looking-glass, and had two or three large ones in my room to reflect each view of the posture I might have fallen into, besides being under the necessity of acting the passion close to a glass to restrain the tendency to exaggerate its expression–which was the most difficult of all–to repress the ready frown, and keep the features, perhaps I should say the muscles, of the face undisturbed, whilst intense passion would speak from the eye alone.” If the propriety of some of these exercises be questionable, there can be no doubt that the general effect of such discipline was to correct the acquired tendencies of his youth and to chasten his style until it lacked nothing less than refinement.
All this concerned the _technique_ of his art. Its soul–the thoughts, the feelings, the characters to be embodied by it–formed the subject of deeper, more constant and more delightful meditation. Here at least Macready was at no disadvantage in a comparison with the most illustrious of his predecessors. Some there may have been who gave more vividly the salient points of a character, or who, as in the case of Kean’s Othello, infused into their personations of some of the grandest but least complex of Shakespeare’s creations an intensity of passion that defied all rivalry. But none ever brought to the study of the poet the intellectual discernment, the sympathetic spirit, the true and heartfelt devotion with which Macready ministered at his shrine. Not his own part alone, but the whole play, including the words and scenes omitted in representation, were imprinted in his memory and continually revolved. The groundwork was thus laid in a thorough knowledge of the _medium_, to use the expression of Taine, applying it, however, not to mere external facts and circumstances, but to that individuality of form, ideas and style which the great dramatist has given to each of his works. Then the meaning and bearing of every phrase received their share of light from the same general source, and the performance was pervaded throughout by a consistency and a subtle discrimination which rendered it a living commentary, acting on the intellect through the emotions.
It is easy to understand why, in the great variety of Macready’s impersonations, none stood out by universal consent as indubitably the greatest. To all he gave his unstinted devotion and the full measure of his powers, and the choice was left to be determined mainly by the peculiar taste of the spectator. Yet there were some which must be recalled with especial vividness as best exemplifying the scope of his genius and his general characteristics. Two of these parts, Werner and Melantius, were not Shakespearian creations, but they were at least devices of the poetical imagination, not of the mere playwright’s handiwork. In both we have the spectacle of a proud and sensitive but open and loving nature blighted with dishonor and misery through the crimes of one near in blood and cherished with an unsuspecting affection. Here were conceptions that made no demands on his imaginative power. He had not to transform himself into the characters, but only to give free play to the springs of his own nature. The grief, the passion, the sudden revulsions of feeling were not mimetic displays: one could imagine no different expression of them. He was Werner and Melantius because Werner and Melantius were Macready.
Shakespeare’s characters do not so adapt themselves to individual idiosyncrasies. No man can hope to identify himself with them unless he can give wings to his faculties and soar above the plane of his actual emotions. Often, no doubt, apparent triumphs have been gained by displays of histrionic power that owed little to the informing spirit of the poet. But Macready has never been accused of seeking such results: whatever his performances may have lacked, they were always imbued with a fine intelligence which brought all the details into harmony and kept the attention fixed on the conception of the character. Thus in Macbeth, which was perhaps, on the whole, his most perfect impersonation, every look and gesture, every intonation, conveyed the idea of one who lived on the border-line of an invisible world, to whom all shapes and actions were half phantasmal, for whom clear vision and sober contemplation were impossible. All his utterances were abrupt, all his movements hurried; a certain wildness, not of mere mental agitation, but of a spirit nurtured on unrealities, marked his manner and countenance throughout. In Hamlet there was the drawback of a physical appearance unsuited to the part. Yet it was the character which he had studied most profoundly, and in which, as we remember him in it, he held the most complete sway over the minds and feelings of his audiences. None of his performances, as may be imagined, was so distinguished by its intellectuality, yet none was so simply and irresistibly pathetic. The abstraction and self-communing in the delivery of the famous soliloquy can never have been surpassed, and were probably never equaled; and throughout the closet scene there was a reality in the tenderness, the vehemence, and the awe which held the spectators breathless and spellbound. “Beautiful Hamlet, farewell, farewell!” are his closing words in recording his last performance of the part. But this was no final parting: while memory retained her seat in the mind of this great artist, this true and loving servant of Shakespeare’s genius, the matchless creations with which he had so identified himself could never cease to be the subjects of daily meditation. “On one occasion,” we are told, “after his powers had so much failed that it was long since he had been capable of holding or reading a book to himself, he said he had been reading _Hamlet_. On some surprise being expressed, he touched his forehead, and said ‘Here;’ and when asked if he could recollect the whole play, he replied, ‘Yes, every word, every pause; and the very pauses have eloquence.'”
Books Received
The Internal Mission of the Holy Ghost. By Henry Edward, Archbishop of Westminster New York: D. & J. Sadlier.
Man and Beast Here and Hereafter. By Rev. J.G. Wood, M.A., F.L.S. New York: George Routledge & Son.
Lakey’s Village and Country Houses, comprising eighty-four pages of Designs. New York: The Orange Judd Co.
Social Science and National Economy. By R.E. Thompson, M.A. Philadelphia: Porter & Coates.
A Defence of the United States Patent System. By J.S. Perry. Boston: James R. Osgood & Co.
Brief Biographies: English Statesmen. By T.W. Higginson. New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons.
The Best Reading: Hints on the Selection of Books. New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons.
How to Make a Living. By George C. Eggleston. New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons.
Ralph Wilton’s Weird: A Novel. By Mrs. Alexander. New York: Henry Holt & Co.
Warrington’s Manual. By William S. Robinson. Boston: Lee & Shepard.
Home Talks. By John H. Noyes. Published by the Oneida Community.
Spain and the Spaniards. By N.L. Thieblin. Boston: Lee & Shepard.
Social Pressure. By Sir Arthur Helps. Boston: Roberts Brothers.
In the Camargue. By Emily Bowles. Boston: Loring.