Without Prejudice

by Израэль Зангвилл

  Of like kidney was the Grecian Theatre, where one went out between the acts to dance, or to see the dancing, upon a great illuminated platform. 'T was the drama brought back to its primitive origins in the Bacchic dances-the Grecian Theatre, in good sooth! How they footed it under the stars, those regiments of romping couples, giggling, flirting, munching! Alas! Fuit Troja! The Grecian is "saved." Its dancing days are over, it is become the Headquarters of Salvation. But it is still gay with music, virtue triumphs on, and vice grovels at the penitent form. In such quaint wise hath the "Eagle" renewed its youth, for the Grecian began life as the Eagle, and was Satan's deadliest lure to the 'prentices of Clerkenwell and their lasses:

  Up and down the City Road,

  In and out the Eagle;

  That's the way the money goes!

  Pop goes the weasel.

  Concerning which immortal lines one of your grammatical pedants has observed, "There ain't no rhyme to City Road, there ain't no rhyme to Eagle." Great pantomimes have I seen at the Grecian-a happy gallery boy at three pence-pantomimes compact of fun and fantasy, far surpassing, even to the man's eye, the gilded dullnesses of Drury Lane. The pantomimes of the Pavilion, too, were frolicsome and wondrous, marred only by the fact that I knew one of the fairies in real life, a good-natured girl who sewed carpet-slippers for a living. The Pavilion, by the way, is in the Whitechapel Road, not a mile from the People's Palace, in the region where, according to the late Mr. Walter Besant, nobody ever laughs. The Pavilion, like the "Brit.," had its stock company, and when the leading lady appeared for her Benefit as "Portia," she was not the less applauded for being drunk. The quality of mercy is not strained. And what more natural than that one should celebrate one's benefit by getting drunk? Sufficient that "Shylock" was sober!

  In Music-Halls, the East-End was as rich as the West,-was it not the same talent that appeared at both, like Sir Boyle Roche's bird, winging its way from one to t' other in cabs? Those were the days of the great Macdermott, who gave Jingoism to English history, of the great Vance, of the lion comiques, in impeccable shirt-fronts and crush hats. There was still a chairman with a hammer, who accepted champagne from favoured mortals, stout gentlemen with gold chains, who might even aspire to conversation with the comiques themselves. Sic itur ad astra. Now there is only a chairman of directors who may, perhaps, scorn to be seen in a music-hall: a grave and potent seignior whose relations with the footlights may be purely financial. There were still improvisatori who would turn you topical verses on any subject, and who, on the very evening of Derby-day, could rhyme the winner when unexpectedly asked by the audience to do so. A verse of Fred Coyne's-let me recall the name from the early oblivion which gathers over the graves of those who live amid the shouts of worshippers-still lingers in my memory, bearing in itself its own chronology:

  And though we could wish, some beneficent fairy

  Had preserved the life of the Prince so dear,

  Yet we WON'T lay the blame on Lieutenant Carey;

  And these are the latest events of the year.

  With what an answering pandemonium we refused to hold the lieutenant accountable for the death of the victim of the African assegais! And the ladies! How ravishingly they flashed upon the boards, in frocks that, like Charles Lamb at the India Office, made up for beginning late by finishing early! How I used to agree with the bewitching creature who sang that lovely lyric strangely omitted from the Anthologies:

  What a nice place to be in!

  What a nice place, I 'm sure!

  Such a very jolly place,

  I've never seen before.

  It gives me, oh! such pleasure,

  And it Ms my heart with bliss,

  I could stay here for ever:

  What a nice place is this!

  Such eyes she made at me-at whom else?-aloft in the balcony; and oh, what arch smiles, what a play of white teeth! If we could only have met! Yester-year at a provincial town some one offered to introduce her to me. She was still playing principal boy in the pantomime-a gay, gallant Prince, in plumed cap and tights. But I declined. Another of the great comic singers of my childhood-a man-I met on a Margate steamboat. He told me of the lost glories of the ancient days quorum pars magna fuit, and of the after-histories of his great rivals. One, I recollect, had retired with a fortune, opened a magnificent Temperance Hotel at the seaside, and then broken his neck by falling down his own splendid staircase, drunk. "Ah," said the veteran, sighing at an overcrowded profession, "there were only two or three comic singers in those days." "There are only two or three now," quoth I. And the old man beamed. Another ancient hero of the halls, long since translated to the theatres, whom I first saw at a music-hall in St. Giles', buttonholed me the other night in St. James', in the halls of a Duchess: a curious meeting. That I should have ever reverenced him seemed as strange as that there should be still people to reverence the coronet of the Duchess. Yes, it is very far off, that magic time when the world was full of splendid things and splendid men and women, a great Fair, and I, like the child in Henley's poem, wandered about, enjoying, desiring, possessing. Now I know there is nothing worth wanting, and nothing but poor flesh and blood, despite all the costumes and accessories. For there is no sense in which I have not been "behind the scenes." And as for the literal theatric sense, I have flirted with the goddesses at the wings till they have missed their cues, I have supped at the Garrick Club of a Saturday night, when all the stars come out, I have toured with a travelling company, I have had words of my own spoken by dainty lips,-nay, I have even played myself, en amateur, the irascible old gentleman with the snuff-box and the coloured handkerchief. And what is there to say of the human spectacle, but that perhaps the pains and the crimes are necessary to the show, and that without a blood-and-thunder plot human life would not run, drying up of its own dullness? "All the world's a stage," and we are all cast for stock roles. Some of us have the luck to be heroes, the complacent centre of eternal plaudits, some are born for villainy and the brickbat. And while others have had to play goodness knows what-medieval Italian princesses, Cockney cabmen, old Greek hetaire, German cuirassiers, American presidents, burglars, South Sea Islanders-I find myself-for the first time on any stage-in the applauded role of man of letters, if with little option of throwing up the part. They have an optimistic phrase, those happy-go-lucky creatures of the footlights, when, on the very day of production, nobody knows his words or his business, the scene will not shape itself, and chaos is lord. "It will be all right at night," they say. And we, who play our parts gropingly on this confused and noisy scene, wondering what is the plot, and where is the manager, and straining our ears for the prompter's whisper, can but echo with another significance their cheery hope: "It will be all right at night." Perhaps, when the long day's work has drawn to its end, and the curtain, has fallen upon the plaudits and the hisses, we shall all sit down to supper after the play, complimented by the Author, smiling at the seriousness with which we took our roles of hero or villain, and glad to be done with, the make-up and the paint. And in the music that shall hover about our table, we may perhaps find a celestial restfulness, compared to which the most exquisite orchestras of this earth shall sound but as "tuning up."

  III. ART IN ENGLAND

  My friend the Apostle was in hot haste, and would not stay to be contradicted. "Not going tonight!" he cried, in horror-struck accents. "Why, tonight is the turning-point in the history of the British drama! To-night is the test-battle of the old and the new; it is the shock of schools, the clash of nature against convention. This play will decide the fate of our drama for the rest of the century. Here you have a play by a leader of the old school produced at a leading theatre. If it succeeds, the old drama may linger on for a year or two more; but if it fails, it will be the death-blow of the old gang. They may pack up!" The Apostle was at the other end of the street ere I had taken in the full import of these brave words. What! there was a crisis in the drama, and I, living in the heart of art, had heard nothing about it! For
tunately it was not too late. I could still make amends for my ignorance. It was still open to me to assist at this historic contest, for the arena was to be the Haymarket, where I am a persona gratis. Visions of the great first night of "Hernani" thronged tumultuously before me; my blood pulsed with something of its ancient youthful ardour as I girded my loins with black trousers for the fray, and adjusted my white tie with faltering fingers. I had half a mind to don a gilet rouge, but the reflection that my wardrobe did not boast of coloured waistcoats gave the victory to the other half. I dashed up to the theatre. All was placid. The stalls were packed with a brilliant audience in correct and unemotional costume. There were classic faces, and romantic faces, and faces that were realistic, but each and all blank of the consciousness of a crisis. The talk was of everything save art and literature. The critics did not even sharpen their pencils. They looked bored to a man. In vain my eye roved the arm-chairs in search of a fighting figure. I could not even see the musical iconoclast who had carried his pepper-and-salt suit into the holy of holies of the Italian opera. My heart sank within me. When the orchestra ceased I gave one last despairing glance all round the theatre in search of my friend the Apostle. He was not there!

  The play was "The Charlatan,"-the work of that other apostle, whose outspoken Epistles to the English chronically relieve the dull decorum of London journalism; the man of whom Tennyson came near writing-

  Buchanan to right of him,

  Buchanan to left of him,

  Buchanan in front of him,

  Volleyed and thundered.

  But that night it was the audience that volleyed and thundered, in unanimous applause. Hisses or party-cries were not. During the intense episodes, when the house was wrapt in silence, and you could have heard a programme drop, no opposition partisan as much as laughed. The author was called at curtain-fall, and retired uninjured. Next morning the critics were scrupulously suave, with no sign of the battle they had been through. Most wonderful to relate, Mr. William Archer, the risen hope of the stern and unbending Radicals, launched into unwonted praise, and gave an airing to some of the eulogistic adjectives that had been mouldering in his dictionary; nor did he even appear to be aware that he had gone over to the enemy!

  For one thing, Bard Buchanan had given us neither old school nor new, but a blend of both-nay, a blend of all forms of both-a structure at once modern and mediaeval, with a Norwegian wing. It combined the common-sense of England with the glamour of the East, the physiology of the hypnotist with the psychology of Ibsen. More! It was an epitome of all the Haymarket plays, a resume of all Mr. Tree's successes. The heroine was a mixture of Ophelia and hysteria, the hero was a combination of Captain Swift, Hamlet, and the Tempter; the paradoxical pessimist was a reminder of Mr. Wilde's comedies, the bishop and scientist were in the manner of Mr. Jones. How clever! Social satire a la Savoy, seance a la salle Egyptienne , sleep-walking a la Bellini, moonlight poetry a la Christabel, a touch of spice a la Francaise, and copious confession a la Norvegienne, all baked into one pie. How characteristic! And characteristic, mark you, not only of Mr. Buchanan's chaotic cleverness, but of Mr. Tree's experimental eclecticism. Did I say an epitome of the Haymarket plays? This is but another way of saying an abstract and brief chronicle of the time, to whose age and body Mr. Tree so shrewdly holds up the mirror. For this dying century of ours is all things to all men. We are living in the most picturesque confusion of the old and new known to history-in a cross-road of chronology where all the ages meet. 'Tis a confusion of tongues outbabbling Babel, a simultaneous chattering of the centuries. And, more troubled than the Tower-builders, we understand, one another better than we understand ourselves; again, like "The Charlatan," half odic force, half fraud, who is never so honest as when he confesses himself charlatan.

  But this is not what I set out to say. There was a moral to the tale of my friend the absentee Apostle who was so cocksure about the crisis. This moral is that he has Continental blood in his veins. To these foreign corpuscles he owes the floridness of his outlook, his conception of the excited Englishman. The Englishman takes his authors placidly; he is never in a ferment or a frenzy about anything save politics, religion, or sport: these are the poles and the axis of his life's pivot; he is not an artistic person. Art has never yet taken the centre of the stage in his consciousness; it has never even been accepted as a serious factor of life. All the pother about plays, poems and pictures is made by small circles. Our art has never been national art: I cannot imagine our making the fuss about a great writer that is made about a second-rate journalist in Paris. It is Grace the cricketer for whom the hundred thousand subscribe their shilling: fancy a writer thus rewarded, even after scoring his century of popular novels. The winning of the Derby gives a new fillip to the monarchy itself. A Victor Hugo in London is a thought a faire rire . A Goethe at the court of Victoria, or directing Drury Lane Theatre, is of a comic-opera incongruity. Our neighbours across the border have a national celebration of Burns' birthday-they think as much of him as of the Battle of Bannockburn. We English, who have produced the man whom the whole world acknowledges its greatest poet, have not even a Shakespeare Day. Surely Shakespeare Sunday would do as much good to the nation as Hospital Saturday or Shrove Tuesday! Charles Lamb wanted to say grace before reading Shakespeare, but the Puritans who make England so great and so dull are only thankful for stomachic mercies.

  I cannot easily conceive our working ourselves up to such enthusiasm as the Hungarians lately displayed over the jubilee of Jokai, an enthusiasm that resounded even unto this country, and shook the lacunar aureum of the Holborn Restaurant with shouts of "Eljen."

  The peculiarity of the Hungarian temperament does not, however, entirely explain their joy in Jokai. He is so much more than a mere novelist, poet and dramatist, with three or four hundred volumes (one need not be particular to a hundred with this modern Lope de Vega) to his credit. He is also a soldier and a politician, skilful with the sword as well as the pen, and with the tongue as well as the sword. He has drawn blood with each and all of these weapons, and though nowadays he often votes in the House without inquiring what he is voting for till he has recorded his vote, this does not diminish his claims to practical wisdom. He married the leading actress of Hungary, who, without waiting for an introduction, rushed forward from the audience to present him with a bunch of flowers when a play of his made a hit. Fancy Ellen Terry rushing forward to present Pinero with a bunch of flowers at the conclusion of "The Second Mrs. Tanqueray"! No, the thing is as impossible in England as the combination of roles in Jokai himself. The idea of letting a man be at once man of letters and man of action! Why, we scarcely allow that a man of letters may occupy more than one pigeonhole! If he is a poet, we will not admit he can write prose-forgetting that is just what most poets do. If he is a novelist, he cannot write plays,-the truth being, of course, that it is the playwrights who cannot write plays. If he is a humourist he can never be taken seriously, and if he is accepted seriously he must be careful to conceal his sense of the humour of the position. Not only so, but we insist on the sub-sub-specialisation which Adam Smith showed to be so profitable in the making of pins, and which, passing from the factory to the laboratory, now threatens to pass from science into literature. Having analysed away the infinitely great, we are now devoting ourselves to the apotheosis of the infinitely little.

  A priori, one would think action the salvation of the literary man, the corrective of "the fallacies of the den," the provider of that experience which is the raw material of literature, and prevents it from being spun out of the emptiness of one's own entrails. But the practical Briton knows better. He has never forgiven John Morley for going into politics (though I doubt not "honest John" would now find much to revise in his essay on "Compromise"); and he finds Socialism ever so much more Utopian since William Morris went into it. Can you imagine a true-born Briton following the flag of Swinburne, or throwing up a barricade with George Meredith? To the last Beaconsfield was suspected of persiflage beca
use he wrote novels and was witty. America makes her authors ministers and envoys, but England insists that brains are a disqualification for practical life. "Authors are so unpractical: we don't want them to act-we only want them to teach us how to act." A chemist or an astronomer must needs isolate himself from the world to supply the pure theory on which the practical arts are founded, and so the litterateur, too, is expected to live out of the world in order to teach it how to live. But the analogy is false.

  You can work out your mathematical calculations by the week, and hand over the results to the navigator. But the navigation of the stream of time is another matter. There is no abstract theory of life that can be studied without living oneself. Life is always concrete; it is built up of emotions, and you cannot have the emotions brought into your study, as you can order in your hydrochloric acid or your frog's leg. As well expect anchorites to set the tune for men in the thick of the fight! They will chant Masses when they should be shouting Marseillaises. In despair our men of letters leave the country, and become politicians in little savage islands; or they leave the town and become invisible behind their haloes; or they take to golf in small Scotch cities, and pretend that this satisfies their thirst for activity. Sometimes they turn market-gardeners and fob off the interviewer with remarks about caterpillars. Browning was reduced to dining out. It may be contended that the writer must sequester himself to cultivate the Beautiful. But the Beautiful that has not its roots in the True is not the Good. Or it maybe urged that active life would limit the writer's output. Exactly: that is one of the reasons that make active life so advisable. Every writer would write less and feel more. The crop of literature should only be grown in alternate years. As it is, a writer is a barrel-organ who comes to the end of his tunes, clicks, and starts afresh, just as a scholar is a revolving bookcase. Consider, too, how a holiday of action would disenthral the writer from the pettiness of cliques and coteries, with their pedantic atmosphere and false perspectives. I would have every University don work in the docks six months a year (six months' idleness is surely quite enough for any man); every platonic essayist should attend a course of music-halls; and if I could afford it I would set up all the superfine critics in nice little grocers' shops, with the cosiest of back parlours. Why, bless my soul! it is your man of culture, your author, your leader of thought, who is parochial, suburban, borne , and the rest of it! It is a commonplace that the Londoner is the most provincial of all Englishmen, living in sublime ignorance of what is thought and done in the rest of the kingdom; and in similar wise, when a man sneers at the bourgeoisie, I never think of looking up his pedigree in Debrett. It is, no doubt, extremely exasperating that the world was not created for the convenience and to the taste of artistic persons, but unfortunately the thing had to be turned out before their advice could be obtained.