Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905

Robert Loraine as the “hero” gave a far better performance. It was theatrical, but satisfactory. The late Robert Burns was played by T. D. Frawley in a deliciously Hibernian way. Poor Bobbie would have had a fit if he could have seen his nationality juggled with in this manner. If Mr. Frawley had warbled “The Wearing o’ the Green” the illusion would have been complete. Mr. Andrew Mack could have done nothing better – for Ireland.

“The Lady Shore” was the title of Miss Virginia Harned’s massive production at the Hudson Theater. Jane Shore was dragged, willy-nilly, from history almost as though she were the heroine of a so-called popular novel, and two ladies, Mrs. Vance Thompson and Lena R. Smith, propelled her toward 1905. While, on moral grounds, we may inveigh against the courtesan, when we meet her in everyday life, the fact remains that for the stage there is no character in greater demand by “star” actresses and “romantic” playwrights. They seem to find a peculiar interest in a woman who has “lived” – no matter how. If, in ransacking history, they are lucky enough to discover a courtesan who can be billed as a “king’s favorite,” they appear to smack their lips exultantly. One is almost inclined to believe that dead-and-gone kings must have chosen “favorites” merely for the sake of to-day’s stage.

As soon as the playwright has excavated a courtesan, he begins to think of the best way of whitewashing her. For she must be offered up as more sinned against than sinning. Of course. The playwright wastes his substance thinking up excuses for her. He is quite willing – nay, anxious – that she shall go wrong, but he prefers that she shall be driven to it by untoward circumstances. He is desirous that we shall sympathize with her, to the point of tears, in the last act. It is very kind of him to do such charitable deeds in history’s name, and we realize how exceedingly unselfish he is. Just the same, this mania for resurrecting defunct courtesans seems a trifle neurasthenic. It appears to indicate a hysterical sympathy, on the part of the playwright, with dead characters whom, in life, he would hesitate at asking to dinner en famille.

The two women who built up “The Lady Shore” smashed history into smithereens in their rabid and frenzied effort to make her an exquisite impersonation of nearly all the virtues. It was, in fact, grotesque and ludicrous. With any old history book staring them in the face, they treated Jane Shore precisely as though she were the heroine of a dime novel. They had no qualms. They lopped great wads from her past, and huge excrescences from her present, and by the time that she had reached the last act, the audience sat dazed at the delicate beauty of her character. No masculine playwright could have done as much. Possibly if the purifiers of Lady Jane Shore elected to dramatize the career of Messalina, they would make of her a combination of Joan of Arc and Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall.

The Jane Shore at the Hudson Theater was married to a brute of a husband, but she left him simply because she was driven to it, poor girl! She became the mistress of Edward IV., apparently because she yearned to be a mother to his children. She was always rescuing the little princes from the Duke of Gloucester. She sat beside Edward IV., in the council chamber of Westminster Palace, so that she could beseech him to pardon delinquents who were brought before him in a procession of fifteenth century “drunk and disorderly.”

There never was a more perfect lady. The playwrights unfortunately omitted to picture her teaching a Sunday school, and I can only imagine that they must have forgotten to do so. Jane Shore’s love for Edward IV. was depicted in such lily tints that you simply hated the memory of your history book that said such rude things about her life after the sovereign’s death. The historical “penance” that on the stage seemed so effective was, as we know, really unavailing. Dramatic license is a great thing, and it is pardonable when it is used with discrimination. But made to do duty as a daub, it is unjustifiable. What is the use of going down into history as one thing, if you are to be bobbed up on the stage, after the passage of centuries, as another? To the feminine playwright, the line that separates saints from sinners is an invisible boundary.

As a play, “The Lady Shore” was mere melodrama, of a somewhat incoherent nature. Perhaps if the central character had been imaginary – and it was nearly that – the melodrama would have been all the better for it. Why not invent a good new character, instead of revamping a bad old one? Why not exercise the imagination upon some original creation, instead of straining it around a type that lurks in the libraries? The authors of “The Lady Shore” might have used their labors more advantageously. It is always a futile task to rewrite history. History is cold, and unbudgingly accurate. Why trifle with it?

Miss Virginia Harned, however, escaped from her play. She is an emotional actress of considerable force, as she showed us in her production of “The Lady of the Camelias.” She has the power of repression. She is artistic, sincere and graceful. Her work in this diffuse play proved that beyond the peradventure of a doubt, so that her engagement at the Hudson Theater need not be unduly deplored. The Gloucester of John Blair was extremely amusing. Such a Richard, the most imaginative imaginer could never have dreamed of! He played the part as though the Duke of Gloucester were an Ibsen gentleman, battling with a dark green matinée. Mr. Loraine came from “Nancy Stair” to “The Lady Shore,” and was Edward IV. It would be interesting to know which “heroine” he really preferred. The little princes in the tower seemed to deserve their fate. They were arguments in favor of race suicide.

Two other celestial bodies of the feminine gender, fixed for one brief week apiece on the theatrical “concave,” moved quickly in the direction of “the road.” These more or less heavenly lights were Miss Odette Tyler and Miss Eugenie Blair, who appeared at those kaleidoscopic theaters called “combination houses.” Miss Tyler used to be something of a Broadway “favorite” – a term that has lost a good deal of its significance. She appeared in the little Yorkville Theater on the highroad to One Hundred and Twenty-fifth Street, in a play of her own, called “The Red Carnation.”

No purpose would be served in analyzing this uncanny, chaotic mass, even were it possible to do so. Miss Tyler placed herself amid French revolutionary surroundings, and was seen as a remarkable “romantic” French woman, with a strong American accent and an emphatic New York manner. She fluttered through Paris in 1793, evidently convinced that it was just as “easy” as New York in 1905. She had a caramel demeanor and ice-cream allurements. She kittened and frivoled through the Reign of Terror with an archness that was commendable, though somewhat misplaced, and she let loose a lay figure labeled Marie Antoinette that was designed to frame her own accomplishments.

Familiar as we are with the French revolution, used as a stage motive, “The Red Carnation” threw such a new light upon it all, that we were a trifle dumfounded. Miss Tyler gracefully revised it for us, and made it appear as a somewhat gay and frolicsome time. Moreover, it had all the modern improvements. It seemed to be steam-heated and electric-lighted, and although Marie Antoinette did not make her entrance in an automobile, you felt that it was waiting outside. Historians, interested in the French revolution, might get some valuable sidelights from Miss Odette Tyler’s idea of it. The actress herself has an agreeable personality and considerable ability.

The other “star” to whom I have fitfully alluded – Miss Eugenie Blair – has much vogue outside of New York. She came to the Murray Hill Theater with a version of Wilkie Collins’ much-abused “New Magdalen,” which was called “Her Second Life.” This being her life number two, you felt a distinct sensation of relief that you were spared a glimpse at lives numbers one and three. It was such a very crude performance that I should not have dragged it into this record had it not been for the fact that Miss Blair was part of the singular display of celestial bodies that I have tried to indicate in this article. She is a weighty actress corporeally, if not artistically, and poor Mercy Merrick fared rather badly. This Wilkie Collins heroine has been neglected of late, in favor of such base subterfuges as figures of the Nancy Stair caliber, but certain signs point to revivals of “The New Magdalen,” which as an emotional story has seldom been surpassed. Compared with the pitiful puppet “romances” of to-day, this genuine piece of throbbing fiction seems to be in distinctly another class.

Mr. Frank Keenan, with whose praiseworthy effort to emulate the tactics of M. Antoine in Paris my readers are familiar, gave up the Berkeley Lyceum ghost, unable to weather the storm and stress of experiment. While admiring Mr. Keenan’s energy, and appreciating the little one-act bills that he offered with such rapid-transit celerity, it is impossible to avoid deprecating the lack of logical foresight that he manifested.

He trifled with our young affections, aroused our enthusiasm and inspired in us the belief that a permanent institution was inevitable, and then – quietly dropped out. In other walks of life, people who make experiments have generally supplied themselves with the wherewithal to wait while their schemes approach fruition. Rome was not built in a day, but if the builders thereof had been actors, Rome never would have been built at all! The actor, who is usually a singularly unbalanced person, looks for immediate success, and can endure nothing else.

Why Mr. Keenan should have expected to jump into a whirlwind of instantaneous applause is an enigma. Nothing that is out of the conventional rut succeeds at the start. There must be patience, perseverance and a struggle. Otherwise life would be very easy, which it is not. The rosy little scheme at the Berkeley Lyceum had attracted considerable attention. Critics paid homage to every change of bill, anxious to chronicle success, and looking with glad eyes at the possible advent of a new impetus to the jaded theatrical machine. They had worked themselves into the most appreciative state of mind. Lo, and behold! After a few weeks, M. Antoine’s American imitator evaporated. Lack of funds!

What a dismal lack of those funds there must have been when the enterprise started! Who but an actor would embark upon a scheme, and project such radiant promises in the interests of those who are tired of wallowing in the trough of vulgar “popularity,” when it was apparent that, without that popularity, the thing couldn’t last more than a month? Mr. Keenan should apologize to M. Antoine, of Paris. He took his name in vain. People with new ideas, opposed to the conventionality of the old ones, expect naturally to bide their time before the public unhesitatingly accepts them. If Mr. Keenan had engaged in his alluring pursuit, willing and even anxious to “lose money” before he made it, a very different story would have been told.

People ask why dramatic chroniclers grow cynical. The answer is simple. They feel that they are persistently “jollied” along, and they assuredly are. It was so in the case of the Berkeley Lyceum plan that fell through simply because money failed to pour into the box office, and M. Antoine, of Paris, lacked the vitality of Barnum & Bailey’s circus! It was so last year when Mr. Sydney Rosenfeld tried to “elevate” the stage with the Century Players. This is an age of get-rich-quickly, and there is no other object. Actors talk of art, and of unconventionality; they inveigh against commercialism and pose most picturesquely. But they are in such a hurry to spear the florid, bloated body of easy success that they cannot wait. Mr. Frank Keenan went direct from M. Antoine’s Parisian plan to vaudeville!

The little play upon which he relied to turn the tide of dollars in his direction was called “A Passion in a Suburb,” and was described as “a psychological study of madness,” by Algernon Boyesen. It was horror for the sake of horror, which is always distressing, and it was a failure. It was food neither for the elect nor for the mob. Both classes demand a plausible excuse for stage happenings. The picture of an insane husband strangling his wife and child might be accepted as the logical sequence of some startling train of events. But to enter a playhouse and watch a couple of murders for no other reason than that the murderer was a madman, is not enlivening. It is ghoulish.

I have devoted much space to Mr. Frank Keenan and his plan. I was sorry for him until I thought it all over. Then I couldn’t help feeling a bit sore. It was all very foolish. The bubble was pricked so quickly! It is a consolation to reflect that the New York critics did everything in their power to push along a project that would have been of great value to this metropolis. It was foredoomed to failure, because it depended upon the iniquity known as “quick returns.” De mortuis nil nisi bonum. (I think I have, though!)

That a one-act play is fully able to create a veritable sensation, as keen as any that a five-act drama might evoke, was instanced at the Manhattan Theater, when Mrs. Fiske produced a little drama, written by herself, and called “A Light from St. Agnes.” I think I may say that it was the finest and most artistic one-act play that I have ever seen – and I’ve seen a few in my day. It aroused a matinée audience, on a warm afternoon, to an ecstasy of enthusiastic approval, because it appealed directly to the artistic fiber.

It was not a case for cold analytic judgment. It was not an occasion when long-haired critics could draw a diagram, and prate learnedly of “technique” and other topics that often make critics such insensate bores. “A Light from St. Agnes” was recognized intuitively as great. The soul of an audience never makes a mistake, though the brain frequently errs. A brain might perhaps prove that this play was artistically admirable, but the soul reached that conclusion instantly and unreasoningly. The effect was marvelous.

I wonder if you quite grasp my meaning. You know there are some things that refuse to be reduced to diagram form. They decline to answer to the call of a, b and c. They won’t be x’d and y’d algebraically. Very material people of course rebel at this. They want everything cut and dried. They would dissect the soul with a scalpel, and reduce psychic effects to the medium of pounds and ounces. That is what certain reviewers tried to do with “A Light from St. Agnes.”

Their material eyes saw that the end of the little play was murder; that its motive was a sacrilegious robbery – the theft of a diamond cross from the body of a woman lying dead in a church; that the man was a drink-besotted ruffian; that the woman was his illicit partner; that the atmosphere was assuredly brutal. Material eyes saw all this. Material senses reasoned that, given all these qualities, such a play must be horrible, and unduly strenuous. But intuition set all this reasoning awry. You see, intuition doesn’t reason; it knows. It is better to know than to reason. Get a dozen people to prove to you that “A Light from St. Agnes” was a dismal and unnecessary tragedy. Oh, they might be able to do it. Then go and see it, and you will understand precisely what I am driving at.

Plays that appeal to intuition are the most wonderful offerings that the theater can make. Nothing can stay their effect; nobody can successfully argue against them. Rare indeed they are. When some playwright, as the result of a genuine emotion, makes a drama, in the sheer delight of that emotion, and with a disregard for conventionality, and no hope of box-office approval – then you get a work of art. Incidentally, I may remark that such a work of art is so irresistible that it literally forces the box office to tinkle. It would be a pity if it didn’t.

The scene of “A Light from St. Agnes” is laid in a Louisiana village called Bon Hilaire. Michel and Toinette occupy a rude hut, in the vicinity of St. Agnes’ Church. The light from the church sometimes irradiates the sordid, loathsome room. In fact, Toinette places her couch in such a position that the light may shine upon her eyes, and awaken her in time to call Michel, her befuddled partner.

A woman who has tried to reform the lawless life of this section of Louisiana has died. Her body lies in the church. Toinette and Michel have both been cynically amused, in their reckless way, at her efforts, unavailing, to reform them. And she is dead! Father Bertrand visits Toinette, and tells her this. The peasant laughs. The priest gives her a crucifix that the woman left for her, and its influence – though the playwright is far too subtle even to suggest this – is the “moral” of the little play for those who want their i’s dotted and their t’s crossed.

The drama moves quickly. The drama is tragedy. Michel returns, more hopelessly intoxicated than ever. She lies on the rude couch, seeking sleep. He talks, as he plies himself with drink. The subject is the dead woman in the church of St. Agnes. Some one had placed a lily in her hand. He hopes that nobody will ever dare to place a lily in his! There are long silences; significant pauses. Through the open window he looks into the church. He sees the dead woman, laid out on a gold-embroidered cloth. On her breast is a cross of diamonds.

More long silences; more significant pauses. He must possess that diamond cross. Why not? He hated the dead woman. He would steal into the church and rob the body; nay, more, he would hurl insults at it. Toinette has the crucifix. Perhaps it is that; perhaps it is the awakening of some forgotten instinct within her. The horror of the man’s intention convulses her. There is a terrible conflict between the two. It is the very intensity of drama. The audience, wrought up, holds its breath. Then Toinette, by a ruse, escapes from the man, and, rushing from the dwelling, gives an alarm. The bells ring, in wildest chime. Michel realizes that he is trapped; that the woman has undone him. He goes after her, finds her, brings her back. He wrestles with her, forces her back upon the rude couch, and plunges his knife into her throat.

The stage is in darkness. Yet you can dimly see him hovering over the body; you watch him in a sort of fascination, as he washes the blood from his hands, and then furtively, in the silence, steals away. Toinette lies, extended on the couch, motionless – dead. From the window the light from St. Agnes creeps into the room. It is cast tenderly over Toinette’s body, which it irradiates strangely as the curtain falls slowly.

One must “describe” plays, even when in so doing one runs the risk of doing them an injustice. My recital of the story of “A Light from St. Agnes” sounds bald, as I recall the effect that the play produced. I insist that never for one moment was it “morbid” or unnecessarily horrible. It rang true, without one hysterical intonation. It was sincere, dignified, artistic, beautiful. It was admirably staged; it was acted by John Mason, William B. Mack and Fernanda Eliscu with exquisite appeal.

Mrs. Fiske scored heavily as a playwright. There were two other one-act dramas from her pen – “The Rose” and “The Eyes of the Heart.” The latter made an excellent impression, but it was in “A Light from St. Agnes” that she stamped herself indelibly upon the season.

FOR BOOK LOVERS

By Archibald Lowery Sessions

Practical purposes served by stories of trade and commerce. Something more than entertainment. Among the interesting new books are “The Common Lot,” by Robert Herrick; “The Master Word,” by L. H. Hammond; “The Plum Tree,” by David Graham Phillips.

Spring has brought with it a multitude of gay volumes. American bookbinding has at last reached such a point that, whatever the nature of its contents, a novel may at least make an impression by its good clothes.

Trade stories almost overcrowd this brilliant assemblage. Of course, it is what might be expected of American commercialism, that our literature should open its doors to all phases of business and manufacture. Most of us feel particularly at home and in our element, as it were, when finding amusement for a leisure hour among mills or stock markets.

And these tales, like the Rollo books, impart much valuable information to the uninitiated. We can remember feeling a slight degree of impatience some years ago, when Mr. Hopkinson Smith gave us his careful demonstration of the building of stone piers in the pages of “Caleb West.” But in the end we recognized thriftily that he had given us, for the small price of the book, enough points to be available for carrying on an intelligent conversation with a stone mason; a decided addition to one’s accomplishments in those days of social misunderstanding.

That book came with the first advances of the tide. Now hundreds of such volumes are washed up at our feet, out of which we may accumulate regular trade libraries if we like, from which a young student can learn the ins and outs of all professions and commercial ventures, their temptations or advantages, and their relation, as well, to the mysterious workings of love. What a possession for a would-be-well-equipped worldling!

The only difficulty is, what are we going to do when these resources are used up?

However, there is no real need to worry. We can still encourage the unsuccessful author, who has been befogged by romance and idealism, to peg away for a year or two at some, if possible, unique form of manufacture, going into it from the bottom and learning its tricks and its manners. He will have at least the opportunity of becoming a good mechanic, and probably some chance of getting up a paying novel in the hereafter – with a seductive cover.

There can be no doubt that “The Common Lot,” by Robert Herrick, Macmillan Company, is among the strongest of this year’s books, and one which should take high rank as a thoroughly representative American novel.

From beginning to end it absorbs attention, is virile in the depiction of character, and most of all notable in its absolute fidelity to human nature and the modern point of view, even where it points an overwhelming moral. The story of Jackson Powers’ career, his promising beginning, the natural temptation to overlook a bit of dishonesty, and his equally natural response to it, followed by his deterioration as an architect who sacrifices his ideals to commercial interests, is a fine piece of work; so is the portrait of his strong wife, and her slow but crushing realization of his weakness.

The delightful little doctor in the slums, and the defiant product of conventionality, Venetia Phillips, supply plenty of humor, and for sensation, one need not look further than the thrilling description of the Glenmore fire, which, in its awful tragedy, reveals Powers to himself as a criminal.

Not the least powerful scene is that in which his confession and attempts to atone are received by the contemptuous man of the world, who sees in them only weakness and cowardice, despite his scorn of the crime.

No reader will put down the book without having experienced some stirrings of heart and some reminders of personal experience, or without a keen interest in the story.

As “The Cost” dealt with finance on a big scale, so David Graham Phillips’ latest book, “The Plum Tree,” Bobbs-Merrill Company, deals with politics on a big scale.

In these two stories, Mr. Phillips depends for the success of his narrative rather upon theme and plot than upon style and characterization; not that these two elements are slighted, or that they are not skillfully and masterfully handled, but that one feels that they are purposely subordinated to the subject-matter and to interest in the development of the tale.

That it is an intensely interesting book cannot be denied; it is so because it is near enough to the facts of politics to make the stirring and dramatic episodes it describes seem like the account of a phase of vital human life.

The story is that of young Sayler’s development from a green, inexperienced and impecunious young lawyer, to the seasoned man who controls the politics of the country through his unerring manipulation of both party machines; the maker of Presidents, the master of Congress, the terror of the financial world. The methods by which he achieves these results make up the action of the story; they are such as we are all familiar with, except, perhaps, in the combination which Mr. Phillips makes of them.

The love element is of minor importance, and doubtless, to some minds, it will be considered unattractive. But no one can deny that the story, as a whole, is one of more than ordinary power.