THEATRE REVIEWS

27. Clarissa (1890)

Clarissa
by Robert Buchanan (adapted from the novel, Clarissa Harlowe; or the History of a Young Lady by Samuel Richardson).
London: Vaudeville Theatre. 6 February, 1890 (matinée).
London: Vaudeville Theatre. 8 February to 18 April, 1890.

[Advert from The Times (8 February, 1890 - p.8) for Clarissa.]

The Stage (6 December, 1889 - p.9)

     Robert Buchanan’s adaptation of “Clarissa Harlowe,” is now being carefully rehearsed at the Vaudeville. Mr. Thomas Thorne will very wisely try his new venture first at a matinée, after his wont. In the cast I am pleased to see the name of Miss Lillie Hanbury, a clever little lady, who shows great promise.

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The Times (7 February, 1890 - p.6)

VAUDEVILLE THEATRE.

     The interminable prolixity of the novels of Richardson and the forbidding character of the epistolary style in which they are written have long relegated them to the upper shelf; but readers who search sufficiently will still find in these prototypes of the realistic novel a considerable vein of dramatic ore. More particularly may this be said of “Clarissa Harlowe,” of which a remarkably successful version by MM. Dumanoir, Léon Guillard, and Clairville was produced in Paris in 1846, affording the famous Rose Chéri the occasion for one of her earliest and greatest triumphs. The French Clarisse was readapted more than once to the English stage, but for some reason the story never attained a great degree of success in London, even when played by Mrs. Stirling and Charles Mathews. Nor does a recent American version by M. Dion Boucicault appear to have been more fortunate. Undeterred by the fate of the past English adaptations, however, both Mr. Robert Buchanan and Mr. W. G. Wills have recently dramatized Richardson’s masterpiece afresh; and the former author’s version was yesterday afternoon brought out at the Vaudeville, under circumstances of the most promising character. Indeed, the story as handled by Mr. Robert Buchanan and the Vaudeville company, more particularly by Miss Winifred Emery in the part of the martyred heroine, is not unlikely to attain the vogue of the old Gymnase play, which, of course, the adapter has carefully studied.
     It is easy to see what dangers beset the adapter of “Clarissa Harlowe.” The story is a painful one from the beginning, and has to be conducted to an appropriate conclusion, without regard to that dramatic bugbear, an unhappy ending. For a union between Clarissa and Lovelace—whose name, by the way, as a synonym for libertine has passed into French, as it would probably have done into English had it not been supplanted by Byron’s Don Juan—is out of the question and has never, we believe, been attempted even by the school of adapters who, in the last century, allowed Romeo and Juliet to “live happily ever afterwards.” As a pure-souled martyr to the “polluting hand of man,” Clarissa must accordingly be exhibited by author and actress both in a singularly angelic light; the tyranny which drives her forth from the paternal roof must be odious in the extreme, and all the measures resorted to by her abductor in order to compass her ruin must be correspondingly heartless. By such means alone can the public be brought to acquiesce in the apotheosis of a young lady who, prosaically speaking, only meets with the fate of the common and generally unregarded female “outcast” of melodrama. Mr. Buchanan has very skilfully done his work in this respect, and from Miss Winifred Emery he has received invaluable assistance. Upon the representative of the hapless Clarissa the whole sympathetic interest of the story depends; her virginal air and sweetness count for quite as much as the constructive art of the adapter, and, failing such adventitious aids, the play would be in imminent danger of falling to pieces. Miss Emery in this part is a worthy successor to the fascinating and talented Rose Chéri.
     The changes now imported into the story relate chiefly to the manner in which the death or expiation of Lovelace is brought about. In the French play the avenger was Clarissa’s uncle; in the novel he is her cousin. Mr. Buchanan, on the other hand, magnifies the character of Lovelace’s disreputable henchman, Philip Belford, and transforms him into the libertine’s executioner on the ground that his sister, like Clarissa, has also been betrayed. By this device a congenial and important part if provided for Mr. Thomas Thorne, who is allowed to figure in Lovelace’s conspiracy, instead of, like his French prototype, l’oncle terrible, merely swooping down at the last as a deus ex machinâ. Lovelace finds in Mr. Thalberg a very spirited and plausible representative. This young actor is, comparatively speaking, a newcomer at the Vaudeville, but his present performance will assuredly win him a high position in the handsome young profligate line of character. Some picturesque types are scattered over a not too numerous cast. Among these may be mentioned the Mr. Solmes of Mr. Cyril Maude, the old and decrepit suitor who is thrust upon Clarissa by her father and the Captain Macshane of Mr. Frederick Thorne. Of the former, as well as of Clarissa’s father, who is forcibly played by Mr. Harbury, we unfortunately get but a glimpse; and, indeed, Mr. Thomas Thorne is not so well served in this piece as in Sophia or Joseph Andrews. But for these drawbacks the winning performance of Miss Emery abundantly compensates. Clarissa is altogether an eminently enjoyable and wholesome play; and it will, of course, forthwith take, and no doubt long hold, a place in the evening bill.

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The Era (8 February, 1890 - Issue 2681)

“CLARISSA.”
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Mr Harlowe      ...     ...     Mr HARBURY
Captain Harlowe       ...     Mr OSWALD YORKE
Mr Solmes        ...     ...     Mr CYRIL MAUDE
Stokes              ...     ...     Mr J. S. BLYTHE
Lovelace           ...     ...     Mr T. B. THALBERG
Capt. Macshane        ...     Mr FRED THORNE
Sir Harry Tourville     ...     Mr F. GROVE
Aubrey             ...     ...     Mr FRANK GILLMORE
Watchman       ...     ...     Mr WHEATMAN
Richards           ...     ...     Mr C. RAMSEY
Coffee-stall-keeper   ...     Mr BRAY
Drawer             ...     ...     Mr AUSTIN
Philip Belford    ...     ...     Mr THOMAS THORNE
Clarissa Harlowe       ...     Miss WINIFRED EMERY
Hetty Belford     ...     ...     Miss ELLA BANISTER
Jenny                 ...     ...     Miss MARY COLLETTE
Mrs. Osborne    ...     ...     Miss C. OWEN
Lady Bab Lawrence  ...     Miss L. BRYER
Lady May Lawrence ...     Miss FLORENCE WEMYSS
Sally                  ...     ...     Miss LILY HANBURY

     Have you ever read Richardson’s ‘Clarissa’? was a question often asked in the “intervals” on Thursday afternoon at the Vaudeville Theatre, where Mr Robert Buchanan’s dramatic version of the old bookseller’s immortal story was played for the first time. The answer in most cases was, “Yes; but a long time ago.” Mr Buchanan’s audience were thus in exactly the condition of mind to be wished for by the adaptor; not so firmly bound to preconceived ideas as to object to innovations, nor with such elevated and elaborate notions of the characters in Richardson’s “Clarissa” as to demand literal reproductions of them in Mr Buchanan’s. That gentleman has explained the course he has followed in his work in a note attached to the Vaudeville programme of Thursday afternoon. In the play of Clarissa, he says, “the same freedom of treatment has been adopted as in the author’s dramatic transcripts from Fielding, Sophia and Joseph’s Sweetheart. New incidents and new characters have been introduced, and while the spirit of the original has been preserved as far as possible, no attempt has been made to retain its letter. Free use has also been made, especially in act three, of the play on the same subject by MM. Dumanoir, Guillard, and Clairville, produced with extraordinary success at the Gymnase Theatre, Paris, in 1842. The leading episode, on which depends the whole motif of the story, has been in no particular tampered with in the present version.”
     In the first act of the play we are in the vicinity of Clarissa Harlowe’s home. Lovelace, disguised as a peasant, is lurking about the place in order to get an interview with her, and is assisted in his schemes by a dairymaid named Jenny. Clarissa’s parents are determined that she shall marry an elderly gentleman named Solmes, whom she detests; and, between her hatred for the match and her instinctive distrust of Lovelace and his protestations, the inexperienced girl is sadly beset. By the assistance of his friends and hangers-on, Captain Macshane, Sir Harry Tourville, and Aubrey, Lovelace works upon Clarissa’s fears, and hurries her off to a carriage, which bears her away to London, where she arrives at an inn in Covent-garden in the early morning.
     As Clarissa is still suspicious, Lovelace has to employ stratagem to gain his object; and to precipitate matters, bribes Philip Belford to impersonate an old relative whom Clarissa has never seen, and to insist on marriage taking place between her and her abductor at once. Whilst playing his part, Belford, who has been made a misogynist by the seduction of his sister Hetty by some person unknown to him, is so touched by the evident purity of Clarissa that he conceives a disgust for his dastardly task; and his resolve to save her is confirmed when he meets his sister, who tells him that the man for whom she left her home was Lovelace himself.
     A sham marriage takes place at Lovelace’s London residence, where Clarissa discovers that she is being deceived, and, her suspicions being aroused, begs her pretended husband to allow her to leave the house. This he refuses to do, and finally induces her to retire to rest, sending her by Jenny, whom he has summoned to town to wait upon her, a draught craftily qualified with a strong opiate. Jenny discovers this trick, and prevents Clarissa from taking the drugged liquor. Belford comes to kill Lovelace for the seduction of Hetty, and calls up the friends of the libertine—who arrive to serenade him—to be witness of the retribution. Lovelace pours some of the opiate into a glass of wine, which Belford drinks. Clarissa comes down from her room, and endeavours to escape from the house. She almost succeeds in doing so with the assistance of Belford, but faints at the critical moment; and Philip, after a vain attempt to carry her out, falls, overcome by the drug, Clarissa, unconscious, being borne away by Lovelace in unholy triumph.
     The last act is devoted to the death of the heroine and the punishment of her seducer, who is now desirous of marrying her, and who comes to the cottage near Hampstead Heath, where she is lying sick, to propose to what is vulgarly termed “make an honest woman of her.” Clarissa, whose loathing of her betrayer is intense, receives the proposal with noble scorn, and Lovelace is made to realise the gulf there is between him and her. Belford leads the repentant libertine away to a duel, in which Lovelace, in despair, allows himself to fall by his opponent’s sword, and comes in to die almost at the same time as Clarissa expires, returning in her delirium to the early days of her love, and fancying Lovelace is her true husband and that they have just been wedded.
     The acting was good all round. Mr T. B. Thalberg, if he did not quite realise the arch-libertine of our imagination, proved equal to a very difficult task, and sustained a long and trying part with commendable staunchness to the painful end. Mr Harbury was solid and dignified as Mr Harlowe, and Mr Oswald Yorke enacted the brother of Clarissa with creditable care and energy. Mr Cyril Maude made a marked impression during the brief period of his appearance as the sanctimonious Mr Solmes, and Mr J. S. Blythe gave a respectable representation of Stokes, a farm bailiff. Mr Fred. Thorne’s Captain Macshane was a companion picture to his Welsh parson in Joseph’s Sweetheart, and his Scotch led-captain deserved the same hearty praise which we accorded to his previous effort. Mr F. Grove and Mr Frank Gillmore gave creditable expositions of the small rôles of Sir Harry Tourville and Aubrey, and Mr Wheatman spoke his few lines well as the watchman, other small parts being well played by Messrs C. Ramsay, Bray, and Austin. Mr Thomas Thorne in that of Philip Belford had a very sympathetic and thankful part, and made a decided hit in it. The awakening of repentance in Belford’s breast, and his desperate but unsuccessful effort to rescue Clarissa out of Lovelace’s clutches were watched with keen interest by the audience. Miss Winifred Emery deserves warm and unstinted praise for the manner in which she sustained the part of Clarissa. Her delicacy of physique and style well suited her to the character, and the exquisite refinement with which she endowed her creation, joined with the expressive grace of her acting to banish all ideas of bathos, and to enlist the sympathy of the audience. Her Clarissa Harlowe was an achievement of as much merit as difficulty. Miss Ella Banister’s demonstrative Hetty Belford was a useful contrast to the maidenly reposefulness of Miss Winifred Emery’s heroine; and Miss Mary Collette was appropriately simple and natural as Jenny. Miss C. Owen in the short part of Mrs Osborne was careful and distinct; and Miss L. Bryer and Miss Florence Wemyss suggested without too distinctly affirming the class to which the Ladies Bab and May Lawrence belonged. Miss Lily Hanbury was acceptable as the market girl Sally. With pretty scenery by Messrs Perkins and Hemsley, costumes by Nathan, furniture by Maple, and the charming serenade in the third act expressly composed by Mr Robert H. Lyon, Mr Buchanan’s last “adaptation from the English” had every accessory assistance to the success which it achieved on Thursday afternoon. The piece is by no means too long as it stands for an evening’s entertainment; but it would be a decided improvement if, without unduly curtailing its length, some of the didactic lines in the last act could be removed, and a superfluous line or two taken out here and there in the first and second. The curtain was twice raised on Thursday upon the company assembled on the stage, amidst whom, on a third time of asking, Mr Buchanan appeared, and bowed his acknowledgment of the plaudits of the audience.

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The Graphic (15 February, 1890 - Issue 1055)

     MR. BUCHANAN’S Clarissa, at the VAUDEVILLE, is necessarily a work of more sombre and less varied complexion than the same writer’s adaptations of “Tom Jones” and “Joseph Andrews.” Unless the whole spirit and moral of Richardson’s novel were to be falsified, it was inevitable that this “history of a young lady” should present a more or less monstrous picture of villany fertile in odious devices for undermining female honour. The tragic ending, with the death of one who, “though wrapped in a strange cloud of crime and shame,” lived, like Shelley’s heroine, “ever holy and unstained,” could not indeed by any effort of ingenuity be dispensed with. Mr. Buchanan has incurred censure for making Clarissa, at the last moment, embrace the dying Lovelace, and, no doubt, there is something offensive in the notion of her lips being polluted by contact with those of this coarse and brutal type of the man de bonnes fortunes of the Richardson period; but Mr. Buchanan has taken occasion to protest that this is only the act of one whose consciousness of what is passing around her has faded into a dream of death. The concession that has really been made to the supposed craving of playgoers for romantic endings lies in the notion of inspiring Lovelace at the last moment with a disinterested love for his victim which such a man could not possibly feel. This is a notion borrowed from the French piece, of which Mr. Buchanan acknowledges in the play bill that he has made “free use.” It is not Richardson, nor is it in Richardson’s vein, but the wonderful fact is that the adaptor has, after all, and in spite of the new incidents, and even new characters, he has introduced, given us a play that approaches so nearly to a faithful presentation both of the story and the spirit of the old novel. The stage management has been well thought out; and the performance generally is characterised by harmony and finish. The most disappointing item is the Lovelace of Mr. Thalberg, who, though physically well endowed for the part, puts on, like Rosalind, “a swashing and a martial outside,” and indulges in extravagant postures and wavings of the arms, which have nothing in common with the seductive fine gentleman of the period of wigs and swords. Miss Winifred Emery’s Clarissa is, on the other hand, perfect in its grace, tenderness, resignation, and strength of character. For the special behoof of Mr. Thomas Thorne the author has invented a character compounded of the attributes of Belford, Tomlinson, and Morden—a broken-down, dissipated tool of Lovelace, who, tempted at first to abet his cynical employer’s schemes, repents, protects and befriends the heroine, and finally runs Lovelace through the body in a duel. The part is full of fine opportunities, and it is played by Mr. Thorne with a sombre sort of power, for which few of his admirers would hitherto have been disposed to give him credit. Among the other performers Mr. Cyril Maude must be given credit for an admirable bit of character-acting in the part of the miserly old beau Solmes, Mr. Fred Thorne for a roughly spirited performance of Macshane (Tomlinson), while some less prominent, but more or less important parts are skilfully played by Miss E. Banister, Miss Mary Collette, Mr. Blythe, and Mr. Gillmore. A striking item in the scenery is Mr. Hemsley’s elaborate view of Covent Garden Market, after Nebot’s picture in the possession of the Duke of Bedford. Very favourably received at the matinée performance, Clarissa has since taken a place in the evening bill, which it is likely to hold for some time to come.

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The Theatre (1 March, 1890)

“CLARISSA.”

New drama, in four Acts, by ROBERT BUCHANAN, founded on Richardson’s world-famous novel.
First produced at the Vaudeville Theatre, Thursday afternoon, Feb. 6th, 1890, and placed in the
evening bill, Saturday, Feb. 8th, 1890.

     Mr. Buchanan’s version of “Clarissa Harlowe” is not the first by several that have been produced. He admits that he is much indebted to the French dramatisation by M.M. Dumanoir, Guillard, and Clairville, played “at the Gymnase in 1842.” Since then it was seen at the Princess’s in 1846, the adaptors being Messrs. T. H. Lacy and John Courtney, when Charles Matthews (an actor who we all know had not the faintest idea of sentiment or romance) was the Lovelace and Mrs. Stirling, Clarissa. Then there was Mr. Boucicault’s version, and latest Mr. W. G. Wills’s, produced at the Theatre Royal, Birmingham, December 16, 1889. Mr. Buchanan has given us a workmanlike and most interesting play; his language is appropriate, and the introduction of Hetty Belford adds to the strength of the drama. There are blemishes, however. There is something that is almost too horrible in the first act where Lovelace toys with one of his victims (Jenny), and holds out as a reward to her that if she will aid him in his designs, he will get her the situation of waiting maid with Clarissa so that Jenny shall be near him. Again, that men of position like Sir Harry Tourville and Aubrey should pander so openly to Lovelace’s brutal instincts is brought too much in evidence, as is the scene where these men and a couple of infamous women drink success to their patron’s designs on the hapless heroine. Nor does it seem in accordance with the repentance of Belford (the Morden of the novel) that he should immediately after his promise to lead a new life slay Lovelace, who then dies at Clarissa’s feet, she having in a state of ecstatic delirium kissed and forgiven her betrayer as her soul departs. In the last act, too, there is an almost brutal disregard for the feelings of the repentant Hetty, whom by his past conduct he has actually driven to the streets, when in her very presence Lovelace offers marriage to Clarissa as some, though tardy, atonement for the evil he has wrought. Another blemish is the frequency with which the name of the Deity is invoked. Mr. Buchanan has given us an exquisite character in Clarissa, the soul of purity, defiled only in an earthly sense, but a sublime and spotless martyr in Heaven’s sight, and it is for this reason that I should have esteemed his work the more highly had he not so conspicuously brought out the sensuality and animal nature of some of his characters. Though in the first act I thought Miss Winifred Emery a little cold, scarce showing sufficiently the possession that Lovelace had taken of her heart, later she was near perfection; her death scene, though prolonged, was robbed of any sense of weariness to the beholder by its exquisite poetry and beauty. The actress appeared to be almost transfigured, and to be already a denizen of that happier world in which she was so soon to take her place for ever. Mr. Thalberg, though very good for so young an actor, was neither romantic nor passionate. Such a character as Lovelace, a man who can obtain such conquest over women of every grade, should be thoroughly captivating towards them; when he tires of his playthings of an hour he might be heartless but he should not be cynical. Miss Banister surprised me by her power as Hetty. Her elocution was very faulty and her bursts of emotion were undisciplined, but there was distinct evidence of a capability, that study and experience will develop into the accomplishment of great things. Mr. Thomas Thorne was earnest and sincere as Belford, a man who has lost faith in woman since his sister’s disgrace, but whose heart is moved at the innocence of Clarissa. His scene with Lovelace when taxing him with his treachery, and his endeavour to rescue the profligate’s fresh victim, was intense and vivid. Mr. Cyril Maude was excellent as Solmes, the old lover, intended by her father for Clarissa’s husband. Mr. Fred Thorne, Miss Mary Collette, and Miss Lily Hanbury also deserve very favourable mention. Mr. Hemsley has in the second act given us a capital reproduction of Covent Garden Market as it appeared in 1749, and the dresses by Nathan & Co., from designs by Karl, are handsome and correct. “Clarissa” was so well received tbat it was placed in the evening bill almost immediately.

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Time (April, 1890 - pp.435-439)

     An adaptation, a poem, and a note. Not content with giving us a four-act play cleverly built out of perhaps the most undramatic novel ever written, Mr. Buchanan gives us a little poem of his own among the dentifrice advertisements, and a note explaining that for the one dramatic fourth of the play he is indebted to the Gymnase drama of Dumanoir, Guillard, and Clairville. Undramatic as the subject is, and undramatic as much of the treatment almost of necessity must be, yet it is undeniable that “Clarissa” holds the attention of the same shop-keeping class that sees no pathos in Nora. Winifred Emery’s acting is really wonderful. It is questionable if anything short of actual genius could keep together that hour upon hour of dying in the fourth act. And yet the act and the piece are kept together by the work, almost unaided, of this young actress. Mr. Thalberg helps in the earlier acts, and if he had not quite such a fine figure and quite such good teeth he would be much more useful. Mr. Thomas Thorne is too old and clever a stager to make any mistake, and his Belford is a sterling, thorough piece of work whenever no pathos is required. Only two points of general criticism. Would not the end of the third act be better with “Clarissa” fainting on the sofa as she is a moment before that end, instead of the present finish? The latter is on this wise. Lovelace performs the excellent gymnastic feat of carrying “Clarissa” across the stage and half-way up the stairs to his bedroom, and then “imprints on her lips” an anything but chaste salute. We prefer the simpler ending. Not from any notions of prudery, but from the point of view of dramatic significance. And the ending of the play would be better, as we think, without so much rather ostentatious blessing on the part of “Clarissa,” because she has had a little trouble with Lovelace, and surely better if she did not embrace him lover-fashion at the finish. Either she is a weak girl, loves him still, and will yield to his offer of marriage, or she is a strong woman, loathes him for the wrong done to her, and to all womanhood, and then she would not kiss and embrace him, but go on blessing him as she has blessed all the rest.

The first-piece improvement mania – a very amiable form – has even infected the Vaudeville, that most conservative of theatres. “Meadow sweet” is necessarily as slight as a maiden of fifteen must be. But it is graceful and full of character as well, and it is very cleverly played by “all concerned,” with one exception. Miss Ella Banister is not the fresh and rose-milk country maiden of the author and the piece. She is not quite able to throw off the town airs she catches nightly outside the Bell Tavern in Covent Garden in the second act of “Clarissa.” All the others are admirable, and Cyril Maude’s living, not acting, of a country cad, turned town snob, is a piece of condensed genius. We have used that word twice already in this notice in respect to a husband and wife. For Winifred Emery is, as all the world knows, Mrs. Maude. In their art they are also one.

Alec Nelson (pseudonym of Edward Aveling)

[This review appears on the Marxist Internet Archive in the Eleanor Marx Dramatic Notes section.]

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The Theatre (1 April, 1890)

[From ‘Our Omnibus-Box’.]

PUBLIUS TERENTIUS AFER, ESQ.
                                                                                                                                   20th March, 1890.

MY DEAR TERENCE,—
                           A young person I know told me the other day that Henry I. of England died of a surfeit of palfreys This set me thinking (why?) of the villa near Puteoli, facing the blue Tyrrhene sea, where the secret of thy literary co-partnership with Lælius and the young Scipio formed many a jesting theme for conversation, maybe, over twinkling bumpers of Setian wine, heady enough to wash the throat clean through those long, strong revels of gluttony that hailed the fat Ambracian kid, and dropsical apple-snail, and perhaps the rich lamprey from distant Britain as rare bon-bouches. How we can picture the flushed cheeks and the fair chaplets of roses reeling over drunken brows, as the balmy wind steals in by way of fluted pillar and tessellated pavement, and cools its bosom against the tinkling fountain in the peristyle, and venturing further, flies again, let us hope, from the hot, lascivious atmosphere of the triclinium, to sob itself pure in the arms of Naples Bay. For the air of Puteoli villa was not good for the least of Nature’s chameleons, and the quips and quiddities that went round at its orgies would have proved strong meat, perhaps, even for a Lovelace. Ah, me! the merciless luxuries—which podgy Gibbon preferred to call refinements—of those ancient days! the heathen indulgence and brutal pursuit! the prurient beast in his exotic palace, and the helpless Miriam writhing, in her shame, or poor Nest from her northern eyrie standing with the blue of the sea in her eyes and death in her heart! I can have no sympathy with you here, Terence—now less than ever, for I have lately been to see “Clarissa” at our own little “Vaudeville,” and the cleansing fever of repentance is burning in me still. Lovelace! he was a Bayard to you all. If you would have chuckled richly over his fiendish intriguing, you would have sneered proportionately at his remorse; no dew of pity ever nourished green germs in your breasts. The tears of wretchedness fell thereon like rain on asphalt, finding no interstices to woo a single wandering seed. I can fancy sweet Clarissa done to moral death, in thy outrageous Rome, and no poignard for her betrayer’s bosom, and, worse, no angel’s comfort kissing her to her own young decline. Is not thine unhappy ghost, “blown along a wandering wind,” hounded ever on now remorselessly by the harpy presentments of such piteous, yellow-haired slaves from over the water as thou and thy kind so often and so cruelly wronged? I hear, methinks, a shadowy chuckle in the hollow of the sky! “Not from thy hand, libertine, this stone to our memories!” Alas! who am I to cast blame! Did not I once woo Billy Waghorn’s sister from the arms of Joe Pringle with lure of “brandysnaps” cunningly warmed in the breeches pocket to the consistency of toffee? I mind me also of Mary Earwaker, of the New Cut, formed for man to “waste his whole heart in one kiss upon her perfect lips,” but whom, nevertheless, I abandoned for that she developed a plebeian stye in one of her gem-like orbs. These things do not bear dwelling upon in the ecstasy of my late bitter reformation. For I have seen “Clarissa,” and am humbled. And who is Clarissa? you will ask. Ah! that I can tell you. She is Winifred Emery and no other, and Winifred Emery is Clarissa. Surely all is said here. But whose the play? say you, the cunning adaptor of old. Ah, Terence! she belongs to no play, but to fact. And yet was her piteous ladyship introduced to the too-little-thinking life of to-day by one who can run even you close in your peculiar line, my “dimidiate Menander.” Buchanan the playright is not uniformly true to his finer instincts; the author of “White Rose and Red” is not always to be depended upon for such a little thing as grammar; but Buchanan the adaptor has no equal in extracting the germ of beauty and truth from a bog of verbiage and prolixity. Prurience! I tell you never was play of pimps and harlots more pronounced and less indelicate. As old Richardson set his heroine in extenso, so has his latter-day interpreter in nuce—a jewel in a dunghill. A diamond never glitters as it does on black velvet; the darker the evil horrors surrounding, but never overwhelming, the outraged girl, the fairer her soul shines forth in contrast. It is a picture that most may weep over and all appreciate. We may find our eyes wet as the curtain falls, without shame; we may acknowledge the influence wrought in our natures and justify it in our after lives with no loss of manliness. Call it a play if you will; I, for one, shall always think of Winifred Emery as Clarissa, and whatever parts she may essay hereafter—and the Gods grant they may be many—the image of that dying heroine will colour and sanctify them all.

                                      Yours distantly,
                               (Particularly so at present),
                                                     THE CALL-BOY.

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From Playhouse Impressions by Arthur Bingham Walkley (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1892 - p 157-162)

ROBERT BUCHANAN.

“CLARISSA.”
(Vaudeville Theatre, February, 1890.)

AT the first performance of one of Voltaire’s tragedies, freely purloined from a Greek original, it is said that the author leant out of his box and shouted at the somnolent pit, “Applaud, you idiots; that’s Sophocles, not Voltaire!” At the Vaudeville I hid behind a fair neighbour’s monumental hat, in mortal terror lest the author, leaning out of his box, and catching me falling asleep in the wrong place, should shout, “Don’t yawn, you idiot; that’s Richardson, not Buchanan!” Which is which? The harassing question recurred with each fresh entry, each successive incident. Is it Buchanan, and may I yawn publicly? Or is it Richardson, and must I dodge behind my neighbour’s hat? Into such an abyss of doubt is one cast by respect for a British classic whom one has neglected to read. Neglected is hardly the word; it should be, refused. Despite the injunctions of my pastors and masters; despite the temptation of getting the whole set of eight volumes from a second-hand bookstall for fourpence, I have always refused to read “Clarissa Harlowe.” If any one asks why, let him be answered by this scrap of dialogue reported by Boswell:

“ERSKINE: Surely, sir, Richardson is very tedious?
JOHNSON: Why, sir, if you were to read Richardson for the story, your impatience would be so much fretted that you would hang yourself.”

Perhaps some rude person, who fails to perceive the true inwardness of Impressionist criticism, will say that he doesn’t care a straw whether I have read the book or not, that that is my affair, not his. Let such an objector just consider what would have happened if I had read Richardson’s book without going to see Buchanan’s play. Obviously my judgment would have been cut-and-dried in advance. It would, according to time-honoured practice in such cases, have been a string of lamentations over the shocking fashion in which the audacious modern had mangled the venerable ancient. The word sacrilege would have appeared at least a dozen times in my notice, and there would have been dark allusions to body-snatchers, resurrection men, ghouls and other such fearsome things. Now, my ignorance of the book has saved me from all this.
     Moreover, it enabled me at the Vaudeville to enjoy that pleasant sport known to the French code as la récherche de la paternité. Where did Richardson come in? Where Buchanan? And where Dumanoir, Guillard, and Clairville? But who, you ask, are Dumanoir, Guillard, and Clairville? Mr. Buchanan himself answers this question in a note on the programme. They were the joint authors of a French dramatisation of Richardson’s novel, made famous by the acting of Bressant and Rose Chéri. Mr. Buchanan (or more probably the programme compiler—an accurate programme the eye of man hath not seen) says this play was produced at the Gymnase in 1842. The correct date is August, 1846. Jules Janin and Théophile Gautier went into ecstasies over this piece; and when a French dramatic critic of 1846 became ecstatic the air was thick with meteoric adjectives, I can tell you. But it is perhaps time that my own adjectives began to coruscate. Let them flash first upon Mr. Thomas Thorne. The first guess I hazard is that there is mighty little Richardson in this gentleman’s part. One may get at that à priori. A leading character, obviously, must be found for the manager, and the only leading characters in this novel (one may be permitted to know so much without having read the book) are Lovelace and Clarissa. Now, the wildest imagination refuses to conceive Mr. Thomas Thorne as Lovelace, and it is equally difficult to suppose him playing Clarissa. Hence I take the part of Philip Belford to be the joint invention of the English and French dramatists. Belford is a drunken ne’erdoweel, turned misogynist by the death of his wife and the ruin of his only sister, Hetty. Through the man’s sottishness glimpses of a better nature are perceived. Hardly has he helped Lovelace in the plot against Clarissa when he repents, and, finding that it is Lovelace who is his sister’s betrayer, resolves to save the woman and kill the man. In the first enterprise he fails, for the same drugged wine which makes Clarissa Lovelace’s helpless victim disables Philip Belford just as he is on the point of effecting her rescue. But it is Belford’s sword by which Clarissa is avenged. The actor overelaborates the part in his own well-known fashion, though apparently to the complete satisfaction of those play-goers who like their pathos sung—and sung adagio—and sung on one note. His quaint humour, which made the fortune of his Partridge and his Parson Adams, here gets no scope. We shall probably be safe in assuming that what Belfonl is belongs to Mr. Buchanan, what he does to our friends Dumanoir, Guillard, and Clairville. Hetty Belford, Philip’s fallen sister, is, one supposes, Buchanan du plus pur: she has that melodramatic air which betrays late nineteenth-century work. One may risk the same guess about Captain Macshane, a Sir Pandarus of Troy, with a broad Scotch accent, who masquerades as a clergyman and makes a happily frustrated attempt to sing “The Gowden Vanitee.” It is a droll part, and is “composed” with care by Mr. Fred Thorne. Clarissa’s heavy and unrelenting father becomes a terrible personage in the hands of Mr. Harbury. Fortunately he disappears after the first act. So—not so fortunately—does Mr. Solmes, Clarissa’s rich elderly suitor, a character very cleverly sketched by Mr. Cyril Maude. Miss Mary Collette plays a little rustic coquette prettily, and Messrs. F. Grove and Frank Gillmore both give the conventional stage picture of an eighteenth-century man of fashion, i.e., satin clothes, many flourishes of the hat, frequent “Fore Gads,” and a strut.
     Coming to the Lovelace, I find myself in a quandary. You see, my ignorance of Richardson’s book prevents me from knowing what sort of a Lovelace Richardson’s Lovelace was. Mr. Thalberg may be that man. If he be, why, so much the worse for Lovelace and Richardson and Mr. Thalberg. Whatever may be the case with the printed page (especially in Richardson’s epistolary form where there is room for the slow development of a psychological study) one cannot stand a character of this sort, a creature of unqualified moral turpitude, on the stage of to-day (outside sheer melodrama) unless one gets an intellectual impression. I cannot be interested in a mere well-dressed rake. No doubt the Don Juans of real life are often poor, empty creatures. Women have a strange taste. But if you bring Don Juan on the stage, you must make him a Don Juan that satisfies my imagination. There must be a magnificence about the fellow; he must be a virtuoso in the Fine Art of Don Juanism; must have maestria; must be a philosopher like the Don Juan of Molière; a heroic figure that will not make Leporello’s catalogue sound ridiculous; a host not too puny to invite the statue of the commander to supper. How else will you satisfy a generation that (if it does not read “Clarissa Harlowe”) is very familiar with Feuillet’s M. de Camors and Daudet’s Due de Mora? I recognize the dramatist’s difficulty here. A character of this complexity is not easily rendered by the simple methods of the stage. It is something like the difficulty Lamb complained of in the representation of Shakespeare’s colossal villains. They lose their intellectual charm before the footlights, where, e.g., “the profound, the witty, the accomplished Richard” is apt to become a mere ogre. Now, this Lovelace is no virtuoso in Don Juanism. He is no seducer, even. He is a vulgar cheat, who flourishes his handkerchief, takes snuff with an air, uses foul drugs, and—one must put a brutal fact brutally—commits a rape upon his victim. Don’t ask me to be interested in this fellow. He is a poor, cheap, sawdust-stuffed creature, an eighteenth-century vibrion. And when Belford kills this vibrion, as Clarkson in Dumas’ play kills the other, the vibrion’s return to gasp out his dying repentance over his dead victim’s body only fills me with disgust. A Don Juan who cannot “see it through”—bah! All this is not to say that Mr. Thalberg fails to do his best with the part provided for him. But if that part be Richardson’s Lovelace I shall never regret my ignorance of Richardson. Of Miss Winifred Emery’s Clarissa one can only say that it is, in Mr. Ruskin’s pet phrase, “an entirely beautiful” performance. The reading of the poor artless little will in the final scene is tear-compelling. And, while you weep, you enjoy the pleasure of harmless speculation into the bargain. Is this a true Richardson tear? you wonder, as it trickles down your nose. Or is it a Buchanan drop? What if it should be only a spurious French tear, a tear of collaboration, the tear of Dumanoir, Guillard, and Clairville? Here are diverting questions, the answers to which Miss Blanche Amory may write down in that little volume of hers, entitled “Mes Larmes.”

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