LETTERS TO THE PRESS - 2

Dramatic Criticism (A Sailor and His Lass)

The Era (6 October, 1883)

A CHALLENGE.

TO THE EDITOR OF THE ERA.

     Sir,—Mr Clement Scott has seen fit to publish my portion of a brief correspondence with his solicitors, and has jumped to the conclusion that my object in desiring an interview with those gentlemen was to “litigate” over an article, written by him, purporting to be a criticism of The Glass of Fashion. As my object was nothing of the sort, and was one of general interest to the dramatic profession, I ask to be allowed to state it in your columns.
     Some months ago, the manager of a West-end theatre was very anxious to produce The Glass of Fashion, but it was pointed out to him that there were certain galled jades whose withers the comedy might wring. The manager suggested that the play should be submitted to the judgment of Mr Clement Scott. I promptly and emphatically repudiated the proposition. A few days later I received a letter from the manager, in these words:—
     “Dear Mr Grundy,—I have taken the opinion of two dramatic critics about The Glass of Fashion, as the opinions were so varied, and they are so dead against its production, and speak so strongly on the subject that I fear it would be madness to think of it. I am more sorry than I can say, as I personally believe in it, &c.”
     Events having confirmed my conjecture that one of the “two dramatic critics” was Mr Clement Scott, I vainly sought an interview with his solicitors, in order to give him the opportunity of correcting me if I was wrong, and if I was right, of explaining on what grounds he justifies the perusal of my manuscript without my consent, and the private expression of his premature opinion of work on which he has to pass judicial sentence. I did not choose to deal with Mr Scott himself, for experience has taught me the unwisdom of corresponding with a gentleman who marks his own letters “Private,” and publishes mine.
     I publicly challenge Mr Clement Scott to admit or deny that he is one of the “two dramatic critics” who read my manuscripts without my authority, and I call the attention of the dramatic profession generally to the growing practice on the part of one or “two dramatic critics” of passing private opinions on plays before they are produced. When a cause comes up for trial before a judge who has given an opinion on it when at the bar, he retires from the bench, or the case is postponed until another judge can try it; yet, surely the honour of an English judge is an unimpeachable as that of one of the dramatic critics.
                                                            I am, Sir, yours faithfully,
                                                                                          SYDNEY GRUNDY.
     Globe Theatre, October 5th, 1883.

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The Era (13 October, 1883)

“A CHALLENGE.”

TO THE EDITOR OF THE ERA.

     Sir,—The insolence of Mr Grundy’s “challenge” is only equalled by the audacity of the language in which it is conveyed to your columns. This hyper-sensitive and wearisome gentleman, having written an unpopular play, seeks to shuffle the burden of his sins of omission on to the shoulders of one of the unfortunate individuals whose destiny it is to devote the greater part of their existence to the study of the undramatic trash that is from time to time dished up for the edification of a long-suffering public. A man with a grievance is commonly understood to be a bore, but the worst kind of bore is the man with a grievance which has been imagined from the cells of a morbidly irritable brain.
     Mr Grundy has conceived this position in order to account for his own misfortunes. He has dreamed of a phantom critic consulted by a harassed manager in order to relieve him from the pressure of worthless manuscripts; and he has persuaded himself to believe that such a philanthropic and phantom critic would be guilty of mala fides if he honestly told the distracted manager that the wares offered to him for sale were of no commercial value. By a direct process of morbid imagination the phantom critic who occupies his spare time in reading plays for illiterate or ignorant managers is one Clement Scott, who is credited even by Grundy with experience enough to discriminate and force enough to condemn.
     This is all great fun for the dramatic Grundy, but it is death to the critical Clement Scott. He is wearied with correspondence, interrupted in his work, threatened with actions at law, dragged down to the office of his solicitors, placarded and lampooned, misrepresented and impudently challenged, merely in order to extract from him the very obvious statement that Grundy is a manufacturer of grievances as well as of plays; and that Clement Scott—thank heaven—never saw one of Grundy’s productions in manuscript in his life; was never in his life—thank heaven—consulted by any manager as to Grundy’s genius or eccentricity; never looked into The Glass of Fashion until it was produced at the Globe Theatre; and since 8th September, 1883, has never been called upon to sit out one of Grundy’s plays—thank heaven!
                                                Yours obediently,                 CLEMENT SCOTT.
     6th October, 1883.
     P.S.—Mr Grundy’s side charge that I “mark my own letters ‘private’ and publish his” is to me even more incomprehensible and groundless than the other. As I have written no letter at all to Mr Grundy on the subject, it is necessarily impossible that I could have marked “private,” or “published” what does not exist! The personal element has been affixed to this silly controversy by Mr Grundy himself, and he has himself alone to blame if for the moment he cuts but a sorry figure.

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The Era (20 October, 1883)

“A CHALLENGE.”

TO THE EDITOR OF THE ERA.

     Sir,—If I correctly interpret the confused mass of verbiage, pious ejaculation, and postscript which appeared in your last issue around the signature of Mr Clement Scott, that gentleman labours under the delusion that he is engaged in a controversy. The facts are these:—I endeavoured privately and with an excess of courtesy to obtain from Mr Scott some information on a matter which concerned me. I was rudely repulsed, and my private letters were published by Mr Scott in an article containing a number of insulting charges, which he has since discovered were unfounded, but has not withdrawn. I thereupon challenged him publicly to give me the information I desired. There is no controversy.
     In an elaborately involved sentence of one hundred and twenty words, Mr Scott appears to imply that he is not one of the “two dramatic critics” who read The Glass of Fashion without my consent. Life is not long enough for the analysis of such a sentence; but if I have rightly understood it, there is an end of the matter. To other dramatic critics my objection does not apply. Although the business of advising seems to me incompatible with the business of criticising, I personally have no objection to my manuscript being judged by any other gentleman of the press.
     In that part of his letter which is intelligible, Mr Scott characterises my challenge as “insolent,” and my language as “audacious.” I admit the audacity of the playwright who comes into collision with Mr Clement Scott; and a gentleman who directs a management to “take down the placards and get another piece into rehearsal” ought to be an authority on “insolence.” But assuming that it is “insolence” to ask for a plain answer to a plain question, surely that may be forgiven in a “hyper-sensitive” author which in a critic is a scandal.
     I can well believe that I am troublesome to Mr Scott. After five years of damnation at his hands, I have the “insolence” not to be damned yet, and the obstinate public persists in applauding to the echo the “unfortunate play” he says it doesn’t like. The remedy is in Mr Scott’s own hands. If he ever has any calm moments, let him take advantage of one of those epochs, seriously to reflect whether the writer of the letter in last week’s Era, whose very eyesight is so clouded by prejudice that he discerns “rent oak, split fireplace,” and “broken tables” in one table that was not broken, a fireplace that was not split, and no oak at all, is in a frame of mind to form a fair estimate of any work of mine. If Mr Scott cannot conscientiously say that he is towards me in that mood of equanimity and charity in which alone just judgments can be formed, let him relieve himself from the discomfort of sitting out my plays and refrain from criticising them and me. Then I will forgive him his past trespasses, and will even join him in his “thanks” to “heaven.”
                                                       I am, Sir, yours faithfully,
                                                                                       SYDNEY GRUNDY.
     Globe Theatre, Oct. 15th, 1883

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THEATRICAL GOSSIP.
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...
     “THE GLASS OF FASHION” was presented at the Globe Theatre on Thursday to an audience composed almost entirely of members of the theatrical profession, who had accepted the invitation of Messrs. Hollingshead and Shine to be present. The house was crowded, and Mr Grundy’s bright, witty, and clever comedy was thoroughly enjoyed, as was shown by the laughter and cheering it provoked. At the end of the second act all the artists engaged had a most enthusiastic call before the curtain.

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The Era (27 October, 1883)

“A CHALLENGE.”

TO THE EDITOR OF THE ERA.

     Sir,—I have done with Grundy, and I devoutly trust Grundy has done with me. Having been proved incorrect in his facts, he is becoming tedious in his fiction.
     He challenged me. I went out and hit my man very hard. Luckily for him he was pachydermatous, and no harm was done. Whenever he cares to stand up again I have another barrel ready.
     Towards our “unappreciated Shakespeare” I have no personal animosity whatever; and I can assure him that he will earn my absolute forgiveness for his past misdeeds when he writes better plays for the public and less nonsense concerning,
                           Yours wearily,                CLEMENT SCOTT.
     20th October, 1883.
     [Mr Grundy’s “challenge” has been given in two letters; Mr Scott has answered in two letters; and we must now decline to insert any further correspondence upon this subject.]

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“DRAMATIC CRITICISM.”

TO THE EDITOR OF THE ERA.

     Sir,—I have read with no little sympathy Mr Sydney Grundy’s letters in your journal apropos of the criticisms on that brightest and most good-humoured of satires The Glass of Fashion, now running so successfully at the Globe Theatre. It would have been a matter for regret, indeed, if a work of such merit could have been “snuffed out by an article,” or by half a dozen; but, as I have frequently asserted, the public—and in that word I really include a large portion of the press—is ever on the side of honesty, independence, and talent, as against venality, nepotism, and incompetence. The protection of us authors, when we are beset by the rancour of the dramatic “ring” and the contumely of the critical coterie, is the fair play of the public at large, and the independence of the newspapers in general. For the rest, no dramatic production of these days is quite so good or quite so bad as certain writers would lead the public to believe, though it must be sufficiently bewildering for simple-minded readers to find a dramatic critic by profession, with a keen eye to both the main and the minor chance, and a vested interest in filchings from the French, combining in himself the individualities of both Mr Puff and Mr Sneer; sending round the hat with one hand, and brandishing a bludgeon in the other; alternating between the epilepsy of savage abuse and the hysteria of sycophantic praise, and generally performing such antics under high heaven as must make even his employers blush and his critical brethren weep.
     In the Contemporary Review, a few years ago, I first drew attention to the “Newest Thing in Journalism,” and in “The Martyrdom of Madeline,” published last year, I was rash enough to return to the attack. What I tried to do critically Mr Grundy has done dramatically, and with much more success. Neither of us, therefore, can complain if the journalists of society tear us to pieces. When, in the current number of Truth, Mr Labouchere scarifies A Sailor and his Lass as he scarified Storm Beaten and Lady Clare, I feel no indignation; it would be cowardly to resent a violence which I myself have provoked, and which comes from a source which I have consistently held up to derision. Mr Labouchere has the courage of his opinions. He makes no pretence to either magnanimity or culture; a cynic pure and simple, he naïvely abuses his opponent, whether that opponent be Mr W. S. Gilbert or myself; and he himself would be the last man in the world to assume airs of superhuman honesty. Then, again, he has no vested interests at stake; he does not float his journal on charity, or praise or blame productions with a side-view to odd “jobs” from the management. It is altogether different with that other gentleman whom Mr Grundy has had the courage to name. But, after all, what does it matter? The public is not to be misled; the bulk of critics holds aloof from coterie conspiracy; and the practical illustration of the impotence of personal malice is to be found in the fact that The Glass of Fashion runs merrily at the Globe, and that crowds are turned away nightly from the doors of Drury-lane. I am, &c.,
                                                              ROBERT BUCHANAN.
     Drury-lane Theatre, October 23d, 1883.

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The Era (3 November, 1883)

“DRAMATIC CRITICISM.”
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A DISCLAIMER.

     Mr Augustus Harris has written as follows:—

TO THE EDITOR OF THE ERA.

     Sir,—Although Mr Buchanan’s letter in The Era of October 27th is addressed from Drury-lane Theatre, it was written without my knowledge or consent, and I saw it for the first time on reading the paper this morning. I am perfectly satisfied with the favourable notices of A Sailor and His Lass which have appeared in a large number of the leading journals and have no inclination to enter into any discussions or old-standing disputes between Mr Buchanan and any individual member of the press.
                                             Yours, &c.,                     AUGUSTUS HARRIS.
     Drury-lane Theare, October 27th.

     [EDITORIAL NOTE.—It is only right to state that Mr Robert Buchanan’s letter, eliciting the above very judicious rejoinder, is not in any way to be identified with the Editor’s sanction of certain opinions therein expressed. It has always been the object of the Editor of The Era to afford in its columns a generous opportunity of discussing any real or fancied grievances affecting the interests of the theatrical profession; but aspersions on the motives of those called upon to discharge the very onerous and not always agreeable duties of a dramatic critic are neither in accord with our public duties nor our personal inclinations.]

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TO THE EDITOR OF THE ERA.

     Sir,—My collaborateur in A Sailor and his Lass has written to the newspapers, intimating that my letter in last week’s Era was written “without his knowledge or consent.” This is most certainly the case, and I should be very sorry indeed to have left on Mr Harris’s shoulders any portion of a responsibility which rested entirely with myself. Moreover, I quite agree with Mr Harris that our drama has been fairly, and even generously, judged by the majority of dramatic critics. The very point of my letter was that private malice is almost invariably defeated by the fair play of the newspaper press in general. Of all our leading critics, only one, so far as I know, combines in his own person the irreconcileable functions of dramatic critic and dramatic author.
                 I am, &c.,                         ROBERT BUCHANAN.
     Grosvenor Club, W., October 29th, 1883.

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TO THE EDITOR OF THE ERA.

     Sir,—A letter appears in your last number signed “Robert Buchanan.” I can add nothing to the chapters of contempt that have been devoted to this writer by the powerful pens of Algernon Charles Swinburne and Edmund Yates, except a public expression of absolute and, I trust, dignified silence.
                                 Yours faithfully,                    CLEMENT SCOTT.
     October 31st, 1883.

     [The correspondence on this subject is now closed.—EDITOR THE ERA.]

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Revolting Realism (A Sailor and His Lass)

[Although I have not come across the ‘short leader’ in the evening edition of The Standard mentioned in Buchanan’s letter, the review of A Sailor and His Lass from that paper is available here. The review begins: “The Sailor and His Lass, the new piece at Drury Lane, which began last night at 7.45 and came to an end—after a revolting scene which should never have been put upon the stage—at 12.15, is a melodrama of the familiar pattern, elaborately set forth by the painters and carpenters.”]

The Standard (19 October, 1883 - p.3)

“REVOLTING” REALISM.
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TO THE EDITOR OF THE STANDARD.

     SIR,—My attention has just been called to a short leader in your Evening Edition of Tuesday commenting somewhat severely on the realisation of a public execution, with all its “revolting” details, in the Drury-lane drama, A Sailor and his Lass. Unfortunately, I quite fail to see in what respect such realisation differs, artistically speaking, from the pictures given in true tragedy of executions by the axe or guillotine, as in dramas illustrating the lives of Mary Stuart and Marie Antoinette, or of burnings at the stake, as in the well-known French play of Jeanne d’Arc, made famous by the acting of Rachel. I shall be answered, doubtless, that the rope is anti-poetical and hideous, while the axe, the guillotine, and the faggot are poetical. Again, I fail to see the distinction, though it was pointed out to me, adversely, when I first attempted, years ago, in my poems, to get pathos and beauty out of themes of coarse contemporaneous life. To myself individually, there is solemnity and poetry in the idea of a poor modern martyr, condemned to die at the hands of the common hangman, awakening in the dim light of a wintry morning, and walking to the scaffold, while the death-bell tolls, amidst the thickly-falling snow. From the beginning of my literary career I have been among the strongest opponents of capital punishment; and if, in the drama already named, I picture that horrible blot on our civilisation as it is, I do so, both as artist and man, in the confidence that the representation can shock no truly tender heart, or otherwise do anything but good. Nowadays, our judicial murders are done in secret, and nowadays the super-sensitive nerves of certain playgoers are “revolted” by any reproduction of the stern and terrible facts of human suffering. Though such things are, they must not be spoken of or seen.
     Moreover, the misery of a ragged criminal is prosaic and disagreeable, while the sufferings of a King in sock and buskin are without offence to the æsthetic spectator. Fortunately, the playgoing public in general are differently constituted; they accept truth to nature, however familiar, and they sympathise with humanity, however lowly. For the rest, I am certain that no representation of merely revolting details, if unillumined by imagination and untempered by art, would be tolerated on our English stage; and if I had really overshot the mark in my drama—or rather, in the drama in which I have had the invaluable assistance and co-operation of Mr. Harris—the organised cabal which came to Drury-lane last Monday night would have succeeded in its purpose, instead of being crushed and defeated by the strength of an unprejudiced audience. No dramatist need fear the British public; for though its severity is sometimes terrible, its fairplay is proverbial. Judging from my own experience, I should surmise that the fairplay of some professional critics is more doubtful; but the Press in general, I am glad to say, resents unnecessary savagery on the part of particular members. To the critic of The Standard, among others, I owe my obligations; for though, as in the present instance, his criticism is somewhat hostile, he tempers justice with good nature, and now, as on former occasions, declines to deal in wholesale abuse.
                           I am, Sir, your obedient servant,
                                                  ROBERT BUCHANAN.
     Drury-lane Theatre, October 18.

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The Pall Mall Gazette (19 October, 1883)

     Mr. Robert Buchanan is much exercised in mind to think that the charge of “revolting realism” should have been brought against the execution scene in the Drury-lane drama of “A Sailor and his Lass.” Mr. Buchanan is a poet as well as a playwright, and perhaps this is why he fails to see “in what respect such realization differs, artistically speaking, from the pictures given in true tragedy of executions by the axe or guillotine.” But a critic might remind Mr. Buchanan that there are many things which are fitting enough in poetry, but which are wholly unsuited to sensuous realization either in painting or on the stage. Perhaps Mr. Buchanan would have remembered this canon but for the fact that he was influenced, it seems, by a didactic motive. He has always been “among the strongest opponents of capital punishment,” and he pictured that “horrible blot upon our civilization” as a man as well as an artist. If the result is one of which the critics cannot approve, it is only another instance of the loss which a work of art always suffers from the intrusion of a directly didactic purpose. All good art is didactic, no doubt, but, like happiness, the moral will be found all the better if it is not too assiduously sought.

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Lady Clare

The Era (29 December, 1883 - Issue 2362)

“LADY CLARE” AND “LE MAITRE DE FORGES.”

TO THE EDITOR OF THE ERA.

     Sir,—In reading your last number I came across an account of the first performance of M. Ohnet’s Le Maître de Forges at Paris. I was immediately struck by the resemblance of the plot to that of Mr Buchanan’s Lady Clare. The similarity was so striking that I was surprised it was not noticed in your columns.
     In both plays the heroine is jilted by an aristocratic lover on account of her lack of fortune, and out of pique marries a rich manufacturer. In both plays she consents to be his wife only in name, and subsequently begins to love him; and in both plays she saves her husband’s life by receiving the bullet in the duel between him and her former lover. Even the name of the heroine is the same in both plays. But the most striking similarity is that between the Melissa Smale of Mr Buchanan and the Athenaïs Moulinet of Le Maître de Forges. The characters and deeds of these two people are identical. Reckoning these similarities up it seems a moral certainty that M. Ohnet, has been largely indebted to Mr Buchanan’s play.
                  Yours sincerely,                                  FRANK W. MASON.
     Dulwich Wood, S.E., December 25th.

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TO THE EDITOR OF THE ERA.

     Sir,—In reading your notice of M. Georges Ohnet’s new play, produced at the Gymnase last week, entitled Le Maître de Forges, it must surely strike the most casual observer the remarkably similarity, both in plot, characters, and incidents, to a piece produced at the Globe Theatre last summer, then under the management of Mr Robert Buchanan, entitled Lady Clare. Le Maître de Forges has, I believe, been purchased for a large sum, and is to be produced in London shortly. Is this singular likeness between Lady Clare and Le Maître de Forges of M. Ohnet merely a coincidence, or has Mr Robert Buchanan taken the story which appeared in the Paris Figaro, and placed it on the stage without acknowledging his indebtedness to the author?
                                               I am, yours faithfully,
     December 27th, 1883.                                    AN ENQUIRER.

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The Era (5 January, 1884 - Issue 2363)

“LADY CLARE” AND “LE MAITRE DE FORGES.”
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TO THE EDITOR OF THE ERA.

     Sir,—One of the readers of your valuable journal, I notice, has written to ask you if I did not draw my novel and my play, Le Maître de Forges, from a work of Mr Buchanan, entitled Lady Clare, and played some months ago in London. Had the reader in question glanced at the poster of Lady Clare, one of which was sent to me, he would have seen these words: “Founded on a well-known French romance.” Now the celebrated novel—for celebrated it is, I blushingly own—is Le Maître de Forges, published more than two years since by me in Le Figaro. I am astonished that, under these circumstances, Mr Buchanan was not the first to protest on my behalf, for nobody better than he knows what he owes me. And having profited by his work, it seems to me that that gentleman might, at least, have proclaimed my literary integrity.
     Well, then, since it is left to me to speak, let me give you the exact truth. Lady Clare was taken entirely from Le Maître de Forges. Mr Buchanan, following a common enough custom (against which old English loyalty is constantly protesting, though vainly, I own) confined himself to merely changing the names of the characters in my novel. His work, in fact, is a downright plagiarism. Having been adapted, to use the delicate euphemism customary in the Buchanan and Co. household, I resigned myself to it. But when charged with being an adaptor I become rebellious; and I ask that each shall have what belongs to him—myself the small merit of having written Le Maître de Forges, and Mr Buchanan the great advantage of having used a good pair of scissors to it. I reckon on your impartiality to publish my letter in your next issue. And I beg to remain,
                                                        Faithfully yours,
     14, Avenue Trudaine.                                GEORGES OHNET.

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TO THE EDITOR OF THE ERA.

     Sir,—Your correspondent Mr Frank W. Mason (in common, no doubt, with many others) is apparently not aware that long before the production of the play of Lady Clare M. Ohnet had written and published his famous novel “Le Maitre de Forges.” It is from that novel that Mr Buchanan drew his material for Lady Clare. It will be apparent to your readers that M. Ohnet’s mortification at having been forestalled in dramatising his own work will not be lessened at hearing that he is “largely indebted to Mr Buchanan’s play;” the truth being that Mr Buchanan is wholly indebted to M. Ohnet’s novel.
     Our excuse for troubling you on this subject is that we hold all English rights in “Le Maitre de Forges” direct from M. Ohnet, and so feel compelled, in justice to that gentleman and to ourselves, to enlighten your readers as to the real facts of the case.
                                                                         Faithfully yours,
     St. James’s Theatre, London, January 2d, 1884.                 HARE and KENDAL.   

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TO THE EDITOR OF THE ERA.

     Sir,—I am obliged to your correspondents Mr F. W. Mason and “An Enquirer” for calling attention to the similarity between Lady Clare, produced at the Globe Theatre, London, nearly a year ago, and Le Maitre de Forges, produced at the Gymnase, Paris, within the last fortnight. The explanation is very simple. The English drama (announced by me in the original programmes as “founded on a well-known French romance”) was suggested by M. Ohnet’s highly popular novel, and was written by me in Paris some two years ago. My indebtedness to the French novelist, however, must be acknowledged under the following qualifications:—
     1. All my characters are English personages, to whom their French prototypes bear little or no resemblance, and several of them—such as the Eton boy with his humorous courtship of the ingénue, the Irish major who seconds my hero in the duel, &c.—are quite original.
     2. Beyond two lines spoken by Lady Broadmeads, the dialogue of Lady Clare is entirely my own.
     3. Over and above all this, the motif and psychology of my play are quite distinct from those of the novel, and, presumably, of the French play. In M. Ohnet’s work, the central situation, that of the duel, is brought about in what I cannot help characterising as a very absurd, or, at any rate, a very French fashion, being founded on a squabble between the heroine and her lover’s wife, and the consequent action of the lover in taking his wife’s part! In Lady Clare, John Middleton goes, as he imagines, to his death, at the hands of a professed duellist, because he believes his wife loves his opponent, and even when Lady Clare interposes between them he fancies she does so to save his enemy, not himself. This furnishes, I fancy, the finest portion of the English drama, and it belongs wholly to myself. The French John Middleton is a very different person, who fights “for his honour” in consequence of domestic jars, and means no kind of self-sacrifice whatever.
     4. The incident of the duel is entirely different in the story, Clare placing her hand over the mouth of the Vicomte’s pistol, and having her hand shattered in consequence. It is a natural inference, therefore, that the arrangement of the duel portion of the Gymnase drama is founded, not upon the novel, but upon that particular portion of Lady Clare.
     Briefly, then, those who take the trouble to compare Le Maitre de Forges with Lady Clare will speedily discover how much the two works differ—in psychology, in dramatic arrangement, in character, and in dialogue. My play depended for much of its success on the light comedy portions, none of which are even foreshadowed in the French original. For the rest I made no concealment of the principal sources of my inspiration, and a reference to the original criticisms will show that the press generally were quite properly instructed as to the connection of my drama with a well-known French novel “Le Maitre de Forges.”
     Lady Clare has now been played in England several hundred times, with almost unvarying success. Since last June it has been the property of Mr Augustus Harris, who “travels” it with beautiful scenery, expressly painted for the tour, and an excellent company. It is important, therefore, to point out in how many cardinal respects it differs from M. Ohnet’s French drama so recently produced at the Gymnase, and how it is in no sense of the word a reduplication of that drama, but a freehand English version of a French novelist’s subject, with new characters, fresh incidents and situations, superadded comedy, and dialogue which I may call (quoting Touchstone) “a poor thing, but mine own.” I am, &c.,
                                                                                                                  ROBERT BUCHANAN.
     Grosvenor Club, W., January 1st, 1884.

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TO THE EDITOR OF THE ERA.

     Sir,—The notion of Georges Ohnet, the novelist and dramatist, stealing a plot from Robert Buchanan, poet and playwright, is surely “enough to make a cat laugh.” The boot is I fear on the other leg. But the originality of Robert Buchanan’s Lady Clare was never for one moment in doubt. This upright and virtuous gentleman, who had not the candour to acknowledge the origin of his “new drama of modern society,” was, however, soon detected by one of the gentlemen who, to use his own elegant phrase, “carry a hat in one hand and a bludgeon in the other.” It was a dramatic critic who brought Robert Buchanan to book and unmasked his disingenuity; it was a dramatic critic who pointed out that Lady Clare was nothing more than a barefaced reproduction of Ohnet’s novel; it was a dramatic critic who within twelve hours of the production of the “new drama of modern society” told the public that Buchanan had without authority dramatised a French novel that he knew was being dramatised by its author for the French and English stage; and there is no one more rejoiced at the exposure of Robert Buchanan’s moral principles than one who has so often listened to the virtuous tirades and sanctimonious indignation of this savage Scotchman and calumniating Chadband.
                       Yours obediently,              A DRAMATIC CRITIC.

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Edmund Yates

The Pall Mall Gazette (3 April, 1884 - Issue 5952)

A PLEA FOR TITTLE-TATTLE.

MR. EDMUND YATES, a journalist and man of letters of position and repute, was yesterday sentenced to be imprisoned for four months for publishing, on the authority of a lady of title, a story concerning an unnamed, but generally recognized, peer which was false and libellous. It is no doubt a sensational sentence. English novelists and English editors, however much they may deserve it, are rarely sent to gaol. In France, under the Empire, there were always a few editors in prison, and in Spain only yesterday the editor of a comic paper was sentenced to eight years’ imprisonment for publishing a caricature of the King. But in England journalists have for a long time contrived to write on questions of prison management and reform without the invaluable advantage of a sojourn within the walls of a gaol. Mr. EDMUND YATES has now qualified for this unique experience, and no doubt both the world in general and the World in particular will profit by the period of seclusion during which this brilliant and enterprising member of the craft will study the inner workings of the prison system of Great Britain.
     Severe though the sentence may be, it is no doubt generally approved. “Served him right” is the popular verdict, to which is sometimes added a pious regret that Mr. LABOUCHERE is not sent to occupy the adjoining cell. For the great twin brethren of society journalism have been too successful to be in good repute in the journalistic world; nor are there many even among their constant readers who care to speak up in their defence. And, so far as this particular case is concerned, we are not disposed to question the justice of Lord COLERIDGE’S sentence. Those who venture into the perilous but profitable fields of society journalism must do it at their own risk, and it is good for journalism and especially good for society journals that the penalties attached to false and libellous statements should be strictly enforced. The charm of society journalism lies in the supposed accuracy of the gossip which it retails. The fact that the Courts imprison a society journalist for saying that which is false cannot but strengthen the popular belief that the paragraphs which fill the columns of society journals are true, for their authors are manifestly at large, and therefore presumably not liable to the lash of the law. As for Mr. YATES, while every one must sympathise with him in the solitary cell to which, if the legal point yet remaining to be tried is decided against him, he must shortly be consigned, he has little reason to complain. A man in such a business carries his life in his hand. If he had been in France he would probably have been shot through the head or pinked under the fifth rib long ago by some of the many fine gentlemen who had winced under his lash. As he lives in England four months’ imprisonment is all that is meted out to him. They will not put him on the treadmill, and he can console himself that, as he has profited by the labours of his fashionable contributors, so he is now suffering vicariously for their sins.
     So far we agree with the Lord Chief Justice. But when Lord COLERIDGE proceeds to justify the sentence of imprisonment pronounced on the publisher of a single admitted libel by a wholesale anathema upon society journalism we are compelled to dissent. No doubt every one of the Lord Chief Justice’s remarks on the subject ought to be true. Unfortunately for society at large they are very much the reverse. It is all very well for Lord COLERIDGE to profess a dramatic surprise that any man’s mind can feel any pleasure in feeding on the sort of food with which society journals are filled; but, as a matter of fact, it is the most natural and notorious thing in the world. If Lord COLERIDGE imagines that it is only a small minority of a privileged class who feel an interest in the publication of personal details about public men, he never made a greater mistake in his life. As a simple matter of fact, there is nothing in the world more popular with all sorts and conditions of men than personalities. Nor is it either foolish vanity or abject curiosity that leads the vast majority of mankind to delight to know all the little details which enable them to form a picture of the life and character of those whose names are in every one’s mouth. Every one delights in BOSWELL, and what is the society journalist but the BOSWELL to an innumerable number of personages, not so great perhaps as the maker of the Dictionary, but far more familiarly known to the man in the street? Of course, if the journalistic BOSWELL does his gossiping falsely or maliciously, by all means let him be punished. It is not a morbid curiosity to wish to know how celebrities look at home, or to see a great man off the stage of public life. It is these personal details of everyday life that enable the average man to realize for himself in how many points he shares with his illustrious neighbour the little cares and ills and joys of common humanity. In ADDISON’S time his correspondents were curious to know all about the personal appearance of the “Spectator,” whether he had a short face and the like; and it is the same thing to-day. But why does Lord COLERIDGE signal out the journalist as the sole offender? Is he the only retailer of personal gossip? It is true that he is the only retailer who is bound over by heavy penalties to refrain from slander and libel and indecency, but to that extent he is better than his brother of the club smoking-room, over whom courts can exercise hardly any restraint. There are few more brilliant raconteurs alive than the Lord Chief Justice himself. Yet if Lord COLERIDGE were in all severity to apply his own canon as judge to his own conversation in society, is it certain that it would all escape condemnation? The Lord Chief Justice recently returned from across the Atlantic. He has brought back with him a vast fund of anecdote, a great store of observations on men and things. But let him ask himself seriously whether in society he has delivered himself more commonly of profound observations, inspired by “high aim and real public usefulness”—say, on the working of democratic institutions in the United States—or whether the staple of his talk has not been precisely such personalities—better told, no doubt, and of a higher order, but essentially the same in essence—as those on which he pronounces so severe a censure in the court of law. We are not defending slanderers, backbiters, scandal-mongers, and all the unclean tribe. But, while punishing the libeller with all necessary severity, do not let us confound in one sweeping condemnation all those whose humble office it is to act as phonographs of the tittle-tattle which forms the staple of the ordinary conversation of Society.

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The Pall Mall Gazette (10 April, 1884 - Issue 5958)

MAGNANIMITY.

To the EDITOR of the PALL MALL GAZETTE.

     SIR,—The journals of society have had my satire, and I have had, in return, their most savage abuse; but only a coward cherishes malignant resentment for attacks he himself has induced, and I for one shall be very sorry if Mr. Edmund Yates goes to prison. The punishment, in my opinion, is far in excess of the offence, and, what is worse, it savours of old-fashioned persecution. No good ever has resulted, or ever can result, by treating as criminal mere offences against good taste; and if journalists are to be imprisoned for such offences, few of us, I am afraid, will be safe, and the profession of journalism will be perilous indeed. I presume that no reader of the World takes its gossip over-seriously, and the particular libel can hardly be said to have done Lord Lonsdale any real social harm; so that, all things considered, a fine and a judicial rebuke would have met all the requirements of the case. I am still in hopes, therefore, that better counsels may prevail in high quarters, and that justice may be tempered with magnanimity. This sending of journalists to prison is at the very best a barbarous business, and unworthy of the civilization under which we live.—
I am, Sir, your obedient servant,
     April 8.                                             ROBERT BUCHANAN.

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Constance

New-York Daily Tribune (22 November, 1884 - p.7)

THE PLAY OF “CONSTANCE.”
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A LETTER FROM MR. ROBERT BUCHANAN.
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THE AUTHOR OF “CONSTANCE” ON ITS MORALITY
AND DRAMATIC MORALITY IN GENERAL.

To the Editor of The Tribune.
     SIR: I should be churlish indeed if I complained of the treatment of my new play by your able critic, whose reputation for candor and catholicity is world-wide. He has done me the honor to devote a large portion of your space to criticism, which is not only trenchant but kindly; and if, while acknowledging his generosity to my work in general, I take leave to reply to a few of the questions he puts to me by way of animadversion, let it be understood that I do so in his own liberal and friendly spirit.
     “Why,” he first asks, “should Constance at once believe a story prejudicial to the man she loves? Why does she not ask him to explain it? Why should she give him up even if she believes it? (!) Why has she lived so long with her grandmother without perceiving her treacherous character? And why should she marry the rich Duke, whom she loathes?”
     The answer to all this is very simple. Constance believes her grandmother’s story because its verisimilitude is complete, because every circumstance of it coincides with her knowledge of her own family history. She knows there has been enmity between her blood relations and those of her cousin, and that her mother has died partly in consequence. She does not ask Frank to explain, because it is perfectly clear that his knowledge of the facts is as limited as her own. Her grandmother is portrayed as a nature warped by family quarrels, but not otherwise ungentle. It is only indeed when she finds that Constance is going to marry the son of her own mortal enemy that she resorts to a treacherous exaggeration of the truth. Surely, any sensitive girl, however deeply in love, would shrink from uniting herself with the son of the man who had, as she believed, caused her mother’s death? The natural consequence of her despair is that Constance is readily hurried into marriage with another suitor, not because she loves him, but because she feels that her first love is hopeless—that never, under any circumstances, can she be free to marry the man she really loves. I do not defend the weakness of my heroine; I simply describe her as acting as young women, under impulses of misconception, act every day.
     Again, your critic writes: “Why should the Duke devise a snare to dishonor his own wife? Why should the snare succeed, when a simple explanation would have defeated it? Why, above all, should the lover, having been ruthlessly repelled, come back again to the woman who had thrown him over? Why should his friend let him remain in ignorance that Constance is married?”
     The Duke, already “tired of his bargain,” and suspicious that she is communicating with her old lover, desires to bring the two together under suspicious circumstances, and test, by the result, the extent of his wife’s passion for his rival. No explanation is possible, as neither wife nor lover is, cognizant of the nature of the device. What follows is not of the Duke’s devising, but the accidental result of the situation. The lover returns to Constance because long absence and suffering have deepened his old affection, and made him regret his too hasty renunciation. The friend, in the excitement of his reappearance, shrinks from informing him of facts which he knows he must learn immediately from the lips of the person most directly concerned.
     Two other questions of your critic may be answered briefly. The long delayed vengeance of Feveral is the most natural thing in the world. Feveral, whose wife has been betrayed by the Duke, first plots to humiliate his master by betraying his wife, through the instrumentality of the old lover. The plot failing, he sides with the Duchess against her husband, and adopts a different and more deadly scheme of revenge. (2) Frank Harlowe carries his arm in a sling, because he is suffering from the wound of a poisoned assegai, in the region of the left lung and heart. I have high surgical authority for the statement that such a wound would partially paralyze the left arm, and that, moreover, the use of the said arm would be irritating to such a wound, and dangerous. As a matter of simple fact, the patient, while still suffering from the body wound, would carry his arm in a support.
     It seems almost childish to offer these explanation; for if I have constructed my play properly, they should be quite unnecessary. Doubtless, in the excitement of somewhat hasty first production, many points were missed, both in dialogue and situation; and thus certain points became obscured and others seemed irrelevant. As for your critic’s general estimate of the play, especially so far as its literary qualities are concerned, it is almost too friendly. “Constance” makes no pretence to being a lofty work of art. It is a melodrama of situation, in which fine writing is carefully avoided. That one so competent as your critic, and so admired for his own poetic gifts, should find in it any merit as a piece of literature is a striking proof of his endeavor to be generous to a brother man of letters, and a stranger.
     I should hardly have troubled him, therefore, with these explanations, if I had not desired at the same time to touch on a question which affects dramatic art generally. There seems to be a general impression on the minds of English-writing critics that the drama is a great moral agent, and that its ethics are to be determined by the wishes of a sort of Critical, if not Christian, Young Men’s Association. More than one writer, in treating of “Constance,” is highly indignant that Frank Harlowe does not exhibit superhuman self-restraint; that, having been enticed to the boudoir of his old sweetheart, he utters any words of passion. Now, I may be a very poor dramatist, but I endeavor as far as possible in all my works not to create mere monsters of virtue, just as I aim in writing modern dialogue to avoid those very flights of easy rhetoric which the press so much admires. Frank Harlowe and his cousin are a young man and a young woman of a tolerably common type; and they act, I think, very much as such persons do in real life. A French dramatist treating such a couple would have over-accentuated their passion—and it would be better to do so than to represent them as impossibly virtuous creatures, moving in an atmosphere of moral platitudes.
     It is an old cry that the ethics of the English drama are provincial and commonplace. They will remain so, I contend, as long as criticism is stereotyped and rectangular. The hero of a modern play is expected to be impossibly good, as a contrast to the villain, who is impossibly bad: he must be all heroism and all sweetness and light, if he is to utter those beautiful sentiments which tickle the ears of the groundlings. In the same manner, a heroine must be impossibly virtuous, proof against every species of temptation. In the days when we had a drama, such ideas were unknown; the playwright was not ethical, save in the loftiest sense of the adjective; and dramatists were content, in dealing with great passions, to paint men and women as they are—noble, yet weak, full of fine instincts, but made of very variable flesh and blood. Not one element, but many elements, got to make up an average human being. The true type of male heroism is not to be found in the good young man who died. The true model of feminine virtue is not Clarissa. In other words, the genuine painter of human emotions is not Richardson, but Fielding; not Hannah More, but Thackeray.
     It is the sacred mission of the modern English critic to scalp the modern dramatist; to treat him as a literary criminal, conspiring against the virtue of the community; to goad him into poetry, to incite him to platitude; to confront him at every step of his progress with the severe features of the Anglo-Saxon, axiomatic, prig-adoring matron; to warn him, in Podsnappian terms, against bringing a blush to the cheek of a young person; to insist that, because the critic is virtuous or would fain appear so, there shall be nor more cakes and ale. But the said critic must excuse me if I refuse to take him seriously. He is a clever fellow, a good fellow, a fellow of infinite device; but he is sometimes spiteful in his virtue, often disingenuous in his faultfinding and altogether he has the common defect of supernaturally high-minded persons—a conspicuous want of charity.
     Having said so much in deprecation of the manners of a class for whom I have otherwise a holy fear and respect, may I conclude by mentioning a circumstance which, I think, redounds to the honor of the critical calling here in America? The critic of one of your leading contemporaries submitted to a New-York manager, some years ago, a drama in which free use was made of the central situation employed by Leon Gozlau, by Sardou and finally by myself. For some reason or other, this drama was not produced. Knowing the facts of the case, and realizing that even critics are human, I looked with no little apprehension for this critic’s verdict on the play of “Constance.” To my surprise and delight, that verdict was kindly to a degree, and might almost be described as friendly by bias. In a long literary experience I have known no circumstance so gratifying as showing the nobility of temper and high honor of a powerful critic.
                                                      I am, &c.,
                                                             ROBERT BUCHANAN.
     New-York, Nov. 14, 1884.

     [The latter half of Mr. Buchanan’s bright and kindly letter does not apply to anything that has been said in THE TRIBUNE. The morality of his play of “Constance” has not been assailed in this journal, or even mentioned. Indeed the scenes to which he refers were singled out for especial and cordial praise. For the rest, there would seem to be abundant scope for difference of opinion as to the question of probability in human conduct as shown in works of fiction.—Ed.]

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The Era (6 December, 1884 - Issue 2411)

“Constance.”
TO THE EDITOR OF THE ERA.

     Sir,—In The Era of last Saturday, November 29th, your New York correspondent writes that “the event of the week has been the production of Constance at Wallack’s Theatre, this play having been sold to Mr Wallack by Mr Robert Buchanan as entirely new and original; but two weeks since some of the journals of this city alleged that the piece was an adaptation of La Duchess de Monte Major,” &c.
     Now I have just finished reading a tale, written by Miss Harriet Jay, and entitled “A Marriage of Convenience,” in which the plot and most of the names are identical with the plot and characters in the play of Constance as described by your New York correspondent. Wherefore, in the language of my countrymen, I am all “mixed up.”
     Who is the original author of play or novel?
                                      Yours very much puzzled,
                                                                KATE MUNROE.
     December 4th.

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“The Stage of To-day”

New-York Daily Tribune (21 December, 1884 - p.4)
[This ‘letter’ was incorporated in the essay, “A Note in 1886”, included in the section, “The Modern Stage”, of A Look Round Literature (London: Ward and Downey, 1887)]

THE STAGE OF TO-DAY.
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A LETTER FROM ROBERT BUCHANAN.
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PLAYS AND ACTORS IN ENGLAND AND IN AMERICA
—THE GENERAL PROSPECT—DRAMATIC DECADENCE.

     Periodically, say every five years, the great English-speaking public is startled by the eager voice of the Quidnunc, announcing the prospect of a great dramatic revival; periodically, the voice dies away among other voices of the crowd, while the dear, old, moribund drama continues, in its corpse-like coma, with spasmodic quickenings of death-in-life. When Robertson loomed above the horizon, the world prepared for something cosmic, only to discover that what it imagined to be a sun was a sort of gigantic tea-cup. When Boucicault rose radiant out of the sea of Irish woes, there was another portent, but what onlookers at first mistook for a potent magician’s wand, turned out, I fear, to be only—a shillelah. Meantime, the accomplished author of “Pinafore,” like a facetious Choragus of Choragi, has amused himself by poking fun at the Shape that once lived and moved and spoke the tongue of Shakespeare, by ridiculing its sock and buskin, by deriding its antique method,—so persistently and so cleverly, with such a touch of Aristophanes-plus-Mr. Gappy and the “jolly bank-holiday-every-day-young man”—that it has been a dangerous thing for any dramatist to view life seriously or sentimentally, or to attempt the grand manner so familiar to our fathers. Against the influence of sad wags like Mr. Gilbert, we have to set such phenomena as the beautiful “revivals” of Mr. irving, which have reminded playgoers that after all there is a grand manner, and that it is a little better, when all is said and done, than the manner of the middle-class cynic.
     But to do Mr. Gilbert justice (and no one is a warmer admirer of his saturnine humor than I am), his influence for good in this generation has far exceeded his influence for evil. He might be described, with some measure of truth, as the Mark Twain of the stage; for while the American humorist has succeeded in disintegrating so much of the shallow enthusiasm and false sentiment of ordinary life, the English one has done the same service in destroying what was false and meretricious in dramatic tradition. True, he has gone to the extreme length in disillusionizing the public sentiment as to all the higher dramatic emotions; but that was inevitable, and the question will adjust itself by and by, since those emotions are practically indestructable. As the matter now stands, any attempt at pure poetry on the stage is very like skating on thin ice. There can be no doubt, nevertheless, that our grandfathers very often took platitude for poetry and heroic posturing for the acting of nature. A modern dramatist or actor must now reckon on a public prepared at all points to dispute and ridicule his method wherever it conflicts with common sense. Love is not a passion à la mode, and there is a tendency to “guy” love scenes. Strong exhibitions of emotion are unpopular in real life and equally so in the theatre. At the same time the swift inspiration of genius can conquer the prejudice against the sentiment of love, or rather against its too maudlin expression, and justify the strongest and wildest of emotions under the right conditions.
     While the drama remains moribund, the world is full of actors who may fairly be accounted virile. It is no exaggeration to say that the greatest of these actors are Americans. On the other side of the water we have no artists, with the exception perhaps of Mr. Irving, worthy to rank by the side of Booth, of Jefferson, of Lester Wallack. Even to an Englishman familiar with the finest efforts of Charles Mathews, the acting of the younger Wallack comes with all the force of a revelation. I saw this princely comedian for the first time a few nights ago in “The Bachelor of Arts.” he had long been to me an illustrious name, one of the few American names known by familiar report on the other side, but I had imagined him one of the “old school,” in the Gilbertian and invidious sense. Of the old school he is certainly, in so far as his method puts all the efforts of the new school to shame; at once broad, subtle, swift and penetrating, it is the method of the born actor, equipped with all the culture of his fascinating art. Nowadays, I fear, actors are made, not born, and made very badly. Young men flock upon the stage because it has become a lucrative profession. Formerly only those achieved histrionic reputation who possessed by nature a commanding, an interesting, or an amusing personality. Nature, even more than art, created, in their various lines of character, Mrs. Siddons, the Kembles, Macready, kean, Harley, Robson, Charles Mathews, Buckstone, Keeley, Compton, Wigan, and Walter Lacy. Not but that the same kind of creation takes place occasionally even now. Nature, far more than art, has given us Ellen Terry.
     The fact remains, however, that modern actors generally suggest the idea of professionals who have mistaken their profession. Let any one who doubts this go to Wallack’s when the master is acting, and compare him with the ladies and gentlemen who surround him. There are clever people among them, but, with the exception of the tried veteran, John Gilbert, and the humanely humorous Harry Edwards, they strike the spectator as people who act to live, not live to act. In companies where there is no star of the first magnitude, the effect, of course, is different. Over the way at Daly’s, for example, there is a combination so admirable in ensemble, so full of natural talent and acquired fitness, so excellently guided and directed, that it became last summer the talk of London. Nearly every member of the company has been chosen for his natural acting gifts, and from officers to rank and file, the whole regiment is fit for the field, and magnificently manoeuvred.
     In England nowadays, I regret to say, the tendency to what may be called, rather Irishly, professional amateurism, is much more marked than in America. It began with the Robertsonian successes,which in their excessive and somewhat insipid naturalism called into existence very little first-class talent, but opened the stage door to hundreds of average young men and women. Here and there, but almost by accident, an artist of distinction appeared to break the genteel monotony of the performances at the Prince of Wales’s Theatre; there were brightness and natural gaiety in Marie Wilton, rich humor in George Honey, a pretty kind of talent for grasping small bits of character, in Mr. Hare. But when the Prince of Wales comedians exhausted Robertson and removed to the large stage of the Haymarket Theatre, it was plain that they were little more than amateurs after all. A cruder exhibition than the performance of “Masks and Faces,” with Mr. Bancroft as Triplet and Mrs. Bancroft as Peg Waffington, was certainly never seen on the amateur stage; and “The Rivals,” as we all know, was even worse. The public yearned for the old methods, and found them not very far off, at the Lyceum.
     I am far from suggesting, as many do, that the loss of the fine old crusted performer of the past generation, the performer who played half a dozen parts a week with more or less incoherence, is a thing to be deplored, or that the inroad of good-looking walking gentlemen has been wholly without its advantages. Actors, nowadays, take pains to be natural, they conduct themselves like gentlemen on and off the stage, they dress well and appropriately, they seldom over-act or murder the Queen’s English. But all this improvement, consequent on managerial recruiting among penniless dukes and impecunious earls, will not compensate for the genius, the natural adaptability, which used to be the actor’s distinguishing qualification, or for the boldness and fearlessness of method, which made tragedy tolerable and comedy puissant. Turn again to Lester Wallack, and see him step upon the stage; then turn to any of our modern interpreters of comedy, and note the difference. The secret of the power and fascination is, that this man is the part he plays; that nature, in Lester Wallack, created the physical and intellectual type fit to wear the idiosyncracy of Charles Courtley, of Harry Jasper, of D’Artagnan, of Don Caesar de Bazan. Ars est celare artem; the art is not manifest, because Nature herself is potent in establishing the verisimilitude. The finest of all acting, indeed, resolves into another Irishism—that, au fond, there is very little acting about it. Fechter in his young days was Armand Duval, Desclée was Camille, Lemaitre was Robert Macaire, Robson was Sampson Burr, Buckstone was Toby Twinkle, Compton was Touchstone, Helen Faucit was Cordelia, and so on all the world over. Natural fitness, plus the many resources and practices of the art, is what constitutes the true actor.
     In England this fact is understood, perhaps, in only one direction. I have long wondered what quality it is in the English atmosphere, or in the English constitution, which breeds so many genuine “low comedians.” On the soil of America, so far as I have seen, they do not thrive; yet over the water their name has been and is legion. Harley, Buckstone, Compton, Robson, Wright, Toole, Righton, Lionel Brough, George Honey, David James, Harry Nicholls, George Barrett, Charles Coote, Harry Paulton, Harry Jackson are names that will occur at once to many. The humor of each of these performers was, or is, something sui generis, but there is a family likeness in it all, indeed, a Cockney likeness. In other branches of the business England is not so excellent. It is doubtful, for example, if we possess a really first-class “juvenile” performer. Henry Neville—whose first appearance caused Planché to leap out of his seat and cry, “At last we have an actor!”—is still perhaps the best, despite his years, which he carries very lightly. Charles Coghlan has great talent, but is unequal and very weak in scenes of passion, where Neville is strong. Kyrle Bellew has shown abundant promise, but is somewhat too self-conscious and artificial; while Harry Conway, who began as the very weakest of walking gentlemen, has lately shown remarkable earnestness and latent strength. In personal attractiveness, William Terriss is the most endowed of them all. His style, however, is unintelligent, and his method unconvincing.
     The same lack of genius which is the fault of our juvenile actors, is to be found among our actresses. In scenes of power and passion, even Ellen Terry loses much of her charm. Mrs. Kendal is an inimitable comedienne, but quite without the pathetic fallacy in romantic and poetical characters, which she has sometimes attempted. Her Pauline, in the “Lady of Lyons,” is not a high-born beauty in distress, but a housemaid in a passion; her Claire, in the “Ironmaster,” is strenuously artificial in its pathetic solicitations. In pure comedy, however, Mrs. Kendal is supremely delightful. Much her superiors in the higher graces of the art are Miss Ada Cavendish, a most unequal actress, and Miss Lingard, now playing at the Prince’s Theatre; but neither of these ladies possesses any versatility. Passing away from leading ladies, we have ingénues by the score, and soubrettes by the dozen; one of the brightest of the latter being Miss Lottie Venne, an inimitable actress in her own peculiar line. Glancing downward through the ranks of the profession, we shall discover that the most noticeable artists are those who follow the good old method. There is Mr. Mead, whom I remember playing the whole range of the drama years ago at the Grecian; Mr. Howe, who graduated in the robustly vigorous Haymarket school; Mr. Willard and Mr. Speakman, both in Wilson Barrett’s company; Mr. Hermann Vezin, perhaps the finest elocutionist living, and consummately excellent, when suited; Mr. Fernandez, excellent in everything, but especially excellent in strong, rugged character studies; and Mr. Odell, who has a quiddity and oddity peculiarly his own. All the artists I have named are to be distinguished from the mob of gentlemen of the new school, who get upon the stage with ease, and act without intellectual conviction.
     Why is it, then, that, with so many capable artists, and so warm an appreciation of their talents on the part of the public, we have so few virile plays? Because there are no great dramatic authors, say the critics. Because the managers are uninstructed, say the playwrights. Because the public is a great silly baby, to be pleased with a rattle, tickled with a straw, say the managers.
     It may be quite true that we have no great dramatists, but it is also true that we have among us men capable of splendid dramatic work, if such work were in demand; not only within the circle of known writers for the stage, but outside of it, are such men to be found. But it is simply impossible to ensure the production of any drama which is not, to a certain extent, conventional after the known and approved fashions. The enormous outlay necessary in London to mount an important piece, the loss consequent on failure, the apathy of the public to new ideas of any kind, frighten the managers from making experiments. About a year ago, when “Claudian” was produced in London, everybody anticipated failure because it dealt with an ideal and far-off subject; and Mr. Barrett, himself, though a most enlightened manager and actor, had so holy a fear of the mere mention of “blank verse,” that he caused the piece to be written in a sort of hybrid lingo, neither verse nor good prose, which utterly destroyed its value as literature. At a huge sacrifice of time and money, the play was forced along, till at last its novelty and beauty were recognized. Here, however, the circumstances were very exceptional; and moreover, “Claudian” furnished a star part for a manager of ample resources. Under any other conditions, the piece would have been withdrawn within a month. My own experience, which I may cite by way of illustration, is the experience of nearly every dramatic author living. Having an intimate and practical knowledge of stage requirements, acquired through early connection with the theatre, I find it possible to produce pieces which please the manager, and sometimes the public; but whenever I have proposed any drama lofty in method or unconventional in form, I have been met with the answer that such productions are inexpedient. Management is too precarious a business for experiments of any kind.
     Then again, it is very difficult indeed to please both the critics and the public, and what pleases one will often repel the other. Nor are critics always unanimous. Two plays of mine, produced in London. and afterward repeated successfully here, met with exactly opposite treatment from the newspapers here and on the other side. “Stormbeaten” (an adaptation of my own novel, “God and the Man”) was received with a chorus of praise by the leading critics of London; in New-York it was roundly slaughtered in several quarters. On the other hand, “Lady Clare,” which some London critics treated coldly, and which gained its success in London in the face of lukewarm criticism, was praised liberally by the American press, almost without an exception.
     It is the custom in London, and often a sheer necessity, to force plays into success by large expenditures of money, and in the teeth of disastrous business. For many weeks “Pinafore,” the most successful of modern comic opera, played to quite inadequate receipts; so, I am informed, did the “Colleen Bawn.” “The Private Secretary,” when acted at the Prince’s Theatre, involved the author in a loss of some thousands of pounds; but he held firmly on to it, and transferring it to the Globe, reaped a late but abundant harvest. Of course this can only be done where the play possesses great vitality in itself, or where the management is unusually sanguine and determined. It is seldom or never, I believe, done in America, where pieces stand or fall by a first night’s reception, and by the perfunctory morning criticism. The exceptions are cases where the play is produced with an ultimate eye to the “road,” rather than with any view of immediately making money.
     I have touched upon the commercial side of the matter, because, in dramatic work, there is no golden mean between success and failure. A play is condemned absolutely, if it does not prove managerially profitable; no matter what its literary or technical merit, no matter how excellent its succès d’estime, it is justified or condemned by the amount of money paid by audiences who wish to see it. Now, modern audiences are mixed assemblages of men, women, and even children. When a great drama flourished in England, playgoers were different, ready to respond to any kind of method, however daring, if it was justified by its cleverness; and if a prude sat listening under the rain or sunlight, her blushes were hidden by a mask. Later on, when we had a superb comedy, great in spite of its license, the conditions were the same; the subjects were selected without tremor, the treatment was slapdash, the speech vehement, reckless, and bold. It is too late in the day to reproduce these conditions, nor am I suggesting for a moment that their reproduction would be desirable. How far indiscriminate license may degrade and even emasculate art may be seen any night in Paris at the Palais Royal. But it is obvious at a glance that a dramatist writing for a mixed modern audience, with Mr. and Miss Podsnap in the stalls, must choose his subjects carefully and treat them very gingerly. Were he a very Sophocles, he would have to eschew the story of Œdipus; were he an Euripides, he would have to fight shy of the domestic life of Phædra. He must, in short, to be listened to at all, avoid all offence against moral and religious prejudices, follow the conventional ethics, humor the popular creeds (all of them!), use language easily intelligible to immature persons. He must on no account attempt to edify; if he does, he is lost, and catalogued as a bore.
     How, under these and other restrictions, a dramatic revival is possible, I may try to discover later on. In the meantime, I leave the Drama where I found it, in articulo mortis.
                                                                                           ROBERT BUCHANAN.

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Harriett Jay’s Legs

New York Herald (6 January, 1885 - p.7)

MISS JAY IN “LADY CLARE.”

     Mr. Buchanan’s “Lady Clare” was played at Niblo’s Garden last night. His sister-in-law, Miss Harriet Jay, assumed the rôle of the youth, the Hon. Cecil Brookfield. In the first act she wore loose white trousers and the venerable gentlemen in the front row took very little interest in the play. The rear view of Miss Jay’s legs was certainly very unsatisfactory, for they seemed to be bulky and given to inclining inward at the knees. There was a pleasant surprise in the second act, when Miss Jay’s legs appeared in velvet knickerbockers and black stockings. They were plumpish, light comedy sort of legs, but very vague in the region of the knickerbockers, where the general appearance was that of decided stoutness. Miss Jay is two inches taller and a few pounds heavier than Lord Ambermere, and when she cried defiantly, “Hit one of your size,” she made a fine comedy hit. Throughout the last act her legs were clad in tight gray stockings and shooting breeches. In this she made her best points tell.

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The World (New York) (12 January, 1885 - p.5)

MISS HARRIETT JAY RISES.
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An English Actress and Her Opinion of
“Herald” Criticism.

To the Editor of The World:

     In the New York Herald of Tuesday last appeared a notice of my performance of the Hon. Cecil Brookfield in “Lady Clare,” written in a strain with which the readers of that newspaper are rapidly becoming familiar and revealing a kind of humor which, I hope for the honor of humanity, is not widely appreciated in America. The  writer is a curious sample of a new system of journalism, and he deserves in that character an attention to which his personal insignificance gives him no pretense or claim.
     In a moment of inspiration, Mr. Bennett, of the Herald, conceived the idea of revolutionizing dramatic criticism. Instead of intrusting its discussion to grave and grown up critics, he determined to view the drama from the point of view of unclean-minded adolescence. With this view he selected from his staff the youngest, the most incompetent, and the most impudent of the office boys—cousin-german in age, experience, and spiteful propensities, to the printer’s devil; bought him a suit of clothes, gave him the entree to the theatres, and told him to “go ahead.” He did go ahead with a vengeance. He danced a “break-down” on Shakespeare’s grave; he voted Hamlet a “bore,” recommending Mr. Irving to expunge it from his repertoire. He threw mud at Mr. Wallack and the other reputable managers in New York. He filled the air with slang and cat-calls; he ridiculed every decent entertainment; but when the nude ladies of burlesque appeared before him he became loud in rapture, and in lieu of his derisive abuse proclaimed his lewd and boisterous admiration. Now, while a loose-tongued man is an offense to decent society, a dirty-minded and obscene boy is a nuisance—either in the gallery or on a newspaper. The obscene boy sees the Venus of Milo or the Venus of Titian, and cried, “Hullo, she’s got no clothes on! Here’s a lark!” There his notion of art begins and ends. The obscene boy sees me play the Hon. Cecil Brookfield, a performance which satisfied London for a whole season, and exclaims, “Look at her legs! Hang her acting: look at her legs!” That is his notion of the drama. He would discover only salacious suggestion in Mrs. Kendal’s Rosalind, and would perceive no difference of motive between the Viola of Miss Neilson and the nudities of the “Adamless Eden.”
     Now please conceive the situation. A lady, respected in England for her work in literature, who, whether as woman, authoress or actress, has received the respect and sympathy of all honest and pure-minded men, appears in an American theatre and is immediately placed at the mercy of a fledgling critic, who has neither knowledge, experience, talent nor respect for common decency, and whose sole aim is to select such expressions as may shock one who is as much his superior morally and intellectually as George Eliot was the superior of a shoe-black. Instead of seeing in her performance an attempt at least to achieve an artistic creation, he keeps his little, lewd, spiteful eyes on the “legs” of the actress, and writes a criticism about them. With the cunning of a street urchin he gathers up filth out of the gutter and flings it at his victim, shrieking all the time with delight at what he thinks a “jolly lark.”
     In England such a performance would insure the obscene boy sharp treatment from the reformatory of prison birch. Am I to understand that it is tolerated and approved of in America? I cannot believe it—nay, I am certain that the American public in general execrates the system which consigns dramatic criticism to the care of a Yankee “Gavroche,” or a transatlantic “Bailey Junior.” I am, &c.,                      HARRIETT JAY.
Authoress of “The Queen of Connaught,” “The Dark Colleen,” “The Priest’s Blessing,” &c.
     Niblo’s Garden, Jan. 10.

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The Daily Republican (Omaha, Nebraska) (8 March, 1885 - p.3)

     A New York letter says: The dramatic critic of The Herald is again the subject of attack on the part of the dramatic papers and such daily papers as are always glad to find an excuse for pitching into The Herald. The trouble this time is Miss Harriet Jay’s legs. Miss Harriet Jay is the sister-in-law of Robert Buchanan, with whom she is paying a visit to this country. Miss Jay has acted in burlesque in England, but never with any great success. She has distinguished herself more as a novelist (for she has written some very pretty stories) than as an actress; but she has an ambition to distinguish herself upon the boards, and Mr. Buchanan does all in his power to assist her. He succeeded in getting her an opportunity to play one afternoon at the Madison Square theater, and he invited the “press” and the “profession” to witness her performance. It was not a very edifying spectacle, but the audience had some amusement out of it. Not satisfied with this, Mr. Buchanan gets Miss Jay an engagement at Niblo’s Garden, where she appeared in a boy’s part. Miss Jay’s figure is not at present adapted to roles of this sort; she is too old and too stout to appear in them successfully; but you seldom find an actress who knows when she is too old or too stout to play any role that she may take a fancy to. The dramatic editor of The Herald sent one of his assistants to see this performance, and when the young man returned to The Herald office he asked him how Miss Jay was. “Very poor,” replied the young man; “I don’t see what I can say about her acting.” “What was the most conspicuous thing about her performance?” asked the editor. “Her legs,” replied the young man, blushing. “Very well, then,” said the chief, “write about her legs;” and this the young man set to work to do. In a neat paragraph he told the readers of The Herald that Miss Jay’s legs in the first act were incased in silken hose of a certain color, and that their expression was so and so, and he went on to describe them in this light and airy manner in each succeeding act, and then he closed his report of the performance. It was not a very dignified way of noticing a play, but there was some provocation for it, I must admit. The effect upon Miss Jay was electrical, and she, or rather Robert Buchanan, at once sat down and dashed off a circular letter, which was sent to every paper in New York. Only one published it; it was signed Harriet Jay, but it was in Mr. Buchanan’s most characteristic style; in the style that he won his first spurs, when he attacked the “flashly school” of poetry in the columns of The Examiner. He called the representative of The Herald every name that his invention suggested, and was very sarcastic and amusing at the expense of the young man. But The Herald doesn’t mind, and the paragraph about Miss Jay’s legs has advertised her to an extent that she never could have got by any legitimate means.

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