Mummer-Worship

Universal Review, 1 September 1888, pages 105-118, 6,590 words

An actor is one who repeats a portion of a story invented by another. You can teach a child to act, but you can teach no child to paint pictures, to model statues, or to write prose, poetry, or music; acting is therefore the lowest of the arts, if it is an art at all, and makes slender demands on the intelligence of the individual exercising it; but this age, being one mainly concerned with facile amusement and parade, reverences the actor above all other beings, and has by some prodigy, that cannot be explained by us, succeeded, or almost succeeded, in abstracting him from the playwright, upon whom he should feed in the manner of a parasite, and endowing him with a separate existence  —  of necessity ephemeral, but which by dint of gaudy upholstery and various millinery has been prolonged beyond due limits and still continues. We of the nineteenth century have witnessed this, and stranger and more wonderful things even we have witnessed, and we bear testimony to them. For according to ancient books and traditions, the actor and actress of past times — those times when Shakespeare and Jonson lived  —  may be compared with a careless lad and wench who, having tired of the ties of home and ways of respectability, threw off all galling restraint and roved, after their own hearts’ fashion, on the outskirts of society, telling poetry to the joyous who like them cared little for beads, ashes, and repentance. Such manner of dramatic life found favour to the close of the last century, and did not fall into complete desuetude until about twenty years ago. Then a great and drastic change came; the mummer grew ashamed of his hose and longed for a silk hat, a villa, and above all a visit from the parson. Nothing more touching than the shame which suddenly came upon mummers, male and female; and now, in full fig, that is to say in a villa, in a silk hat, and with the cards of the parson and his wife in their hands, they lay claim to our sympathies and demand our household affections, Their women assure us that they are excellent mothers and have not known the joys of lovers; the men invite us to their club, and speak of aristocratic connections. So the mummer has changed his garb and name; he is now the actor, and wears a silk hat. Can the leopard change his spots or the Ethiopian his skin? The modern mummer sits on the lawn outside his villa in St. John’s Wood; his boys play beneath the leafage; his wife, a portly lady on the verge of forty-five and society, tells you of the many acts of Christian charity she is performing and of the luncheon parties to which she has been asked. His house is full of letters from eminent people, cuttings from newspapers, and portraits of himself and his wife, for as he was civilised (up or down, which is it?), his vanity has grown as weed never grew before: it overtops all things human, and puts forth religious blossom.

Genius and respectability for the actor, genius and virtue for the actress, is the cry from the modern stage. Grant us this and we'll be still. He who has met the young actress in a Bayswater drawing-room has heard her say, ‘Why shouldn’t a girl be virtuous on the stage as well as elsewhere... and a great deal more so too?’ And the young lady’s aphorism finds echo in the newspapers. It would be profitless, it would be vain, to seek for the John and Paul of the new gospel. So numerous are they that their individualities have been lost, and suffice it for the purpose of this article to say, its apostles are everywhere. The Word is preached, miracles are recorded, and in that Jordan, the Roman Church, the black are made white, and turned bleating into society’s fold. Every day the strength of the movement calls new preachers into existence, and we must needs seek sermons in skirts and prayer in the wings. Five years have not passed since we heard for the first time that a favourite actress nursed her children, read prayers, and gave tea and tracts to naughty chorus girls. A favourite American actress has improved upon the English woman’s initiative, inasmuch as the details concerning her private life which are offered for our delectation are of a more refined nature. When the first rumour of her refusal of the Duke’s hand had been adequately contradicted, we were informed that she went to church every Sunday, and lived a holy and retired life with her mother, and latterly it has transpired that she will never marry: virtue is not enough for this young lady, she must have the sacredness of the vestal; and so a corner-stone of the convent has been added to the Church of the Drama. And as a Lyceum tragedy is burlesqued at the Gaiety, so did danseuses and others burlesque the moral tone that came from Wellington Street, and we have had to listen to persistent asseverations of virtue from notorious ‘professional’ ladies who accept presents of jewellery and sup with the young dogs of the town. The trade in stage virtue waxes fast and furious, so much so that it seems not unlikely that signs of it will soon be put over theatrical doors.

I will presently consider what the probabilities are in this respect; in the meantime let me point out the absurdities and inconvenience which result from this social deification of ‘her Majesty’s servants ’  —   this attempt to fuse the theatre and the drawing-room.

Mummers interrupt our path in life — their virtue, their beauty, their successes, their books — for lately they have taken to writing books; books about what? about themselves. There is but one subject of interest to the mummer, and, like his clothes, his talk, and his virtue, his books excite the curiosity of the public. We have had five editions of the Bancroft Memoirs — two bulky volumes of five hundred pages each. Mr. Toole’s Memoirs are promised, Mr. Grossmith’s (A Society Clown, by George Grossmith) have appeared and Mr. Corney Grain’s are announced; and the daily press, letting pass the rarest prose and verse without a word (I believe no notice appeared of Mr. Pater’s ‘Imaginary Portraits’ in the Telegraph, Standard,or Chronicle), eagerly gives up dozens of columns to praise and quotation of the stupid anecdotes that anyone who has held or played in a theatre chooses to write out. And when not engaged in compiling the stories of their virtuous and successful lives from theatrical journals and provincial notices, the mummers discuss their social grievances in the evening papers. What is the social status of the actor? is argued as passionately as a frontier question of European importance. Mr. Grossmith writes to the duke, before he consents to accept ten pounds to sing a couple of songs, to ask if he will be received as a guest or what? ... Or was it that the duke wrote to Mr. Grossmith and asked how he would like to be received? Be this as it may, something went wrong, and Mr. Grossmith declares that he scored over the duke by taking a countess down to supper. Neither doctors, lawyers, nor dentists stipulate how they are to be received when they attend. And it will seem to many that when a gentleman accepts a fee for singing in a drawing-room he would prove his blue blood better by declining to consider himself in the light of an ordinary guest than by afterwards discussing his claim to be received on an equal footing with those whose presence was not paid for. It would also be well if on retiring from the stage and entering society actresses would refrain a little, not criticise too severely the morals of the ladies around them, and not wonder in stage whispers why Mrs. So-and-So is received.

I know how easily the present may be depreciated by comparing it with a past which time has hallowed and the imagination must needs idealise, knowing it only in its noblest aspects; but facile, common, and unjust as the expedient generally is, it seems to me impossible to consider the state of our drawing-rooms without glancing at those that preceded them. I will attempt no description of an eighteenth-century salon — a mention of Mr. Orchardson’s picture will bring my reader’s thoughts to the desired point. Such representation of the eighteenth century, even when we have exaggerated what time has taken of ugliness, and allowed for what the imagination lends of beauty, must be admitted as proof that our manners have declined out of all reckoning. We should have looked in vain for mummers in the salon of Madame Récamier, and it is to the honour of ladies of old time that we do not find them ostentatiously love-making with inferiors. Love then spread his wings in court phrase and political intrigue; now he is a vulgar parrot that speaks by rote and screams before the foot-lights. He who thinks society has lost nothing of dignity and elegance must call to mind Mr. Orchardson’s picture as he walks into a London drawing-room. Here is a specimen of a modern salon in a fashionable house wherein the mummer has gained a footing. Look with me at the company. First here are some young Jews whose long locks do not conceal their Whitechapel origin. One is at the piano. The eyes of many middle-aged ladies are fixed on him; he ogles them in turn; on his especial patrons he lets a single glance fall; he strikes a chord with his right hand; he lets his left drop by his side and utters the last note. The song is done, the middle-aged ladies remove their eyes and sigh with admiration. His place is taken by a girl of wild and unsettled look. Her dress is loud, her hair is perhaps touched with dye; she plays and sings, acts and recites, and is said to make a great deal of money. She is always engaged to a young mummer, and she is now playing the accompaniment for her future husband. Like the others, he is exceedingly lovely, and everywhere you hear of his loveliness. When he gives a concert the hall is filled with women mute with delight or talking incoherently. Will anyone assert that this is not true, and, being true, that it is not decadence? The individual standing in the doorway left the army some years ago; there is still a look of the officer in his mild face — a face made mild by long association with folly, vanity, and caprice. As usual, he is waiting for his wife; as usual, she stands at a little distance, in the middle of the room, talking of herself. She explains that she is a popular favourite, and how, in the event of not getting an engagement, she will give another matinée. How much money has the poor man spent on matinées, on tours, on seasons at the Opéra Comique, the Globe, the Olympic, the Strand? There are always people in his house, principally dramatic authors — unkempt dramatic authors from the Strand; erudite and melancholy dramatic authors from Oxford; foolish and foppish dramatic authors from Mayfair. They read plays after breakfast, after lunch, and after dinner, and the readings are only interrupted by fashionable men who come from the clubs and make up parties to go to the theatre. The poor husband sits on the stairs with his only child on his knees; the child says, ‘ When will mother come home, father?’ The elderly man who sits talking to an old lady was stricken in early life with a hatred of dressing for dinner and afternoon calls, and to escape from what he hated he lived with an actress. His social experiment succeeded for a time, but as society became disorganised the lady succeeded in scrambling through some unguarded loopholes, and when she married her protector she determined to make up for lost time. No more loose jackets; no more smoking in the drawing-room; no more Bohemian friends, but society pure and simple; and the little man has now to take in double doses that which he hated — afternoon calls and formal conversation. He is not only obliged to dress every day for dinner, but he has to give entertainments in the open air — they give him violent colds; afternoon calls interfere with politics, but every day you can see him crumpled up in his wife’s vast carriage. The horses step out, her bosom stretches forth, and away they go to leave cards. Deluded little politician! Had he married a lady he would have escaped with half his present visiting, and might have been allowed to dispense occasionally with evening dress,

In the salons of the eighteenth century love was interwoven between literature and politics. Now our love passages twine round a criticism of acting — how So-and-So used to play the part walking up the stage with his hands in his pockets, whereas So-and-So used to play the part walking down the stage with his hands behind his back. ‘I want you,’ says the actor to his lady, ‘to come to the theatre to-night, for I have invented a new bit of “business”: while So-and-So is singing his sentimental song I pretend to have lost my tobacco-pouch, and so that the public shan’t get tired of it I intend to vary the “business” next week by pretending that I have got a pebble in my shoe.’ Over such points the season goes mad, falls prostrate and licks the dust. Every prostration has been performed, every servile contortion has been made; and these changed creatures, with hymn-books in their hands and their pinchbeck virtue oozing through their speech, come up every staircase shaking the dust of their past careers from their garments.

For the last ten years the actor has not only demanded acclamation for what he does, but he has striven to obtain, and has succeeded in obtaining, praise for what he is, thus emulating all priests and sacred apes. He demands more than they: by right of his office he claims intelligence as his inalienable right. Even priests and sacred apes have refrained from this last audacity. When I say the actor claims intelligence, even genius, by right of his office, I do not mean that the claim has ever been put into writing — in the form of a deposition read before the Lord Mayor, who will listen to depositions on all subjects — but by his attitude of late years the actor has not only made, but has maintained, his right to genius. Not only all he asked has been conceded, but he has been encouraged to come again and ask for more.

He has meanwhile maintained his claim, a claim conceded to him in the old ‘Rogue and Vagabond’ days, to an immunity from all the ordinary courtesies, restraints, and obligations of mere dull, respectable humanity. As rarely as of old does he answer a letter, pay a visit, keep an appointment, or tell the truth. Advertisement, like the poor, is ever with him. He parades upon the river amid our wives and daughters his beauty, his mistresses, his vulgarity, himself; and where once the cool water fell softly in the dark shadow of the lock or noisily amidst the timbers of the weir, we must now listen to the latest ‘chestnuts’ from the Avenue Theatre, or have our ears sullied by the scabreux jocosities of the opéra bouffe.

I pass without comment the banquets that have been given to him on leaving for America, of the inordinate use made of the telegraph-wire in proclaiming his victories; it would hardly be to the point to speak of the reporters who go to his ship when the anchor-chain has run out, write of his health and his impressions in endless columns, and style him ‘great chief.’ Let all this be waived. So many have been treated so, that such consideration and recognition is valued little by them. So Mr. Wyndham must have thought when he planned his continental tour. ‘America, what is it? At best a land of dollars. I will go where there are Emperors — to Russia and Germany.’

Our contention is a threefold one: first, that acting is the lowest of the arts, if it be an art at all; secondly, that the public has almost ceased to discriminate between bad and good acting, and will readily grant its suffrage and applause to anyone who has been abundantly advertised, and can enforce his or her claim either by beauty or rank; thirdly, that the actor is applauded not for what he does, but for what he is — that of late years the actor has been lifted out of his place, and, in common with all things when out of their places, he is ridiculous and blocks the way. A plain account of Mr.Wyndham’s continental tour will fully prove these three indictments. Mr. Wyndham is an actor who has played very well indeed in numberless adaptations of French farces, and his plea for seeking the suffrages of Emperors is that he was at school in Germany, and knows French as an educated Englishman knows it. Miss Mary Moore (the ‘leading lady’ at the Criterion Theatre) tells the story of her qualifications for the tour in question in the Evening News of March 24; and it is worthy of repetition here, if only to show the slight preparation and training which are now necessary to gain a footing on the ‘boards.’

‘Well, I began my stage career at Bradford, in Yorkshire, in the first touring company of “The Candidate,” sent out by Mr. Wyndham. I went out as understudy of Miss Eveson in the leading part of “Lady Dorothy.” At Bradford Miss Eveson was taken ill, and I had to go on at very short notice. I need not tell you how dreadfully nervous I was. It was a very severe trial, but I managed to get through it. It was actually my first appearance on any stage. I had no previous experience, even as an amateur.’

The italics are mine; I would ask those who think I have unjustly depreciated the art of acting in relation to the other arts, to think if they can of a man painting a picture without ‘previous experience,’ or modelling a statue, or composing a sonata, or even playing a piano.

‘When Miss Eveson returned to London I continued with “The Candidate ” company, playing the leading part all through the tour.... My first appearance in London was at the Criterion Theatre, in October 1885.... One day I received a cablegram from Mr. Wyndham, asking me whether I would play "Ada Ingot ” in German at Berlin in October. It was a startling proposal, for we were already in the latter part of August, and I had never kept up my familiarity with the German language since my school-days. But I made up my mind to do it if it were at all possible…. In order to get as much practice as possible in the foreign tongue in which I had somewhat rashly undertaken to play, I took my passage in the North German Lloyd steamer "Saal.”’

The touching simplicity of this confession deserves italics. A new amateur goes to Germany and Russia to play in German and French, neither of which she is more than superficially acquainted with.

Only those who have lived ten years abroad and speak a foreign language with fluency and conversational correctness, and therefore know how skin-deep their knowledge of the language is, may appreciate at its full value the exquisite absurdities that this very English couple must have been guilty of. The newspapers told us that they were applauded and received floral tributes, but so would a band of Hottentots who came to Europe to flourish clubs; and no doubt Mr. Wyndham and Miss Mary Moore will be applauded and will receive floral tributes if they go to Paris and play there in Russian; and I would advise them to do this, for Russia is all the fashion in Paris. The Parisians will nod their heads and say, Que c'est charmant ... quelle jolie langue... harmonieuse, &c. But to return to their German tour. Telegrams came from Berlin, Frankfort, Moscow, and St. Petersburg, announcing Mr. Wyndham and Miss Mary Moore’s triumphant success. Evidently the passage in the North German steamer bore fruit, and I can imagine them preparing their French by engaging ticket-collectors in discussion. When they returned home there was more banqueting and more floral tributes, and for a big bomb the Chancellor of the Exchequer was invited to supper on the stage of the Criterion Theatre and he made a speech. I regret that I cannot lay hands on a verbatim report, but, in default, I give some lines of a description of it which appeared in the Era: —  

Mr. Charles Wyndham will need all his natural modesty to prevent his becoming intoxicated by his recent achievements. It was much to carry the flag of the British drama to Berlin; it was more to win the admiration of Russian royalty; but to get Mr. Goschen to bear eloquent tribute to the actor’s merits was, indeed, something remarkable. The Chancellor of the Exchequer is, as everybody knows, the embodiment of the practical. Stern, shrewd common-sense has always been his most striking characteristic. To find him the sympathetic and admiring laudator of the buoyant and volatile actor-manager who has recently returned to the Criterion Theatre with all his blushing honours thick upon him is, indeed, as Mr. Coborn would say, ‘a surprise.’ Mr. Wyndham has, indeed, been curiously fortunate in his connection with political magnates. It was at the Criterion Theatre, it will be remembered, that Mr. Gladstone sat on the very evening when the fall of Khartoum was announced. Much political capital was made out of the circumstance; and both parties had reason to be grateful to ‘The Candidate’ on this occasion. The Liberals must have been thankful for the much-needed relaxation afforded to their sorely harassed chief, whilst the Conservatives did not fail to make a vast amount of political capital out of the coincidence, comparing the ‘grand old man’ to Nero fiddling whilst Rome was in flames, with other pleasant parallels of a similar nature. And now a Chancellor of the Exchequer holds forth in polished terms at a banquet on the very Criterion stage, and sings the praises of the British drama of the day. Mr. Goschen’s knowledge of German theatrical taste enabled him confidently to pay a tribute to the reality of Mr. Wyndham’s success. After a pun that Mr. Toole might have envied about ‘Garrick on the Spree,’ Mr. Goschen went on to say that a new form of British competition was being carried into the heart of the German Empire. It was said, remarked Mr. Goschen, that the Germans were pushing us hard in many directions; they were said to be depriving us of a portion of our trade; they were said to be our most formidable rivals in all quarters of the globe; but though German men-o’-war might plant the German flag in the Navigator Islands, Mr. Wyndham had planted the Union Jack of Old England on the Court Theatre of Berlin. People had talked about the Panjdeh incident; but what was such an incident compared with the incident of ‘David Garrick’ acted on a Moscow stage? ‘The Germans,’ continued the Chancellor of the Exchequer, ‘have long admired, with proper reverence, the splendid works of our great dramatists; but till lately they scorned the efforts of those who endeavoured to render them on the stage.’

C'est gigantesque, as Flaubert used to say when some more than natural enormity of the bourgeoisie was brought under his notice. But we will not draw attention to any particular sentence, either by italicisation or comment; each is a flawless gem of the rarest human stupidity, and the whole forms the most perfect and complete diadem of nineteenth-century sottishness that we can call to mind. ‘Tout est là, rien ne manque.’

It would seem therefore that our contention, namely, that our century delights more in parade and gross satisfactions than the centuries that immediately preceded it, and therefore accords worship to the mummer, less for what he does than by right of his mummer-head, is not a light paradox founded on fancy, but a solid truth resting on a substantial basis of fact.

Cruelty was the vice of the ancient, vanity is that of the modern world. Vanity is the last disease. To-day we all seek admiration — that is to say, admiration in its original sense of wonderment. It matters not at all to us if we obtain approbation — instinctively we eschew it, fearing all that might tend to diminish the sentiment of wonder which we eagerly strive to create. The stage therefore catches the great part of the attention of modern society. Painting, music, and poetry demand special talents — ability is required to compose even a bad opera, a bad epic, a bad picture — but anyone can play Juliet and Hamlet badly; besides, to compose even bad operas, epics, and pictures, solitude and long concentration of thought are needed, and with solitude and long concentration of thought the young ladies and young men of to-day will have nothing to do. Desiring parade and wonderment, they turn their eyes to the stage. Our generation has ceased to care for work; we all want to live well, to enjoy life. In the lowest as well as the highest I note the same desire. Twenty years ago farm labourers were paid by the piece and they worked on till eight o’clock in the evening; now they are paid by the week and they strike work at half-past five. This general inclination to take pleasure and ease is of course more acutely marked in society than in the fields. Young sons shrink from the counting-house and shudder when the name of Manitoba is mentioned. The arts offer them as a pretext for remaining at home. So the arts are encumbered with young men and women. The most intelligent and the least carnal go to literature, painting, sculpture, and music; the stupid, the vain, and the fleshly go to the stage. Not in vocation and original impulse must we seek the reason of the thousands of pictures that yearly line the walls of the public galleries and the piles of novels that crowd the stalls of the booksellers, but in vanity and idleness; and the dull-witted, uneducated, over-dressed young men who speak of being on or of going on the stage in Kensington and Bayswater drawing-rooms, are too cowardly to enlist, too lazy to face the hardships of colonial life. They would pull plums out of the mummer’s pie, but they will not go into the kitchen where it is made and baked…. The profession must be raised, elevated, &c. If I except a couple of princesses and a duchess in perspective, I know no young lady who has not at one time or other expressed a regret that she was not an actress. Women are quite as foolish and quite as vain as men — which is saying a great deal — and they desire the stage for the same reason as their brothers. But for the young ladies there is at least an excuse: now that we have a surplus female population it is clear that all women cannot marry, they cannot enlist, nor yet go out to the colonies and become domestic servants. So they sigh after the stage. ‘What are we to do with our daughters?’ is a vital question. ‘The young ladies cry in chorus, ‘ Put us on the stage, mamma;’ but mamma still hesitates, and the question is debated: ‘Can Ethel, Harriet, and May sing in the chorus — not in Mr. Farnie’s operas, but in Mr. Gilbert’s — and remain as good and pure young ladies as if they had continued to do crochet-work in the drawing-room at home?’ The parents oppose for a while their daughters’ wishes, but in their heart of hearts they think it would be no bad thing if Ethel, Harriet, and May were to earn each thirty shillings or two pounds a week. Such is the ‘psychological moment’ in Kensington and Bayswater, and out of it come all the various hypocrisy, subterfuge, and sophistry which we may read under such headings as ‘Church and Stage,’ ‘Social Status of the Actor,’ &c.

Ethel, Harriet, and May take lessons in elocution. They assure their parents that to be taught to read Shakespeare by Mrs. A is just the same as to be taught to dance by Mrs. B. At Mrs. A’s they make acquaintances, they invite their new friends to come to their house or they go to their new friends’ houses, where they make more acquaintances, all more or less connected with the drama. If they are lucky, Ethel, Harriet, and May are engaged at small salaries as under-studies. They leave home at eleven in the morning for rehearsal, and they spend several hours wandering about in the twilight of the stage, or sitting in the darkness of the wings. There are the dangers of familiarity. The stage-manager calls them ‘dear,’ puts his arm round their shoulders and walks across the stage with them; and he is a bullying, blaspheming fellow when he is at work, a coaxing, sensual fellow when he is idling. ‘And how is she to-day?’ he asks Ethel. The young girl rebukes him, but she is laughed at by her companions and told she is ruining her chances. Harriet may feel faint: if so, she is led out into the air by the young man standing next her, and he presses her to drink a glass of wine. At rehearsal the formality of introductions is dispensed with. A friend of the manager arranges a lunch, and if our young ladies refuse the invitations so graciously extended to them they are looked upon with suspicion in the theatre. Bouquets and presents are left for them at the stage-door. In the dressing-rooms they meet all sorts and.conditions of girls; they have to dress in their company; they have to listen to their conversation, which is often something more than a trifle coarse. They have not been on the stage a month, and already into what shadow has not home faded, with its familiar restraints, associations, and influences! At the end of the season Ethel, Harriet, and May go on tour. They are friendless, they are lonely and a little afraid; and the instinct is inherent in woman to look to man for love and protection. Now a long railway journey, passed amid enervating conversations and card-playing, is over; the girl is tired; there is a rush for lodgings. ‘Come along, my dear,’ cries one of the principals; ‘I’m going to the "Hen and Chickens;” you'll be able to get a room there.’ She spends months with this man for sole companion, sometimes living under the same roof with him. After having ‘knocked around’ for ten years, and danced and sung in long clothes and short, and been loved much and often, Ethel returned to London, where she is sometimes engaged to play small parts at a salary of five pounds a week. Harriet married an actor; she is now divorced. May ran away with a banker, who promised to marry her, but didn’t; she went to America; she tried to ‘get’ on the stage again; now she is drinking herself to death. And as I have sketched it, so might the fate be of three young ladies taken from a Bayswater drawing-room, and turned into the dramatic profession to make their living; I mean three average young ladies who, meaning to be good girls, turned to the stage for the usual reasons — vanity, weariness of home, and ordinary love of change. I do not say adventure: grant love of adventure, and you draw perilously near vocation. The young lady who, wild with love of adventure and masquerade, beats her wings against the plate-glass window of her prison, and looks to the dark doorway as the lark to the bright sky, will possibly fight her way to the front. Nature has chosen her for the battle of the footlights. The ranks of the chorus will be better filled by those who enlist of inclination than by those who have been led by false promises out of their way of life.

I do not mean to assert that virtue in the usual sense of the word is for women impossible on the stage. That would be unjust and absurd. There are good girls there as there are in every other class of life — girls who deserve all honour for having withstood great, persistent, and most insidious temptations. But it is most certainly the case that the odds against virtue in a stage life are for women almost overwhelmingly great. All the conditions around them are perilous in the extreme. The very subject-matter of their studies are the various phases of love and sensuality; the appeal made to the audience in seven out of ten modern theatres is a sensual appeal; their daily associations are inevitably of the coarsest kind; the physical strain and excitement are extremely great; the living upon applause, upon successful appearance, upon the daily imitation of that love which they are expected on the moral theory to for ever forbear to experience; all these and a hundred other pitfalls there are in the way of a modest girl who wishes to retain the flower of her maidenhood amidst the dangers of theatrical life. And even if the fact of morality is, despite all this, maintained securely, there still ensues that hardening and worsening of the nature which comes from the daily contact with, and enforced toleration of, practices and people with which and with whom no decent woman should be concerned.

Far less than art or government a philosophic idea is understood; but how much suffering might be avoided if the truth could become generally recognised and acted upon, that no world can be wholly pure or impure — that some proportion of vice, as well as virtue, must find its way into human life! The entire removal and abolition of either would mean death to the race. Mr. Lecky, in a magnificently eloquent passage, inspired by a profound philosophy, has described the harlot as the guardian angel of our wives and daughters. Our everyday moralists would do well to master such primary truths before they seek to subvert entirely the present order of vice and virtue.

The stage was once a profession for the restless, the frankly vicious —  for those who sought any escape from the platitude of their personality; the stage is now a means of enabling the refuse of society to idly satisfy the flesh, and air much miserable vanity. Such change has come. No change is more than superficial, and dramatic art has not risen above the law that governs human things. To-day the stage is as moral as it was a hundred years ago — as much so and no one jot more. The alliance between church and stage is a subject wherewith the hypocritical may trade on the eternal credulity of mankind; the alliance between the stage and society is unfortunately a reality, and I have attempted to explain its genesis. The dramatic profession has been, is, and always must be, a profession for those to whom social restraints are irksome, and who would lead the life their instinct dictates. The ideal mother cannot be the great artist. The ancients knew this well, and did not waste time in striving to unite the cradle and the chef-d'oeuvre. And since, in the eternal wisdom of things, we must find a place for vice as well as for virtue, for the Bohemian as well as the housewife, I believe that little will be gained by emptying the coulisse into the drawing-room, and. the drawing-room into the coulisse. We have no belief in the amalgamation of classes, and still hold by the old distinctions. We do not prefer vice to virtue, or virtue to vice, but believe both, since both exist, to be necessary; and our morality consists mainly in striving to keep them apart and refraining from experimental mixing. Victor Hugo in his last book, ‘Choses Vues,’ has a chapter entitled ‘Mlle. Georges.’ The great actress comes to see him in a moment of great distress, and he records her conversation:

‘Voilà la vérité. Je suis dans la misère. J’ai pris mon courage et je suis allée chez Rachel, chez Mlle. Rachel, pour lui demander de jouer Rodogune avec moi à mon bénéfice. Elle ne m’a pas reçu, et m’a fait dire de lui écrire. Oh! par exemple, non! Je ne suis pas encore là. Je suis reine de théâtre comme elle, j’ai été une belle catin comme elle, et elle sera un jour une vieille pauvresse comme moi. Eh bien, je ne lui écrirai pas. Je ne lui demande pas l'aumône. Je ne ferai pas l’antichambre chez cette drôlesse! Mais elle ne se souvient pas qu’elle a été mendiante! Elle ne songe pas qu’elle le deviendra! Mendiante dans les cafés, M. Hugo; elle chantait et on lui jetait deux sous! C’est bon. Dans ce moment-ci elle joue chez Véron à un louis et elle gagne ou perd dix mille francs dans la nuit; mais dans trente ans elle n’aura pas deux liards et elle ira dans la crotte avec des souliers éculés! Dans trente ans elle ne s’appellera peut-être pas Rachel aussi bien que je m’appelle Georges. Elle trouvera une gamine qui aura du talent et qui lui marchera sur la tête et elle se couchera à plat ventre, voyez-vous…. Je dois dix francs à mon portier. J’ai été obligée de laisser vendre au Mont-de-Piété les boutons de diamant que je tenais de l’empereur. Je joue au théâtre Saint-Marcel, je joue aux Batignolles, je joue à la banlieue, je n’ai pas vingt-cinq sous pour payer mon fiacre. Et bien, non, je n’écrirai pas à Rachel, et je me jetterai à l’eau tout bonnement.’

This seems to me truth — truth for yesterday, for to-day, and for all time. Hypocrites shall write about the church and stage, and new devotees shall fall before a single shrine of shovel-hattedness and motley; young ladies will think more than ever that the stage-door will lead them from the irksomeness of chaperons to fame and fortune, and Kensington matrons will incline a more and more docile ear to that which they are now seeking to believe — that their daughters may be virtuous actresses; the flame of mummer-worship shall be blown higher; society shall embrace the mummer more fondly, the mummer shall return the embrace more ardently; we shall hear of another queen of the boards who nurses her children, and another who goes to church every Sunday; many strange things shall come to pass, but such phases of stage-life are ephemeral and circumstantial — gnats on the surface of a well, and in the end the abiding and important truth will be found unchanged at the bottom; and I have not found it more strikingly expressed than in the words of the unfortunate Mlle. Georges.

GEORGE MOORE.