The Tenth Muse

The Observer, 26 June 1921, page 9, 1,314 words

[This transcript is based on a muddy facsimile provided by Newspapers.com; I have noted an illegible word to be transcribed later from physical media.]

Mr. George Moore and the “Phoenix.”

“Batholomew Fair.”

A Fount of Popular Entertainment.

In the course of the week a representative of The Observer called on Mr. Moore. He had barely crossed the threshold when Mr. Moore advanced to meet him hastily, and leading him to a chair, said: “I know what you’ve come to talk to me about. My dear sir, you have come to talk to me about the “Phoenix,” and to hear me talk about that excellent society, whose avowed object is a scheme for the revival of b buried masterpieces. We have met to discuss art and the desire of it, and those who seek in unavailingly from theatre to theatre. We have come together to put questions to each other, but before you say a word, let me have a few with you regarding the disappearances of the Muses.

The nine have hidden themselves from us, or gone into exile as the gods of the old world did in the third century, some hiring themselves out as woodcutters in Germany, and drinking beer instead of nectar. Even Apollo seems to have taken service under graziers, and he, who once kept the cows of Admetus, lived as a shepherd in the beginning of the nineteenth century, so Heine tells us, in Lower Austria, and was tortured by the monks. But he says nothing about the disappearance of the Muses, and I ask you: Where are they? We seek them vainly in the studios of painters and sculptors; they visit no longer the poet. Whither have they strayed? Shall we find them in the workshops of mechanics, inspiring bombs more terrific than any that exploded in the war? Or have they taken refuge in the laboratories to whisper deadly secrets of poisonous gases into the ears of chemists? Have they, in a word, become diabolic among ages that refuse to accept them any longer as divine?”

***

“My dear Mr. Moore, I am afraid that you are leading me out of my depth, but one of these days I hope to get the subject of the disappearance of the muses well before me. Meanwhile, may I ask you if you are certain that the Muses have deserted this world?”

‘The appearance of the tenth Muse,” Mr. Moore replied unhesitatingly, “is testimony to the absence of the nine, for she only appears when her sisters have flown from the world. Last year Lady Cunard was fanning the flame of opera in Covent Garden, and when the last spark faded the unabashed Muse put her faith in the ashes, knowing that it is out of ashes that the Phoenix arises.”

“But Mr. Moore, the Phoenix rises out of her own ashes.”

“Art, my dear sir, has only one set of ashes. The several arts of the Renaissance rose out of the ashes of Pompeii, and out of the ashes of the modern theatre the ancient theatre of Ben Jonson will take wing. The performance of his play, ‘The Fox,’ was one of the important events of my life, and I think that on the night it was played we all felt like prisoners coming out of dungeons into the free air, and that everyone present recognised the first three acts as miracles of delicate construction. And there was a pulse and an energy in its dialogue , written when the language was young and sought expression like the earth in the springtime. The [illegible] play was for all of us a clear vision of a past springtime. ‘Though our lot be cast in an endless winter,’ we said, ‘it is good for us to know that once there was spring in the world.’ It is true that the two last acts are given over to play making, the meting out of punishment is always perfunctory, and Jonson is more complicated and tiresome in his craft than Shakespeare. All the same, the verdict was that ‘The Fox’ is worth a thousand modern plays. One learns something from it, and acquires a memory.

***

“My recollection of the evening when ‘Love for Love’ was performed by the Phoenix Society is of voices separating and uniting, an almost musical memory, shall we say, of a very lovely glee. I remember two soprani and a tenor voice joining them, and the three being reinforced by a bass. I remember the voices dividing and being brought together again, the bass speaking for a few bars here, answered over yonder by the baritone. And then something happened that escapes my memory, but very soon after I aver the soprano returned, and what a very beautiful returning was their voices! Of the plot I heard nothing; the music was enough. I was in my stall like a man listening to the hedgerow, watching the clouds going by, only concerned to listen to the comedy singing its was into exquisite conclusions, just like a summer’s day, Congreve reserving his story till the end of the fifth act, when it no longer mattered. How thoughtful of him to do this, and he does it so well, so absent-mindedly, the presence of one of the characters disguised as a nun is only a faint distraction from the music. Methought all hateful who unravel Congreve’s plots, telling them to us as we pass out of the theatre, robbing us of our pleasure thereby. None remembers Athene Seyler as a nun, but in her winsome gaiety she is a mystery to me, and forever a memory. Her acting is as rich in evocation as a page of Wagner, acting every second she is on the stage; and of all, when she is listening. We read her thoughts of the speaker in her face. Her hands, her feet, the clothes she wears, her gait, her luminous eyes, all of her, body and soul, are at the service of her art.

***

“In that unforgettable performance of ‘Love for Love,’ two elderly men were so perfectly played that it would seem that the tenth Muse can beckon one of her sisters to the theatre when an old play is to be shown. I have no programme, alas! or I would give the names of the twain mummers, for none ever represented life better. At many moments they recalled to me the genius of Monnier, Balzac’s best illustrator. A sailor boy rises up in my imagination, and I fall to thinking that he has been copied into many plays, all ghostlike and wanner than the original.It is shameful not to be able to give the name of the actor who played this part, but let it be confessed my mind cannot retain everything, especially names. On Sunday night, ‘Bartholomew Fair’ will be given, and I am glad not to have read it, for my enjoyment will be greater, vaguer but more intense than if I were reading under a lamp. ‘Bartholomew Fair’ will be followed by one of the most beautiful plays ever written, containing one act as grand as anything in Shakespeare. When it will be given I know not, but ‘The Maid’s Tragedy,’ by Beaumont and Fletcher, will be given same day.

 “The Phoenix has work to do for years to come and I hope that all who are interested in art will subscribe to this society, for the performances of old plays have become the necessity of the few, of those who would escape for a few hours from the intellectual poverty of the century in which our lot is cast.

“Let us be grateful to the Phoenix, risen from the ashes of opera, and cry as we pace in and out of the theatre: ‘Ave, Faustina, grato animo te salutamus.’”