The Bending of the Bough — Characters and Preface

London: T. Fisher Unwin, 21 February 1900, pages v-xx, 3,947 words

List of Characters

JOSEPH TENCH, the Mayor.

Aldermen of the Corporation.

JASPER DEAN,

DANIEL LAWRENCE,

THOMAS FERGUSON,

VALENTINE FOLEY.

RALF KIRWAN,

JAMES POLLOCK,

MICHAEL LEECH,

JOHN CLORAN, the Town Clerk.

GEORGE HARDMAN, Lord Mayor of Southhaven.

MISS MILLICENT FELL, his Niece, engaged to marry ALDERMAN DEAN.

Maiden Aunts of Alderman Dean.

MISS CAROLINE DEAN,.

MISS ARABELLA DEAN,

MRS. POLLOCK, Wife and First Cousin of ALDERMAN POLLOCK, Sister of ALDERMAN LEECH, and Cousin of the DEANS.

MRS. LEECH, Wife and First Cousin of ALDERMAN LEECH, Sister of ALDERMAN POLLOCK, and also Cousin of the DEANS.

MACNEE, Caretaker of the Town Hall.

A PARLOURMAID at ALDERMAN DEAN’S House.

A WAITER at the Hotel.

Several Town Councillors, People, &c.

Preface

FOR some time the necessity of explaining the intentions of the Irish Literary Theatre has been pressing upon us. So I take advantage of the publication of my play, The Bending of the Bough, to explain why Mr. Martyn, Mr. Yeats, and myself prefer to have our plays produced in Dublin rather than in London. It must seem singular to many that we should choose to produce plays in Dublin, where there are few people and very little money, rather than in London, where the audience is unlimited and the purse too, which is always forthcoming when amusements are for sale. Well, it is because we believe London to be too large, too old, and too wealthy to permit of any new artistic movement, and this belief rests upon knowledge of the art history of the world, and some experience of London theatrical conditions. And the essence of our experience of London theatrical conditions is our appreciation of the importance of the fact that whereas Ibsen and Maeterlinck, the great dramatic poets of modern time, have failed completely on the London stage, the ordinary dramatic writer, by the aid of scenery, dresses, and a little dialogue, provides an entertainment which pleases every one. The consistent failure — a failure extending now over ten years — of him whom we regard as the greatest dramatic writer since Shakespeare and of all writers whose work rises above the commonplace, signifies to us that London has ceased to be a place where the work of a poet is appreciated on the stage. We have therefore turned our backs upon London as men turn their backs on a place which has ceased to interest them. But we did not decide on our homeward journey without having considered the reformation of London. After some doubts, some hesitation, it suddenly came upon us that it was impossible. It was suddenly borne in upon us that England had produced her dramatic literature (since Shakespeare only two plays have outlived a generation); England seems to us to have reached the age of manhood, an age at which a nation ceases to produce art, for art belongs to the youth of a nation as empire belongs to its manhood, if it attains to manhood.

In the middle of the century we enjoyed a pleasant St. Martin summer, but though leaves retain their summer green a long while, we read in the August leaf the sered September leaf, and in the September leaf the October leaf, listless and red and yellow. And now in artistic England the pallor of centuries shines in the inactive autumn air. The thrush is silent, the nightingale has flown, and the robin sits on the coral hedge piping his little roundelay. Nothing can revive the season; it will never come again; art knows no sweet returning. Empire, like autumn, is splendid, but silent woods are sad, and in our eagerness for the song of the thrush and the blackbird we fain would detect an accent of their music in the scream of the jay and the cry of the swallow. It were better to delight a moment in the little candour of the robin, and to admire the coral hedge as the gift of the irreparable year. England can say with pride: “England has produced a full measure of music, poetry, painting, and drama; she has completed her spiritual and is now fashioning her material destiny; nations like individuals have two destinies, and who shall deny that the building of an empire is not as important as the singing of a song? England has sung enough; no songs are like her songs, and now she is engaged on the work of her middle age."

But for some reason, so deep in the heart that we cannot define it, the glory of empire does not compensate for the loss of the song and the bust; without them the crown is incomplete and its glory the pallor of ashes.

We become aware of this as we cross Trafalgar Square, whence can be seen on either side the towers of Westminster and the domes of the National Gallery. Looking from one to the other it seems to us strange that no one in a hundred years will be concerned to know how any one of the men who sit deliberating the fate of a continent lived and died: whether he lived married or single, whether his life was a happy or a sorry one, whether he died in exile or in Carlton House Terrace, and that we should be so deeply concerned to know something of the lives of men who drew a few heads, brushed in a few skies and trees, or sang a few songs? Why should we be so eager to know why Shelley left his first wife, why Sir Joshua never married, and be so little curious about the lives of the politicians who sat at Westminster in the supreme moments of the eighteenth century? I can think of no other reason except that the traffic of ministers is with this world, whereas dreams and visions and aspirations come from beyond the world. The things of this world are forgotten; and we remember a nation for its art rather than for its colonies. The Hollanders founded like ourselves an empire, but the names of their colonies, though known to us, are not often upon our lips, and never in our hearts. But Rembrandt is a name to ponder on, its very sound lifts us out of the trance of our daily life; and the names Hals, Ruysdael and Van der Meer are always with us, nearer and more intimate than the names of our brothers or sisters or friends.

Art is produced in the youth of a nation, when the nation is small, when national enthusiasm is awakening, and visions draw into a national focus, and the intellect of every one is akin. With the Assyrian, the Chinese, the Persian, the Roman, and the British empires contrast Egypt, Greece, the Italian States, Venice, Holland, and the English Island. Greece and Holland present perfect and typical examples of the birth of art in nations. It was in 450 B.C. that the Greeks drove the Persians out of Greece, and then an art began before which every art since has bowed reverently, and learned something; and at the end of the sixteenth century the Hollanders raised the sea-banks and rescued their country from the Spaniards, and immediately art flowered like the springtime, suddenly and everywhere; and in a country no larger than Greece thirty great painters were born within the little span of some thirty or forty years; and since then there has been no further painting; in Holland, and in the countries of Titian and Velasquez no one is now found who can draw a nose with even tolerable decorum.

Then whither in her flight from England will art betake herself? Eastward there are the Russian and the German empires and behind them the Chinese. All Europe has been visited and art never returns to where she has once been; even Italy cannot be cited in disproof of this, for in Italy in Roman times art was a Greek importation, and all the Roman statues were the work of Greek artists. So whither will art go? In what country will art suddenly appear! In the Soudan, or in the Transvaal? Or will art rest for a space in this forlorn Atlantic island, re-knitting herself to the tradition which existed before England was, in gold ornaments, and scroll work, and in many tales of chivalry? Will there be a re-blossoming of the ancient language, or shall we save some accent of Shelley’s tongue which has declined elsewhere into neologisms and archaisms. That art has left England there can be no doubt. Art has left France and Germany and Russia; it is still in Norway, and when it leaves Norway it must find another small nation, one which has not yet achieved its destiny — a nation such as Greece was before Marathon, such as England was before the Armada and again before Trafalgar. In the Western Hemisphere Ireland is the only place which seems to fulfil these conditions, but Ireland maybe is still too poor to nourish an art, for although art shuns wealth, art needs some ease of life. But Ireland is just beginning to find her way into easy subsistence; for the first time for centuries starvation and oppression seem fading from her face. The language is reviving, serious poetry is beginning again, and plays, written without desire of gain, for love of art, are offered to the Irish rather than to the English public.

It is impossible to write plays in England except for money, and all that is done for money is mediocre. It was with the Renaissance that money came into art. The Greeks did not build the Parthenon for money, nor did the French build Chartres Cathedral for money; the recompense in either case was the joy of art, and as money entered into art the work of the artist slipped out of his control into that of the mob. It took four centuries to accomplish this change; we had to wait four hundred years for a world fashioned according to the image and likeness of the mob, and now in all save the individual arts, such as lyric poetry and easel pictures, the face of the mob is plainly stamped. The decorative arts, architecture, and mural painting, inlaid furniture, painted porcelain, and metal work have so declined that no one buys them as they are made now; the most ordinary people have come to understand that they must buy eighteenth century furniture and old silver and china, and that a thousand pounds will not buy a design for a clock that is not an old one, or a copy of an old one, nor a design for a chair, or a sofa, or a pair of candlesticks. The mob has become rich; and it imposes its tastes; and those who are not of the mob retire more and more into the past. As life becomes numerous and rich, it becomes garish and vulgar. But though the modern handicrafts appeal to ten times as large a custom as did the beautiful work of the eighteenth century, still their custom is relatively small compared to that from which the dramatic writer suffers. So it is to dramatic writing we must look to discover the depths to which an art can sink when it is written and produced at the mutual dictation of the gallery boy, who for a shilling demands oblivion of his day’s work, and the stockbroker, who for 10s. 6d. demands such amusement as will enable him to safely digest his dinner. All who write for the English stage must write practically at the dictation of these two. The same audience goes everywhere, and the same fare is consequently served everywhere at the same prices.

And to liberate the theatre from the thraldom of money is the truly great adventure which awaits the rich man. But the rich man does not choose a theatre for his charity — a hospital, a college, or a picture gallery is chosen in preference. The wisdom of leaving money to a hospital may not be questioned, but it may be asked if a fine performance of Shakespeare or Ibsen or Maeterlinck does not rouse the listener out of the lethargy of real life as effectively as a course of lectures on Shakespeare or Sophocles or Ibsen or Maeterlinck in which some learned professor expounds superficial opinions regarding these writers. Is it sure that the gift of pictures and the gift of a gallery stimulate intellectual enterprise as much as the gift of a theatre? Is not painting the most occult of all the arts? Are there not a hundred men who can distinguish between good literature for one who can distinguish between the National Gallery and the Royal Academy? Does not the ordinary man prefer a waxwork show or the work of the scenepainter, with limelight and dresses, to either? It has been said that villagers would prefer a circus to a Parish Council. This may be true, but how much more true it is that 90 per cent. of those who visit the Louvre or the National Gallery would find more amusement in the old Doré Gallery. Indeed, the old Doré Gallery not only pleased the public more than any other, but it provided the public with more intellectual stimulus than any other. The public is genuinely moved by Doré, and hardly at all by Titian; none except those who have given a large part of their lives to the study of painting can be moved by Holbein or Titian. We have only to look into our hearts to learn how true this is. Titian and Holbein convey little meaning to the youthful mind; Doré does; and my stages of comprehension were many before I understood why Ingres is a greater painter than Cabanel. But the aesthetic sense of the working man does not develop; he likes the same false, crude emotion at forty as he did at twenty. Nor are “women, ecclesiastics, and persons of quality” more erudite in art; and it is open to doubt if there are very many dukes in England who could tell a Titian from a Veronese. There are at the present moment two pictures attributed to Van Eyck on view in the New Gallery. They are not genuine pictures, but how many years does it take to see that they are not genuine, and he who cannot see at a glance that they are not Van Eyck’s has not advanced beyond Gustave Doré. Yet we, the most practical nation in the world, spend large sums of money upon an art about which 90 per cent. do not know the A B C.

The Luxembourg Museum is a flagrant example of how money is wasted upon the art of painting. This collection is chiefly composed of pictures which attracted attention at the Annual Exhibitions of painting in the Champs Elysées. Every year the State buys the picture which represents best the artistic interest of the moment, the picture which represents what is known in the studios as "the movement.” But works of genius are never in the movement, and we become aware of this if we look at Bastien Lepage’s picture of The Haymakers, a complete and excellent example of a picture typifying a movement. We see at once that it is a capable piece of work, as we should see, if we understood the art of embalming, that certain mummies are capably embalmed while others are not; the picture is dry, and faded, and tedious to look at as a mummy, and like a mummy has only an historical value. It tells us that in such a year the artistic question that occupied men’s minds was Ie plein air, and it demonstrates to perfection that le plein air was a will-o’-the-wisp. Then if we turn to the pictures which were bought because they appealed to the taste of the public the spectacle is still more forlorn. We pass along wondering. Seeing them is like reading through the popular songs of twenty or thirty years ago — songs which delighted our fathers, but do not delight us. The merit of the songs of yester year are not less than the merits of this year’s songs, but they have not been so lately printed, that is really all that can be said; and on the point of novelty the public never errs. Never is it in doubt which is the old and which is the new, and never does it hesitate. And for a reason which never has been explained, and which I fear never will be explained, the last picture painted, the last book published, and the last play produced, exercise, quite apart from any artistic value or any discernible charm, a fascination for the public, the mysterious fascination of novelty; and upon us too, only we do not yield ourselves to the charm of mere novelty so easily as the public. The public has no standard, it merely seeks amusement; and if this be granted, the question arises if an art should be entirely abandoned to the licentious (I use the word in its grammatical sense) taste of the public. Between the painter and the public there is the private patron; three or four picture-buyers kept the pre-Raphaelite movement alive, but between the dramatists and the public there is no one.

The majority decides what art shall live, but this majority is composed of the minorities of successive generations. So is it really open to doubt that Sir Henry Tate and Mr. Chantry would have conferred a lesser obligation upon this country if they had given the interest of their money, £12,000 a year, to a theatre, on conditions that it should produce Shakespeare (with a minimum of scenery and dresses), Ibsen, and Maeterlinck, and all acting plays of literary merit which did not seem to appeal to the crude taste of the passing moment? If Sir Richard Wallace had considered the impulse that an endowed theatre would give to London intellectual life, he might have decided to put up his collection of pictures and make such disposal of the three or four or five hundred thousand pounds which it would have fetched in the auction-room. London would thereby be poorer by many beautiful pictures, but London intellectual life would not have suffered — the National Gallery will be always a sufficient source of knowledge for those engaged in the study of the art of painting. Then, again, the desire of the giver would be better accomplished by the gift of a theatre than by the gift of a picture gallery. A theatre endowed with twelve thousand pounds a year, under the conditions indicated, would confer upon the giver a constant immortality; his name would be held for ever blessed by lovers of dramatic literature, for he would be the eternal life of the pure, impassioned dramatic aspiration of the nation. It is at once a joy and a sadness to think of the generations of young men who, if we had an endowed theatre, would walk into the night, exalted after a performance of some marvellous masterpiece, delighting in the memory of him who had given them the greatest of earthly joys — the joy of art.

The mistake began long ago, two hundred and fifty years ago, when the Puritan tried to suppress the theatre; that could not be done, for the theatre is inherent in man; it would have been better if the Puritan had applied himself to the redemption of the theatre, for in abandoning it to the taste of the licentious mob he aggravated the evil and now the Puritan joins hands with the artist in condemning the theatre. These two have always been represented as hostile forces, whereas when we look below the surface we find them to be in agreement, only expressing themselves differently. Their criticism of the theatre rests on the same ground — they both wish art to be serious, and the arguments for and against the theatre are held by the artist and the Puritan; the public merely seeks to be amused. The arguments by which the Puritan defends his hatred of the theatre are often weak, they are sometimes absurd, but he knows, as the artist knows, that the manager can only save himself from bankruptcy by offering to the public the amusement of scenery and dresses. Scenery is painting with the intellectual side of painting left out, just as modern dramatic writing is writing with the intellectual side, commonly called literature, left out; and modern acting is merely the personality of the actor and actress with the intellectual side of acting, the impersonation of character, left out. And as the theatre has identified itself with the life of the senses rather than that of the intellect, it has become popular, for the crowd desires the life of the senses: the senses are the life of the crowd, and the accusations of immorality that we have heard raised against Ibsen, against all who have sought the life of the intellect on the stage, are merely the voice of the crowd crying that its prescriptive right to the life of the senses in the theatre shall not be infringed upon. It is not the Puritan who cries out that Ghosts shall be forbidden, but the average man. It is the Puritan and the artist who cry out together against the sensualism of the variety entertainment, and it is the supporter of the variety entertainment who bans Sophocles’ noble poem. But the Puritans have had this play performed in their churches in America. The parable of the fire stolen from heaven is the eternal symbol of the persecution of the artist by the world. Immorality is never persecuted — the world cannot persecute itself; nothing is persecuted in this world except the intelligence.

Only sport has escaped the thraldom of money. In art the word “amateur” has been turned from its beautiful original significance, and is used as a term of reproach, being applied to those who do not make their living by the practice of their art. Only in sport does the amateur obtain a distinction. Lord Harris is not thought less of because he did not make a fortune out of cricket; nor is Lord de Grey reproached with not making pheasant shooting pay; nor was Lord Falmouth considered a fool because he ran his horses to please himself. Sport and religion retain in England the dignity of bringing their own reward; and it is our ambition, though we scarcely dare admit it, to contrive such theatrical conditions as will raise dramatic writing to the level of pheasant shooting. Our enterprise is, therefore, the very opposite of every other theatrical enterprise. We should like the Irish Literary Theatre to exist on the generosity of two or three individuals who would spend money upon it as they would upon their pheasant shooting. We want public enthusiasm, and we believe that we can obtain it more easily if we are independent of the public for support. We believe that in artistic enterprise there should be, if possible, a slight loss at the end of the year. Above all, we believe that we should make sacrifices for art as we do for religion, that part of the joy of art is the sacrifice. St. Teresa’s words that she would wish for a flame to burn up heaven, and water to quench hell, so that she might worship goodness for its own sake, are, with some modifications, as applicable to the artist as to the saint.

GEORGE MOORE.