by Henry James
In France (as I spoke just now of France) the actor’s art, like the ancient arts and trades, is still something of a “mystery”—a thing of technical secrets, of special knowledge. This kind of feeling about it is inevitably much infringed when it becomes the fashion, in the sense that I have alluded to, and certainly the evidences of training—of a school, a discipline, a body of science—are on the English stage conspicuous by their absence. Of how little the public taste misses these things or perceives the need of them, the great and continued success of Mr. Henry Irving is a striking example. I shall not here pretend to judge Mr. Irving; but I may at least say that even his most ardent admirers would probably admit that he is an altogether irregular performer, and that an artistic education has had little to do with the results that he presents to the public. I do not mean by this, of course, that he has not had plenty of practice; I mean simply that he is an actor who, in default of any help rendered him, any control offered him by the public taste, by an ideal in the public mind, has had to get himself together and keep himself together as he could. He is at present the principal “actuality” of the London stage, and his prosperity has taken a fresh start with his having at the beginning of the winter established a theatre of his own and obtained the graceful assistance of Miss Ellen Terry. I say I shall not pretend to judge Mr. Irving, because I am aware that I must in the nature of the case probably do him injustice. His starting-point is so perfectly opposed to any that I find conceivable that it would be idle to attempt to appreciate him. In the opinion of many people the basis, the prime condition, of acting is the art of finished and beautiful utterance—the art of speaking, of saying, of diction, as the French call it; and such persons find it impossible to initiate themselves into any theory of the business which leaves this out of account. Mr. Irving’s theory eliminates it altogether, and there is perhaps a great deal to be said for his point of view. I must, however, leave the task of elucidating it to other hands. He began the present season with a revival of “Hamlet”—a part, one would say, offering peculiar obstacles to treatment on this system of the unimportance of giving value to the text; and now, for some weeks past, he has been playing the “Lady of Lyons” with great success. To this success Miss Ellen Terry has very considerably contributed. She is greatly the fashion at present, and she belongs properly to a period which takes a strong interest in aesthetic furniture, archaeological attire, and blue china. Miss Ellen Terry is “aesthetic”; not only her garments but her features themselves bear the stamp of the new enthusiasm. She has a charm, a great deal of a certain amateurish, angular grace, a total want of what the French call chic, and a countenance very happily adapted to the expression of pathetic emotion. To this last effect her voice also contributes; it has a sort of monotonous husky thickness which is extremely touching, though it gravely interferes with the modulation of many of her speeches. Miss Terry, however, to my sense, is far from having the large manner, the style and finish, of a comédienne. She is the most pleasing and picturesque figure upon the English stage, but the other night, as I sat watching the “Lady of Lyons,” I said to myself that her charming aspect hardly availed to redeem the strange, dingy grotesqueness of that decidedly infelicitous drama.
The two best theatres in London are the Court and the Prince of Wales’s, and the intelligent playgoer is supposed chiefly to concern himself with what takes place at these houses. It is certainly true that at either house you see the London stage at its best; they possess respectively the two most finished English actors with whom I am acquainted. Mr. Arthur Cecil, at the Prince of Wales’s, has a ripeness and perfection of method which reminds me of the high finish of the best French acting. He is an artist in very much the same sense that Got and Coquelin are artists. The same may be said of Mr. Hare at the Court, whose touch is wonderfully light and unerring. Indeed, for a certain sort of minute, almost painter-like elaboration of a part that really suits him, Mr. Hare is very remarkable. But the merits of these two actors, and those of some of their comrades at either theatre, only serve to throw into relief the essential weakness of the whole institution—the absolute poverty of its repertory. When Matthew Arnold speaks of the “contemptible” character of the contemporary English theatre, he points of course not merely at the bad acting which is so largely found there; he alludes also to its perfect literary nudity. Why it is that in the English language of our day there is not so much even as an unsuccessful attempt at a dramatic literature—such as is so largely visible in Germany and Italy, where “original” plays, even though they be bad ones, are produced by the hundred—this is quite a question by itself, and one that it would take some space to glance at. But it is sufficiently obvious that the poverty of the modern English theatre is complete, and it is equally obvious that the theatre is all one—that the drama and the stage hold together. There can be no serious school of acting unless there is a dramatic literature to feed it; the two things act and react upon each other—they are a reciprocal inspiration and encouragement. Anything less inspiring than the borrowed wares, vulgarized and distorted in the borrowing, upon which the English stage of to-day subsists, cannot well be imagined. Coarse adaptations of French comedies, with their literary savor completely evaporated, and their form and proportions quite sacrificed to the queer obeisances they are obliged to make to that incongruous phantom of a morality which has not wit enough to provide itself with an entertainment conceived in its own image—this is the material on which the actor’s spirit is obliged to exert itself. The result is natural enough, and the plays and the acting are equally crude.
There can be no better proof of the poverty of the repertory than the expedients to which the Court and the Prince of Wales’s have been reduced during the present winter. The Court has been playing a couple of threadbare French pieces of twenty and thirty years ago—a stiff translation of Scribe’s “Bataille de Dames,” and a commonplace version of a commonplace drama entitled “Le Fils de Famille.” Scribe’s piece is a clever light comedy—it is still sometimes played at the Théâtre Français; but it belongs at this time of day quite to the dramatic scrap-bag. There is something pitiful in seeing it dragged into the breach and made to figure for weeks as the stock entertainment at one of the two best English theatres. At the Prince of Wales’s they have been playing all winter and are still playing Robertson’s “Caste”—a piece of which, in common with the other productions of the same hand, it is only possible to say that it belongs quite to the primitive stage of dramatic literature. It is the infancy of art; it might have been written by a clever under-teacher for representation at a boarding-school. At the Criterion there is a comedy entitled “Truth,” by an American author, Mr. Bronson Howard. Even the desire to speak well of American productions is insufficient to enable me to say that Mr. Bronson Howard offers a partial contradiction to Matthew Arnold’s dictum. “Truth” may be an “original” drama; I know nothing of its history; but it produces the effect of the faint ghost of any old conventional French vaudeville—the first comer—completely divested of intellectual garniture, reduced to its simplest expression, and diluted in British propriety.
ILLUSTRATION CREDITS
1Map of Saratoga Springs, ca. 1888. Library of Congress.
15Engraving of Lake George, ca. 1873. New York Public Library Digital Collections.
25Postcard Str. Vermont, Lake Champlain, New York. New York Public Library Digital Collections.
31Map of the Point, Newport, Rhode Island, ca. 1878. Newport Historical Society.
45American Falls from Goat Island, Niagara, New York. New York Public Library Digital Collections.
61In 1859 the sculptor of the Samuel Johnson statue came back to Lichfield to touch up the work. By this time he had taken up photography to assist in his work, and here he set up his camera for that purpose. This is one of the oldest photographs of Lichfield. Wikimedia.
75Illsborough, Ilfracombe, England, ca. 1890. Library of Congress.
87Abbey, Glastonbury, England. Library of Con
gress.
101Sketch of “Les Charmettes,” ca. 1830. Wikimedia.
117Interior of the Comédie-Française on the rue de Richelieu, Paris, as originally designed by Victor Louis in 1790. National Library of France.
131Bridge of Sighs, Venice, in a postcard by Carlo Ponti, ca. 1850. New York Public Library Digital Collections.
147The Spanish Steps in Rome, ca. 1908. Wikimedia.
157Side view of the Bad Homburg von der Höhe palace, ca. 1860. Library of Congress.
171The castle of Darmstadt in Hessen, Germany. Seen from the West, ca. 1900. Wikimedia.
185A view of Florence from the Arno. New York Public Library Digital Collections.
197Cathedral Square, Pisa, Italy. Library of Congress.
211The building commonly known as the Mausoleum of Galla Placidia in Ravenna, in a drawing by Harald Sund, ca. 1910.
225Albert Memorial, Kensington Gardens, ca. 1876. Flickr, via Cornell Library.
231The great disaster on the Thames: Collision between the Princess Alice and the Bywell Castle, near Wollwich, ca. 1878. Wikimedia.
241Princes Street and castle from Scott’s Monument, Edinburgh, ca. 1890. Library of Congress.
257Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, ca. 1813. Wikimedia.
INDEX
Academy of Art, Florence, Italy, 193
aesthetics, Ellen Terry and, 262
Albany, New York, xviii–xix
Albert Hall, London, England, 226
Albert Memorial, London, England, 225–228, 225(fig.)
Alps, xix–xx, 211–212
The Ambassadors (James), xviii
ambition, James’s, xiii
American tourists
frequenting Newport, 31–34
Lake Como, 114
recognizability, 163–164
Anglican Church, 249
Apollinaris (saint), 216
architecture
Albert Memorial, 225–228
Castello and Superga at Turin, 106
cathedral of Lucca, 208
cathedral of Pisa, 201–203
Darmstadt castle, 173
Exeter Cathedral, 77–79
Franco-Scottish castles, 255–256
Glastonbury Abbey, 95–96
Leghorn’s lack of, 198–199
Lichfield Cathedral, 63–65
massiveness of Milan’s cathedral, 109
Newport, 40–41
Pisa, 201–203, 206–207
Ravenna’s churches, 216–218
Ravenna’s Mausoleum of Galla Placidia, 211(fig.)
Salisbury Cathedral, 97
Wells Cathedral, 88–91
See also monuments
Arno River, 185(fig.), 186, 188–189
Arnold, Matthew, 248, 257, 263, 265
arts
beauty and features of Niagara Falls, 52–54
cathedral of Pisa, 202–204, 204–205
Darmstadt castle, 173, 183–184
Doré exhibit in London, 228–230
effects of light in Venice, 133–134
Florence, 191–192, 192–195
frescoes, 96, 112–113, 205–206
greatness of German music, 166–168
Leghorn’s lack of, 198–199
Milan’s Leonardo fresco, 112–113
paintings at Darmstadt Schloss, 180–182
Ravenna’s mosaics, 216–218
Tintoretto in Venice, 137–141
Turin Gallery, 107–108
van Dyck at Warwick, 73
Wilton House, 98–99
See also mosaics; theatre; Théâtre Français
Athens, Greece, 190–191
Augier, Émile, 123
Augustus (emperor), 223
Austria: Germanicization of Milan, 108–109
Avon River, England, 73
Bad Homburg, Germany
Bad Homburg Palace, 157(fig.), 168
closing of the gaming rooms, 157–159
Kursaals, 158–159
largeness of the German spirit, 166–167
people-watching, 162–163
surrounding scenery, 159–161
the German tone of the people, 163–167
bas-reliefs in Florence, 191
baths at Lucca, 207–208
beauty, defining by country, 165–166
Bismarck, Otto von, 172, 174
Boccaccio, Giovanni, 222
Bologna, Italy, 212–213
Bonaparte, Napoleon, xviii
Borromeo, Charles (saint), 110–111
Bosanquet, Theodora, xvii
Boswell (Croker), 62
Botticelli, Sandro, 193–194
Bressant, Jean Baptiste Prosper, 122–123
Bridge of Sighs, Venice, Italy, 131(fig.)
Buccleuch, Duke of, 252
Burlington, Vermont, xxii–xxiii, 28–29
Byron, George Gordon, Lord, 221–222
Caldwell, New York, 17
Canada: views of Niagara Falls, 49–50
casinos. See gaming houses
Caste (Robertson), 264–265
castles
Darmstadt, 171–174, 171(fig.), 178–182
Scottish Highlands, 255–256
Turin, 106
Warwick, 71–74
cathedrals. See churches
Cecil, Arthur, 262–263
cemetery: Rome, 152–155
Cestius, Pyramid of (Rome), 153
Chambéry, France, 101–104
Chatsworth, England, 70–71
Cheltenham, England: comparison with Saratoga, 10
children
of Saratoga, 11
on Torcello, 135–136
van Dyck’s paintings of the royal princesses, 107–108
“Christian Martyrs” (Doré), 230
churches
Exeter Cathedral, 76–79
Florence, 188, 191–192, 194–195
Glastonbury Abbey, 87(fig.), 94–95
history and relics of Milan’s, 109–112
Lichfield Cathedral, 63–66
Lucca, 208
Pisa, 197(fig.), 201–203
Pistoia, 208–209
Ravenna, 215–223
Salisbury Cathedral, 96–97
Torcello cathedral, 135–136
Verona, 144–145
Wells Cathedral, 87–90
clubs: London in the off-season, 233
Colonne Vendôme, Paris, France, xviii
Comédie Française, 117(fig.)
Corso of Ravenna, 214
court cities, 175–176
Court Theatre, London, 262–265
Croker, John Wilson, 62
Daisy Miller (James), xxii, xxiv
“La Dame aux Camélias” (Dumas), 127–128
dancing
ballrooms in Scottish shooting lodges, 252–253
Saratoga’s balls, 10–12
Dante (Dante Alighieri), 221–222
Darmstadt
history and appearance of the castle, 171–174, 171(fig.), 178–180