The English Stage: Being an Account of the Victorian Drama. Filon Augustin
reading, eh? Still reading – always reading. And what had she been reading? Novels! As though there weren’t enough real tears in the world – real, scalding, bitter tears from breaking hearts – but we must have a parcel of lying books to make people cry double! And what was this silly novel of hers? Clary doesn’t know what to answer, and begins telling her own story – the youth of no family and fortune, the moment of recklessness, the giving of her heart to him and then her hand. “Well, and how did it end?” asks the old officer. Clary had “not come to the end”! Ah, then (he resumes), she had turned down the page when he had interrupted her? But he could tell her how it ended. The young couple went upon their knees, and the father swore a little, then took out his pocket handkerchief, wiped his eyes, and forgave them.
At this Clary’s face lights up with hope. So that would be the ending, according to him! He could assure her of it? Yes, he replies, he could assure her of it. She is on the point of falling upon her knees. Behind the half-open door, behind which there glimmers the light of a candle, her lover waits, ready to rush forward upon a word from her. “Of course, in real life it would be quite another thing,” goes on her father. “If it were I, what would you do?” “I’d kill him like a dog. And as for you – But there, it’s too horrible to think of! Let’s talk of something else.” And he tells her he has found a husband for her. Naturally she protests. The old man goes off again into a fury. “These cursed novels are turning your head. I shall go and burn them this instant.” And he steps towards the door, behind which Clary’s lover stands trembling.
All this is old-fashioned enough; it dates from the time when the drama was made out of the materials of a vaudeville. And yet I think that even nowadays this scene would tell.
But once again Jerrold had to follow the public taste which led him so terribly astray. His greatest success was his worst production, Black-eyed Susan, the popularity of which does not appear to have been even yet exhausted. The hero is a sailor, who translates the simplest ideas into nautical phraseology; the heroine a woman of humble birth, who expresses the loftiest sentiments in the finest language. The prolonged success of such a piece shows the delight which the lower sections of the public derive from the extravagant and the absurd, – the gross idealism, as one may call it, of the masses.
It is more difficult to understand how Jerrold, who had some regard for realism, and who had himself served on the sea, could have brought himself to write a drama which had in it not a semblance of truth, not a touch of nature. In spite of all, however, even in Black-eyed Susan, one may find that unrestrained violence, that diable au corps, which our fathers accepted willingly as passion.
It was not the public taste alone that was at fault; from the year 1830 the commercial decadence of the English theatre became more and more marked. As often happens, contemporaries failed to appreciate the real meaning of this, and attributed it to accidental causes; amongst others, to the rivalry between Drury Lane and Covent Garden, a rivalry which was carried to absurd extremes under some of the managers, who bid against each other, both for plays and players, to an extent that ruined them. Then came the notion of ending this dangerous competition by uniting the two houses under the same management, but the enterprise proved too big for one man and for a single company. The separate existence had to come into force again. A certain Captain Polhill, who aspired to the rôle of a Mæcenas, lost fifty thousand pounds in two years over the management of Drury Lane. Then Macready in his turn had a try, and managed the two theatres successively from 1838 to 1843.
The privileged theatres were no longer living on their privilege; they were dying of it. Theatres were springing up all round them, which succeeded sometimes in drawing the public by strange means. Edmund Yates, whose father was then manager of the Adelphi, has given us in his memoirs some idea of the attractions then in vogue: a Chinese giant, Indian dancers, a legless acrobat who got himself up with spreading wings as a monstrous fly, and who sprang about, tied on to a thread, from floor to ceiling. The privileged theatres had no other course than to emulate the unprivileged ones. They produced Shakespeare in the form of curtain-raisers, or to wind up the evening before half-empty benches. They sliced him, carved him limb from limb, and served him up in bits, or floating in a dish of music, with a garnishment of loud and vulgar mise en scène, of which the contemporaries of Elizabeth would have been ashamed. And, in spite of all, in spite even of Macready’s talent (Kean had died in 1833), they could not get the public to accept him. The new public which filled the theatres was gluttonous rather than gourmet, and wanted not quality but quantity – at least six acts every evening, and sometimes even seven or eight. Masterful, clamorous, ill-bred, uncouth in its expression both of enjoyment and of dissatisfaction, its attitude astounded Price Puckler-Muskau, a very careful observer who visited England about the time. Macready acknowledges that there were some corners in Drury Lane where a respectable woman might not venture. The barbarians had begun to arrive; it was the first wave of democracy before which the habitué, the playgoer of the old school, was forced to flee.
In 1832 a Commission was instituted by Parliament for the purpose of going into the question of liberty for the theatre. The members could not agree upon the subject, and the question was not settled until after eleven years of discussion. Before this ultimate surrender of Privilege and Tradition to the new spirit, one last effort had been made by men of letters to save the theatre. This was when the great tragedian undertook the management of Covent Garden. There was only one feeling in the world of literature: “We must back up Macready!” Everyone helped. John Forster applied himself to the stage management. Leigh Hunt left aside his criticisms to undertake a tragedy (based on a legend in which Shelley had already found inspiration), and those who could not do so much penned prologues and epilogues and brought them to Covent Garden, just as in former days, at moments of national peril, the patriotic rich brought their valuables to the Mint.3
From this abortive renaissance there remain one reputation and three plays. The three plays are The Lady of Lyons, Richelieu, and Money; the reputation is that of Bulwer, the first Lord Lytton. Bulwer passed himself off as a grand seigneur and a genius; he was really but a clever man and a dandy, who exploited literature for his social advancement. He affected a lofty originality, but his talents were mostly imitative. His chief gift, almost entirely wanting in his books, but very notable in his life, was what we call finesse. He took from the Byronian Satanism as much as England would put up with in 1840. He copied Victor Hugo secretly and discreetly. A sort of Gothic democrat, he managed at the same time to charm romantic youths and flatter the proletariat by pretending to hurl down that society in whose front rank he aspired to take his place. His novels were terribly long-winded, but there are generations which find such a quality to their taste. When at last it was discovered that his sublimity was a spurious sublimity, that his history was false history, his “middle-ages” bric-a-brac, his poetry mere rhetoric, his democracy a farce, his human heart a heart that had never beat in a man’s breast, his books mere windy bladders, – why, it was too late! The game had been played successfully and was over – the squireen of Knebworth, the self-styled descendant of the Vikings, had founded a family and hooked a peerage.
He had an eye for all the popular causes which were to be served – and were likely to be of service. When there was talk of reforming the drama, he at once came to the front and took the lead. He was the heart and soul of the Commission of 1832. He was one of those who came to the support of Macready in 1838. It was to this end he wrote The Lady of Lyons (without putting his name to it at first).
This is a literary melodrama; a detestable combination, for melodrama, considered either as a variation from drama proper or as a separate type, is not to be raised to the dignity of literature by the veneering of it with a thin layer of poetry. This operation does but produce wild and violent incongruities. In the first act of The Lady of Lyons, Madame Deschappelles is a Palais Royal Maman. Only a Palais Royal Maman, and only one of the most pronounced of them at that, could imagine she would become a dowager princess by marrying her daughter to a prince. Pauline belongs to the same repertory. What are one’s feelings, then, on hearing tragic verses from her lips in the third act and seeing her compete with Imogene and Griselda in the sublimity (and absurdity) of her self-sacrifice! In the fourth act she has resumed something of her natural temperament – the temperament of a prim and tedious governess.
But
“Write me a drama,” said Macready to young Browning, “and save me having to go off to America.” The drama was written, but attained only a fourth performance, and did not save the actor from his impending expedition.