Chapter VIII: Act II: Scene: Brocken House, Park Lane (1)

_The top of the Grand Staircase_. LORD _and_ LADY WALPURGE _receiving their guests. The greatest taste is shown in the decorations, which are lent for the occasion of the play free of charge, owing to the deserved popularity of Mr. George Alexander. Furniture supplied by Waring, selected by Mr. Percy Macquoid; Old Masters by Agnew & Son, P. & D. Colnaghi, Dowdeswell & Dowdeswell; Wigs by Clarkson. A large, full-length Reynolds, seen above the well of staircase_; R. _a Gainsborough_, L. _a Hoppner. The party is not very smart, rather intellectual and plutocratic; well-known musicians and artists in group_ R., _and second-rate literary people_ L. _An Irish peer and a member of the White Rose League are the only 'Society' present. There are no actors or actresses_. FAUST, _who has aged considerably since the Prologue, is an obvious failure, and is seen talking to a lady journalist_. MEPHISTOPHELES, _disguised as a Protectionist Member of Parliament, is in earnest conversation with_ LORD WALPURGE. FOOTMAN _announcing the guests: The Bishop of Hereford, Mr. Maldonado, Mr. Andrew Undershaft, Mr. Harold Hodge, Mrs. Gorringe, Mr. and Mrs. Aubrey Tanqueray, &c_.

LADY WALPURGE (_archly_). Ah, Mr. Tanqueray, you never forwarded me my photographs; it is nearly three weeks ago since I sent you a cheque for them.

TANQUERAY. Labby has been poisoning your mind against me. You shall have a proof to-morrow!

FOOTMAN. Mr. Gillow Waring.

LADY WALPURGE. I was so afraid you were not coming. My husband thought you would give us the slip.

WARING. How charming your decorations are! You must give me some ideas for my new yacht, you have such perfect taste.

MALDONADO. Walpurge! what will you take for that Reynolds? Or will you swap it for my Velasquez?

WALPURGE. My dear Maldo, I always do my deals through--

FOOTMAN. Mr. Walter Dowdeswell.

WALPURGE. Through Dowdeswell and Dowdeswell; and you, my dear Maldo, if you want to get rid of your Velasquez, ought to join the National Art Collections Fund, or go and see--

FOOTMAN. Mr. Lockett Agnew. 'Er 'Ighness the Princess Swami.

_Enter the_ PRINCESS SALOME.

LADY JOURNALIST. Fancy having that woman here. She is not recognised in any decent society, she is nothing but an adventuress; talks such bad French, too. Have you ever seen her, Doctor Faustus?

FAUST. Yes, I have met her very often in Germany. Though the Emperor would not receive her at first, she is much admired in Europe.

LADY JOURNALIST (_hedging_). I wonder where she gets her frocks? They must be worth a good deal.

FAUST. From Ricketts and Shannon, if you want to know.

LADY JOURNALIST. Dear Doctor, you know everything! Let me see: Ricketts and Shannon is that new place in Regent Street, rather like Lewis and Allenby's, I suppose?

FAUST. Yes, only different.

IRISH PEER (_to_ FAUST). Do you think Lady Walpurge will ever get into Society?

FAUST. Not if she gives her guests such wretched coffee.

LADY JOURNALIST. It's nothing to her tea. I've never had such bad tea. Besides, she cannot get actors or actresses to come to her house.

LADY WALPURGE (_overhearing_). I expect _Sir Herbert and Lady Beerbohm Tree_ here to-night, and perhaps VIOLA. (_Sensation_.)

[_Enter, hurriedly_, MR. C. T. H. HELMSLEY.] Mr. Alexander, a moment with you! A most important telegram has just arrived.

FAUST (_reading_). 'Handed in at Greba Castle, 10.15. Reply paid. Do not close with Stephen Phillips until you have seen my play of _Gretchen_, same subject, five acts and twelve tableaux.--HALL CAINE.' Where is Mr. Stephen Phillips? [STEPHEN PHILLIPS _advances_.] My dear Phillips, I think we will put up _Harold Hodge_ instead. 'The Last of the Anglo-Saxon Editors,' by the last Anglo-Saxon poet.

CURTAIN.

(1906.)

_To_ W. BARCLAY SQUIRE, ESQ.

SHAVIANS FROM SUPERMAN.

DONNA ANA _has vanished to sup her man at the Savoy; the_ DEVIL _and the_ STATUE _are descending through trap, when a voice is heard crying, 'Stop, stop'; the mechanism is arrested and there appears in the empyrean_ MR. CHARLES HAZELWOOD SHANNON, _the artist, with halo_.

THE DEVIL (_while Shannon regains his breath_). Really, Mr. Shannon, this is a great pleasure and _quite_ unexpected. I am truly honoured. No quarrel I hope with the International? Pennell quite well? How is the Whistler memorial getting on?

SHANNON. So-so. To be quite frank I had no time to prepare for Heaven, and earth has become intolerable for me. (_Seeing the Statue_.) Is that a Rodin you have there?

THE DEVIL. Oh! I forgot, let me introduce you. Commander! Mr. C. H. Shannon, a most distinguished painter, the English Velasquez, the Irish Titian, the Scotch Giorgione, all in one. Mr. Shannon, his Excellency the Commander.

SHANNON. Delighted, I am sure. The real reason for my coming here is that I could stand Ricketts no longer. Ricketts the artist I adore. Ricketts the causeur is delightful. Ricketts the enemy, entrancing. Ricketts the friend, one of the best. But Ricketts, when designing dresses for the Court, Trench, and other productions, is not very amiable.

THE STATUE (_sighing_). Ah! yes, I know Ricketts.

THE DEVIL (_sighing_). We all know Ricketts. Never mind, he shall not come here. I shall give special orders to Charon. Come on to the trap and we can start for the palace.

SHANNON. Ah! yes. I heard you were moving to the Savoy. Think it will be a success?

[_They descend and no reply is heard. Whisk! Mr. Frank Richardson on this occasion does not appear; void and emptiness; the fireproof curtain may be lowered here in accordance with the County Council regulations; moving portraits of deceased, and living dramatic critics can be thrown without risk of ignition on the curtain by magic lantern_. _The point of this travesty will be entirely lost to those who have not read 'Man and Superman.' It is the first masterpiece in the English literature of the twentieth century. It is also necessary to have read the dramatic criticisms in the daily press, and to have some acquaintance with the Court management, the Stage Society, and certain unlicensed plays; and to know that Mr. Ricketts designs scenery. This being thoroughly explained, the Curtain may rise; discovering a large Gothic Hall, decorated in the 1880 taste. Allegories by Watts on the wall_--'_Time cutting the corns of Eternity,' 'Love whistling down the ear of Life,' 'Youth catching Crabs,' &c. Windows by Burne-Jones and Morris. A Peacock Blue Hungarian Band playing music on Dolmetsch instruments by Purcell, Byrde, Bull, Bear, Palestrina, and Wagner, &c. Various well-known people crowd the Stage. Among the_ LIVING _may be mentioned Mr. George Street; Mr. Max Beerbohm and his brother; Mr. Albert Rothenstein and his brother, &c. The company is intellectual and artistic; not in any way smart. The Savile and Athenaeum Clubs are well represented, but not the Garrick, the Gardenia, nor any of the establishments in the vicinity of Leicester Square. The Princess Salome is greeting some of the arrivals_--_The Warden of Keble, The President of Magdalen Coll., Oxford, and others--who stare at her in a bewildered fashion_.

THE DEVIL. Silence, please, ladies and gentlemen, for his Excellency the Commander. (_A yellowish pallor moves over the audience; effect by Gordon Craig_.)

THE STATUE. It was my intention this evening to make a few observations on flogging in the Navy, Vaccination, the Censor, Vivisection, the Fabian Society, the Royal Academy, Compound Chinese Labour, Style, Simple Prohibition, Vulgar Fractions, and other kindred subjects. But as I opened the paper this morning, my eye caught these headlines: 'Future of the House of Lords,' 'Mr. Edmund Gosse at home,' 'The Nerves of Lord Northcliffe,' 'Interview with Mr. Winston Churchill,' 'Reported Indisposition of Miss Edna May.' A problem was thus presented to me. Will I, shall I, ought I to speak to my friends _here_--ahem!--and elsewhere, on the subject about which they came to hear me speak. (_Applause_.) No. I said; the bounders must be disappointed; otherwise they will know what to expect. You must always surprise your audience. When it has been advertised (sufficiently) that I am going to speak about the truth, for example, the audience comes here expecting me to speak about fiction. The only way to surprise them is to speak the truth and that I always do. Nothing surprises English people more than truth; they don't like it; they don't pay any attention to those (such as my friend Mr. H. G. Wells and myself) who _trade_ in truth; but they listen and go away saying, 'How very whimsical and paradoxical it all is,' and 'What a clever adventurer the fellow is, to be sure.' 'That was a good joke about duty and beauty being the same thing'--that was a joke I did _not_ make. It is not my kind of joke--but when people begin ascribing to you the jokes of other people, you become a living--I was going to say statue--but I mean a living classic.

THE DEVIL. I thought you disliked anything classic?

THE STATUE. Ahem! only _dead_ classics--especially when they are employed to protect romanticism. Dead classics are the protective tariffs put on all realism and truth by bloated idealism. In a country of plutocrats, idealism keeps out truth: idealism is more expensive, and therefore more in demand. In America, there are more plutocrats, and therefore more idealists . . . as Mr. Pember Reeves has pointed out in New Zealand . . .

THE DEVIL. But I say, is this drama?

THE STATUE. Certainly not. It is a discussion taking place at a theatre. It is no more drama than a music-hall entertainment, or a comic opera, or a cinematograph, or a hospital operation, all of which things take place in theatres. But surely it is more entertaining to come to a discussion charmingly mounted by Ricketts--discussion too, in which every one knows what he is going to say--than to flaccid plays in which the audience always knows what the actors _are_ going to say better often than the actors. The sort of balderdash which Mr. --- serves up to us for plays.

THE DEVIL (_peevish and old-fashioned_). I wish you would define drama.

HANKIN (_advancing_). Won't you have tea, Commander? It's not bad tea.

THE STATUE. I was afraid you were going to talk idealism.

HANKIN (_aside_). Excuse my interrupting, but I want you to be particularly nice to the Princess Salome. You know she was jilted by the Censor. She has brought her music.

THE DEVIL. You might introduce her to Mrs. Warren. But I am afraid the Princess has taken rather too much upon herself this evening.

THE STATUE. Yes, she has taken too much; I am sure she has taken too much.

A JOURNALIST. Is that the Princess Salome who has Mexican opals in her teeth, and red eyebrows and green hair, and curious rock-crystal breasts?

THE DEVIL. Yes, that is the Princess Salome.

SHANNON. I know the Princess quite well. Ricketts makes her frocks. Shall I ask her to dance?

THE DEVIL. Yes, anything to distract her attention from the guests. These artistic English people are so easily shocked. They don't understand Strauss, nor indeed anything until it is quite out of date. I want to make Hell at least as attractive as it is painted; a _place_ as well as a _condition_ within the meaning of the Act. Full of wit, beauty, pleasure, freedom--

THE STATUE. Ugh--ugh.

SHANNON. Will you dance for us, Princess?

SALOME. Anything for you, dear Mr. Shannon, only my ankles are a little sore to-night. How is dear Ricketts? I want new dresses so badly.

SHANNON. I suppose by this time he is in Heaven. But won't you dance just to make things go? And then the Commander will lecture on super- maniacs later on!

SALOME. Senor Diavolo, what will you give me if I dance to-night?

THE DEVIL. Anything you like, Salome. I swear by the dramatic critics.

HANKIN (_correcting_). You mean the Styx.

THE DEVIL. Same thing. Dance without any further nonsense, Salome. Forget that you are in England. This is an unlicensed house.

[SALOME _dances the dance of the Seven Censors_.

THE DEVIL (_applauding_). She is charming. She is quite charming. Salome, what shall I do for you? You who are like a purple patch in some one else's prose. You who are like a black patch on some one else's face. You are like an Imperialist in a Radical Cabinet. You are like a Tariff Reformer in a Liberal-Unionist Administration. You are like the Rokeby Velasquez in St. Paul's Cathedral. What can I do for you who are fairer than--

SALOME. This sort of thing has been tried on me before. Let us come to business. I want Mr. Redford's head on a four-wheel cab.

THE DEVIL. No, not that. You must not ask that. I will give you Walkley's head. He has one of the best heads. He is not ignorant. He really knows what he is talking about.

SALOME. I want Mr. Redford's head on a four-wheel cab.

THE DEVIL. Salome, listen to me. Be reasonable. Do not interrupt me. I will give you William Archer's head. He is charming--a cultivated, liberal-minded critic. He is too liberal. He admires Stephen Phillips. I will give you his dear head if you release me from my oath.

SALOME. I want Mr. Redford's head on the top of a four-wheel cab. Remember your oath!

THE DEVIL. I remember I swore _at_--I mean _by_--the dramatic critics. Well, I am offering them to you. Exquisite and darling Salome, I will give you the head of Max Beerbohm. It is unusually large, but it is full of good things. What a charming ornament for your mantelpiece! You will be in the movement. How every one will envy you! People will call upon you who never used to call. Others will send you invitations. You will at last get into English society.

SALOME. I want Mr. Redford's head on the top of a four-wheel cab.

THE DEVIL. Salome, come hither. Have you ever looked at the _Daily Mirror_? Only in the _Daily Mirror_ should one look. For it tells the truth sometimes. Well, I will give you the head of Hamilton Fyfe. He is my best friend. No critic is so fond of the drama as Hamilton Fyfe. (_Huskily_.) Salome, I will give you W. L. Courtney's head. I will give you all their heads.

SALOME. I have the scalps of most critics. I want Mr. Redford's head on a four-wheel cab.

THE DEVIL. Salome! You do not know what you ask. Mr. Redford is a kind of religion. He represents the Lord Chamberlain. You know the dear Lord Chamberlain. You would not harm one of his servants, especially when they are not insured. It would be cruel. It would be irreligious. It would be in bad taste. It would not be respectable. Listen to me; I will give you all Herod's Stores . . . Salome. Shannon was right. You HAVE taken too much, or you would not ask this thing. See, I will give you Mr. Redford's body, but not his head. Not that, not that, my child.

SALOME. I want Mr. Redford's head on a four-wheel cab.

THE DEVIL. Salome, I must tell you a secret. It is terrible for me to have to tell the truth. The Commander said that I would have to tell the truth. MR. REDFORD HAS NO HEAD!

[_The audience long before this have begun to put on their cloaks, and the dramatic critics have gone away to describe the cold reception with which the play has been greeted. All the people on the stage cover their heads except the_ STATUE, _who has become during the action of the piece more and more like Mr. Bernard Shaw. Curtain descends slowly_.

(1907.)

_To_ ARTHUR CLIFTON, ESQ.

SOME DOCTORED DILEMMA.

A NEW EPILOGUE FOR THE LAST PERFORMANCE OF MR. SHAW'S PLAY.

Though Mr. Bernard Shaw has set the fashion in prologues for modern plays, his admirers were not altogether satisfied with the epilogue to _The Doctor's Dilemma_. It is far too short; and leaves us in the dark as to whom 'Jennifer Dubedat' married. Epilogues, as students of English drama remember, were often composed by other authors. The following experiment ought to have come from the hand of Mr. St. John Hankin, that master of Dramatic Sequels, but his work on the 'Cassilis Engagement' deprived Mr. Shaw of the only possible collaborator.

[SCENE: _A Bury Street Picture Gallery_--MESSRS. GERSAINT & CO. _The clock strikes ten, and_ SIR COLENSO RIDGEON _is seen going out rather crestfallen by centre door_. MR. GERSAINT, _the manager, is nailing up a notice_ ('_All works of art, for art's sake or sale; prices on application. Catalogue_ 1_s_.). MR. JACK STEPNEY, _the secretary, is receiving the private view cards from the visitors who are trooping in; some sneak catalogues as they enter, and on being asked for payment protest and produce visiting cards and press vouchers instead of shillings. Artists, Royal Academicians_, MR. EDMUND GOSSE, _and other members of the House of Lords discovered; men of letters, art critics, connoisseurs, journalists, collectors, dealers, private viewers, impostors, dramatic critics, poets, pickpockets, politicians crowd the stage. From time to time_ JACK STEPNEY _places a red star on the picture frames in the course of the action_.]

J. STEPNEY. I thought all the pictures had been bought by Dr. Schutzmacher.

GERSAINT. So they were, my boy, but he has wired saying they are all to be put up for sale at double the price; capital business, you see we shall get two commissions.

J. STEPNEY. Yes, sir. It is fortunate Mrs. Dubedat did not have the prices marked in the Catalogue.

GERSAINT. You mean Mrs. Schutzmacher. (_Drives in last nail_).

J. STEPNEY. Yes, sir.

_Enter a striking-looking-man, not unlike a Holbein drawing, at a distance: but on nearer inspection, as he comes within range of the footlights, he is more like an Isaac Oliver or Nicholas Lucidel. He examines the notice and sniffs_.

S.L.M.N.U.H.D. Which are the works of Art?

EDMUND GOSSE. Can you tell me who that is? He is one of the few people I don't know by sight. A celebrity of course; and do point out any obscurities. Every one is so distinguished. It is rather confusing.

GERSAINT. That is the Holland Park Wonder, so-called because he lives at the top of a tower in Holland Park--the greatest Art Connoisseur in England. Mr. Charles Ricketts, the greatest--

EDMUND GOSSE. Thank you; thank you.

MR. FREDERICK WEDMORE (_interrupting_). Can you tell me whether the frames are included in the prices of the pictures?

J. STEPNEY. No, sir. They are stock frames, the property of the Gallery, and are only lent for the occasion.

MR. FREDERICK WEDMORE. Then I fear I cannot buy; a naked picture without a frame is useless to me.

CHARLES RICKETTS. Do you think I could buy a frame without a picture?

JOSEPH PENNELL. I say Ricketts, it seems a beastly shame we didn't get this show for the International. It would have been good 'ad.' What's the use of Backers? I see they're selling well.

CHARLES RICKETTS. But, my dear Pennell, you're doing the _Life_, aren't you?--the real Dubedat?

JOSEPH PENNELL. Oh, yes, but the family have injuncted Heinemann from publishing the letters: Mr. Justice Kekewich will probably change his opinion when the weather gets warmer. It is only an interim injunction.

CHARLES RICKETTS. A sort of Clapham Injunction.

SIR WILLIAM RICHMOND, K.C.B., R.A. If I had known what a stupendous genius Dubedat was, I should have given him part of the 'New Bailey' to decorate.

D. S. MACCOLL. Let us be thankful he's as dead as Bill Bailey.

SIR CHARLES HOLROYD (_smoothing things over_). I think we ought to have an example for the Tate. (MACCOLL _winces_.) The Chantrey Bequest--(MACCOLL _winces again_)--might do something; and I must write to Lord Balcarres. The National Arts Collections Fund may have something over from the subscriptions to the Rokeby Velasquez; but I want to see what Colvin is going to choose for the British Museum.

SIDNEY COLVIN. I think we might have this drawing; it stands on its legs. A most interesting fellow Dubedat. He reminds me of Con--

GEORGE MOORE. Not Stevenson, though _he_ had no talent whatever. My dear Mr. Colvin, have you ever read 'Vailima Letters'? I have read parts of them.

SIDNEY COLVIN (_coldly_). Ah, really! Did you suffer very much?

SIR HUGH P. LANE. Do you think, Mr. Gersaint, the artist's widow would give me one of the pictures for the Dublin Gallery? We have no money at all. _I have no money_, but all the artists are giving pictures: Sargent, Shannon, Lavery, Frank Dicksee; and Rodin is giving a plaster cast.

GERSAINT. How charming and insinuating you are, Sir Hugh. We can make special reductions for the Dublin Gallery, but you can hardly expect charitable bequests from picture dealers.

SIR HUGH P. LANE. Oh! but Dowdeswell, Agnew, Sulley, Wertheimer, P. and D. Colnaghi, and Humphry Ward are all giving me pictures. Now, look here, I'll buy these five drawings, and you can give me these two. I'll give you a Gainsborough drawing in exchange for them. It has a very good history. First it belonged to Ricketts, then to Rothenstein, then Wilson Steer, and then to the Carfax Gallery, and . . . then it came into my possession, and all that in three months. (_Bargain concluded_.)

MR. PFFUNGST (_aside_). But is there any evidence that it belonged to Gainsborough?

SIR HUGH P. LANE (_turning to a titled lady_). Oh, do come to tea next Saturday. I want to show you my new Titian which I _have just bought for_ 2100_l_.

TITLED LADY. Sir Hugh, _can_ you tell me who Mrs. Dubedat is now?

SIR HUGH P. LANE. Oh, yes. She married Dr. Schutzmacher, the specialist on bigamy only this morning.

TITLED LADY. How interesting. I should like to meet her. Dresses divinely, I'm told.

SIR HUGH P. LANE. She's coming to tea next Saturday; such good tea, too!

TITLED LADY. That will be delightful.

ST. JOHN HANKIN (_loftily_). Can you tell me whether this charmian artist is pronounced Dubedat or Dubedat?

W. P. KER (_in deep Scotch_). Non Dubitat. (_He does not speak again_.)

P. G. KONODY. Oh, Mr. Phillips, do tell me _exactly_ what _you_ think of this artist!

CLAUDE PHILLIPS. I think he wanted a good smacking.

P. G. KONODY. Ah, yes, his art _has_ a smack about it. (_Aside_.) Good heading for the _Daily Mail_, 'Art with a smack.' (_Writes in catalogue_.)

WILL ROTHENSTEIN. When I see pictures of this kind, my dear Gersaint, they seem to me to explain your existence. An artist without a conscience . . . (_Sees_ ROGER FRY.) My dear Fry, what are _you_ doing here? Buying for New York? (_Laughs meaningly_.)

ROGER FRY. Oh, no; but I hear Gersaint has a very fine picture by the Maitresse of the Moulin Rouge. Weale says it is School of Gheel (_pronounced Kail_).

WILL ROTHENSTEIN. Kail Yard I should think; do look at these things.

ROGER FRY (_vaguely_). Who are they by? Oh, yes, Dubedat, of course.

[FRY _and_ ROTHENSTEIN _regard picture with disdain_; _it withers under their glance_. _Stage illusion by_ MASKELYNE _and_ THEODORE COOK. STEPNEY _places a red star on it_.

GERSAINT. Well, Mr. Bowyer Nichols, I hope we shall have a good long notice in the _Westminster Gazette_. Now if there is any drawing . . .

BOWYER NICHOLS (_very stiffly_). No, there isn't. I don't think the Exhibition sufficiently important; everything seems to me cribbed: most of the pictures look like reproductions of John, Orpen or Neville Lytton.

GERSAINT. Ah, no doubt, influenced by Neville Lytton. That portrait of Mr. Cutler Walpole has a Neville Lytton feeling. Neville Lytton in his earlier manner.

_Enter_ SIR PATRICK CULLEN, SIR RALPH BLOOMFIELD BONNINGTON _and_ SIR COLENSO RIDGEON.

SIR C. RIDGEON. Ah, Sir Patrick, I have just heard that the pictures are for sale; now I am going to plunge a little. I think they will rise in value; and by the way I want to ask your opinion as a scientific man. If I treat four artists with _virus obscaenum_ for three weeks, what will be the condition of the remaining artists in the fourth week?

SIR P. CULLEN. Colenso, Colenso, you ought to have been a senior wrangler and then abolished.

SIR C. RIDGEON. What a cynic you are. All the same I've had great successes, though Dubedat _was_ one of our failures. A rather anaemic member of the New English Art Club come to me for treatment, and in less than a year he was an Associate of the Royal Academy; what do you say to that?

SIR P. CULLEN. Out of Phagocyte, out of mind.

SIR R. B. B. My dear Sir Patrick, how prejudiced you are. Take MacColl's case: a typical instance of _morbus ferox ars nova anglicana_: under dear Colenso he became an official at the Tate.

SIR C. RIDGEON. Then there's Sir Charles Holroyd, you remember his high tempera?

SIR P. CULLEN. There has been a relapse I hear from the catalogue.

SIR R. B. B. How grossly unfair; that is a false bulletin issued by the former nurse: 'the evil that men do lives after them.'

SIR P. CULLEN. My dear B. B., this is not Dubedat's funeral. Do you think Bernard Shaw will like the new epilogue?

BERNARD SHAW. He will; I'm shaw.

L. C. C. INSPECTOR. Excuse me, is Mr. Vedrenne here? Ah, yes! There is Mr. Vedrenne. Will you kindly answer some of my questions? Is that door on the left a real door? In case of fire I cannot allow property doors; the actors might be seized with stage fright, and they must have, as Sir B. B. would say, 'their exits and their entrances.'

VEDRENNE. Everything at the Court Theatre, my dear sir, is real. Ask Mr. Franks, he will tell you the door is not even a jar. The art, the acting, the plays, even the audience is real, except a few dramatic critics I cannot exclude. I admit the audience looks improbable at matinees; _out of Court_ is a truth in art of which we are only dimly beginning to understand the significance. [_Noise outside_.

_Enter_ JENNIFER, _dressed in deep mourning_.

JENNIFER (_with a bright smile_). Mr. Vedrenne, I have just had a telegram saying that my husband, Leo, was killed in his motor after leaving me at the Synagogue. His last words were: 'Jennifer, promise me that you will wear mourning if I die, merely to mark the difference between Dubedat and myself.' This afternoon I am going to marry Blenkinsop. How are the sales going?

VEDRENNE. Well, I think we might have the catechism or the churching of heroines. What is your name?

JENNIFER. Jennifer.

VEDRENNE. Where did you get that name?

JENNIFER. From Bernard Shaw in my baptism.

MR. REDFORD (_Licenser of Plays_). Mr. Shaw, I really must point out that this passage comes from the Anglican Prayer-book. Are you aware of that? I have a suggestion of my own for ending the play.

BERNARD SHAW. Oh, shut up! Let us have my ten commandments.

GRANVILLE BARKER. My dear Shaw, you sent them to Wells for revision and he lost them in the Tube. I can remember the first one, 'Maude spake these words and said: "Thou shalt have none other Shaws but me."'

BERNARD SHAW. How careless of Wells. I remember the second: 'Do not indulge in craven imitation.'

W. L. COURTNEY. The third commandment runs: 'Thou shalt not covet George Alexander.'

GRANVILLE BARKER. One of them runs: 'Do not commit yourself to Beerbohm Tree, though his is His Majesty's . . . ' But we shall never get them right. We must offer a reward for their recovery. I vote that Walkley now says the _credo_. That, I think, expresses every one's sentiment.

A. B. WALKLEY (_reluctantly_). I believe in Bernard Shaw, in Granville Barker, and (_heartily_) in _The Times_.

WILLIAM ARCHER. Plaudite, missa est.

(1907.)

CURTAIN.

THE JADED INTELLECTUALS. A DIALOGUE.

_Scene: The Smoking-room of the Elivas Club_.

_Characters_: LAUDATOR TEMPOREYS, _aetat. 54, a distinguished literary critic, and_ LUKE CULLUS, _a rich connoisseur of art and life. They are not smoking nor drinking spirits. One is sipping barley water, the other Vichy_.

LUKE CULLUS. You are a dreadful pessimist!

LAUDATOR TEMPOREYS. Alas! there is no such thing in these days. We are merely disappointed optimists. When Walter Pater died I did not realise that English literature expired. Yet the event excited hardly any interest in the Press. Our leading weekly, the _Spectator_, merely mentioned that Brasenose College, Oxford, had lost an excellent Dean.

L. C. I can hardly understand you. Painting, I admit, is entirely a lost art, so far as England is concerned. The death of Burne-Jones brought our tradition to an end. I see no future for any of the arts except needlework, of which, I am told, there is a hopeful revival. But in your fields of literature, what a number of great names! How I envy you!

L. T. Who is there?

L. C. Well, to take the novelists first: you have the great Thomas Hardy, H. G. Wells, Henry James, Rudyard Kipling, Maurice Hewlett . . . I can't remember the names of any others just at present. Then take the poets: Austin Dobson, my own special favourite; and among the younger men, A. E. Housman, Laurence Housman, Yeats, Arthur Symons, Laurence Binyon, William Watson--

L. T. (_interrupting_). Who always keeps one foot in Wordsworth's grave. But all the men you mention, my dear Cullus, belong to the last century. They have done their best work. Hardy has become mummy, and Henry James is sold in Balham. Except Hardy, they have become unintelligible. The theory that 'to be intelligible is to be found out' seems to have frightened them. The books they issue are a series of 'not-at-home' cards--sort of P.P.C.'s on posterity. And the younger poets, too, belong to the last century, or they stand in the same relation to their immediate predecessors, to borrow one of your metaphors, as _l'art nouveau_ does to Chippendale. Oh, for the days of Byron, Keats, and Shelley!

L. C. All of whom died before they were matured. You seem to resent development. In literature I am a mere _dilettante_. A fastidious reader, but not an expert. I know what I don't like; but I never know what I shall like. At least twice a year I come across a book which gives me much pleasure. As it comes from the lending library it is never quite new. That is an added charm. If it happens to have made a sensation, the sensation is all over by the time it reaches me. The book has matured. A quite new book is always a little crude. It suggests an evening paper. There at least you will agree. But to come across a work which Henry James published, say, last year, is, I assure you, like finding a Hubert Van Eyck in the Brompton Road.

L. T. I wish I could share your enthusiasm, or that I could change places with you. Every year the personality of a new artist is revealed to you. I know you only pretend not to admire the modern school of painting. You find it a convenient pose. Your flora and your fauna are always receiving additions; while my garden is withered; my zoo is out of repair. The bars are broken; the tanks have run dry. There is hardly a trace of life except in the snake-house, and, as I mentioned, the last giraffe is dead.

L. C. Our friend, Dr. Chalmers Mitchell, is fortunately able to give us a different account of the institution in Regent's Park. You are quite wrong about modern painting. None of the younger men can paint at all. A few of them can draw, I admit. It is all they can do. The death of Charles Furse blasted all my hopes of English art. Whistler is dead; Sargent is an American.

L. T. Well, so is Henry James, if it comes to that. And so _was_ Whistler. But I have seen the works of several young artists who I understand are carrying out the great traditions of painting. Ricketts, Shannon, Wilson Steer, Rothenstein, Orpen, Nicholson, Augustus John are surely worthy successors to Turner, Alfred Stevens, and the Pre-Raphaelites.

L. C. They are merely connoisseurs gifted with expressing their appreciation of the past in paint. They appeal to you as a literary man. You like to detect in every stroke of their brushes an echo of the past. Their pictures have been _heard_, not _seen_. All the younger artists are committing burglary on the old masters.

L. T. It is you who are a disappointed optimist.

L. C. Not about literature or the drama. I seem to hear, with Ibsen's 'Master Builder,' the younger generation knocking at the door.

L. T. It comes in without knocking in my experience; and generally has _fig_-leaves in its hair--a decided advance on the coiffure of Hedda Gabler's lover.

L. C. But look at Bernard Shaw.

L. T. Why should I look at Bernard Shaw? I read his plays and am more than ever convinced that he has gone on the wrong lines. His was the opportunity. He made _il gran refuto_. Some one said that George Saintsbury never got over the first night of _Hernani_. Shaw never recovered the _premiere_ of _Ghosts_. He roofed our Thespian temple with Irish slate. His disciples found English drama solid brick and leave it plaster of Paris. Yet Shaw might have been another Congreve.

L. C. _Troja fuit_. We do not want another. I am sure you never went to the Court at all.

L. T. Oh, yes, I attended the last _levee_. But the drama is too large a subject, or, in England, too small a subject to discuss. We live, as Professor Mahaffy has reminded us, in an Alexandrian age. We are wounded with archaeology and exquisite scholarship, and must drag our slow length along . . . We were talking about literature. Where are the essayists, the Lambs, and the Hazlitts? I know you are going to say Andrew Lang; I say it every day; it is like an Amen in the Prayer-book; it occurs quite as frequently in periodical literature. He _was_ my favourite essayist, during the _last_ fifteen years of the _last_ century. What is he now? An historian, a folk-lorist, an archaeologist, a controversialist. I believe he is an expert on portraits of Mary Stuart. You were going on to say G. K. Chesterton--

L. C. No. I was going to say Max Beerbohm. Some of his essays I put beside Lamb's, and above Hazlitt's. He has style; but then I am prejudiced because he is the only modern artist I really admire. He is a superb draughtsman and our only caricaturist. Then there is George Moore. I don't care for his novels, but his essays are delightful. George Moore really counts. Few people know so little about art; yet how delightfully he writes about it. Everything comes to him as a surprise. He gives you the same sort of enjoyment as you would derive from hearing a nun preach on the sins of smart society.

L. T. Moore is one of many literary Acteons who have mistaken Diana for Aphrodite.

L. C. You mean he is great dear; but he gets hold of the right end of the stick.

L. T. And he generally soils it. But you know nothing about literature. The age requires blood and Kipling gave it Condy's Fluid (_drinks barley water_). The age requires life, and Moore gave us a gallantee show from Montmartre (_drinks barley water_). Even I require life. To-morrow I am off to Aix.

L. C.--les Bains?

L. T. No, la-Chapelle!

L. C. Oh, then we shall probably meet. Thanks. I can get on my own overcoat. I shall probably be there myself in a few weeks.

ABBEY THOUGHTS.

Shall some memorial of Herbert Spencer be erected in the Abbey, or rather in what journalists love to call the 'National Valhalla,' the 'English Pantheon,' or the 'venerable edifice,' where, as Macaulay says, the dust of the illustrious accusers, _et cetera_----? The question was once agitated in a daily paper. It seems that the Dean, when approached on the subject, acted like one of his predecessors in the case of Byron. The Dean is in a very difficult position, because any decision of his must be severely criticised from one quarter or another. The Abbey retains, I understand, some of its pre-Reformation privileges, and is not under the jurisdiction of Bishop or Archbishop. Yet no one who has ever visited the Chapel of St. Edward the Confessor on October 13th, the festival of his translation, can accuse the Abbey authorities of bigotry or narrow- mindedness. Only a few years ago I fought my way, with other Popish pilgrims, to the shrine of our patron Saint (as he _was_, until superseded by Saint George in the thirteenth century), and there I indulged in overt acts of superstition violating Article XXII. of 'the Church of England by law established.' A verger, with some colonial tourists, arrived during our devotions, but his voice was lowered out of regard for our feelings. Indeed, both he and the tourists adopted towards us an attitude of respectful curiosity (not altogether unpleasant), which was in striking contrast to the methods of the continental _Suisse_ routing out worshippers from a side chapel of a Catholic church in order to show Baedeker-ridden sightseers an altar-piece by Rotto Rotinelli.

Thoughts of Cranmer, Latimer, and Ridley irresistibly mingled with my devotions. What had the poor fellows burnt for, after all? Here we were ostentatiously ignoring English history and the adjacent Houses of Parliament; outraging the rubrics by ritual observations for which poor curates in the East End are often suspended, and before now have been imprisoned. I could not help thinking that the Archbishop of Westminster would hardly care to return these hospitalities, by permitting, on August 24th, a memorial service for Admiral Coligny in Westminster Cathedral. . . . I rose from my knees a new Luther, with something like a Protestant feeling, and scrutinised severely the tombs in Poets' Corner. Even there I found myself confronted with an almost irritating liberalism. Here was Alexander Pope, who rejected all the overtures of Swift and Atterbury to embrace the Protestant faith. And there was Dryden, not, perhaps, a great ornament to my persuasion, but still a Catholic at the last. Dean Panther had not grudged poet Hind his niche in the National Valhalla (I knew I should be reduced to that periphrasis). And here was the mighty Charles Darwin, about whose reception into the English Pantheon (I have fallen again) I remember there was some trouble. Well, if precedent embalms a principle, I venture to raise a thin small voice, and plead for Herbert Spencer. 'The English people,' said a friendly French critic, 'do not admire their great men because they were great, but because they reflect credit on themselves.' So on the score of national vanity I claim space for Herbert Spencer. Very few Englishmen have exercised such extraordinary influence on continental opinion, which Beaconsfield said was the verdict of posterity. On the news of his death, the Italian Chamber passed a vote of condolence with the English people. I suppose that does not seem a great honour to Englishmen, but to me, an enemy of United Italy, it seemed a great honour, not only to the dead but to the English people. Can you imagine the Swiss Federal Council sending us a vote of condolence on the death of Mr. Hall Caine or Mr. Robert Hichens?

Again, though it is ungrateful of me to mention the fact after my experiences of October 13th, the Abbey was not built nor endowed by people who anticipated the Anglican form of worship being celebrated within its walls, though I admit it has been _restored_ by the adherents of that communion. The image of Milton, to take only one instance, would have been quite as objectionable to Henry III. or Abbot Islip as those of Darwin or Spencer. The emoluments bequeathed by Henry VII. and others for requiem masses are now devoted to the education of Deans' daughters and Canons' sons. Where incensed altars used to stand, hideous monuments of the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries wound the Gothic air with their monstrous ornaments and inapposite epitaphs. St. Paul's may fairly be held sacred to Anglicanism, and I do not think any one would claim sepulture within its precincts for one who was avowedly hostile to Christian or Anglican sentiment. But I think the Abbey has now passed into the category of museums, and might well be declared a national monument under control of the State. The choir, and possibly the nave, should, of course, be severely preserved for whatever the State religion might be at the time. Catholics need not mourn the secularisation of the transepts and chapels, because Leo XIII. renounced officially all claims on the ancient shrines of the Catholic faith, and High Churchmen might console themselves by recalling the fact that Abbots were originally laymen.

My whole scheme would be a return to the practice of the Primitive Church, when priests were only allowed on sufferance inside abbeys at all. The Low Church party need not be considered, because they can have no sentiment about what they regard as relics of superstition and Broad Churchmen could hardly complain at the logical development of their own principle. The Nonconformists, the backbone of the nation, could not be otherwise than grateful. The decision about admitting busts, statues, or bodies into the national and sacred 'musee des morts' (as the anti-clerical French might call it under the new constitution) would rest with the Home Secretary. This would be an added interest to the duties of a painstaking official, forming pleasant interludes between considering the remission of sentences on popular criminals: it would relieve the Dean and Chapter at all events from grave responsibility. The Home Secretary would always be called the Abbot of Westminster. How picturesque at the formation of a new Cabinet--'_Home Secretary and Abbot of Westminster_, the Right Hon. Mr. So-and-So.' The first duty of the Abbot will be to appoint a Royal Commission to consider the removal of hideous monuments which disfigure the edifice: nothing prior to 1700 coming under its consideration. A small tablet would recall what has been taken away. Herbert Spencer's claim to a statue would be duly considered, and, I hope, by a unanimous vote some of the other glaring gaps would be filled up. If the Abbey is full of obscurities, very dim religious lights, many of the illustrious names in our literature have been omitted: Byron, Shelley, Keats--to mention only these. There is no monument to Chatterton, one of the more powerful influences in the romantic movement, nor to William Blake, whose boyish inspiration was actually nourished amid that 'Gothic supineness,' as Mr. MacColl has finely said of him. Of all our poets and painters Blake surely deserves a monument in the grey church which became to him what St. Mary Redcliffe was to Chatterton. A window adapted from the book of Job (with the marvellous design of the Morning Stars) was, I am told, actually offered to, and rejected by, the late Dean. To Dante Gabriel Rossetti and the wonderful movement of which he was the dynamic force there should also be a worthy memorial; to Water Pater, the superb aside of English prose; to Cardinal Manning, _the_ Ecclesiastic of the nineteenth century; and Professor Huxley, that master of dialectics.

A young actor of my acquaintance, who bore the honoured name of Siddons, was invited to take part in the funeral service of the late Sir Henry Irving. His step-father was connected by marriage with the great actress, and he was very proud of his physical resemblance to her portrait by Reynolds. He had played with great success the part of Fortinbras in the provinces, and Mr. Alexander has assured me that he was the ideal impersonator of Rosencrantz. It was an open secret that he had refused Mr. Arthur Bourchier's offer of that _role_ in a proposed revival of _Hamlet_ at the Garrick. Since the burial of Sir Henry Irving in the Abbey, _he has never been seen_: though I saw him myself in the funeral _cortege_. All his friends remember the curious exaltation in his manner a few days before the ceremony, and I cannot help thinking that in a moment of enthusiasm, realising that this was his only chance of burial in the Abbey, he took advantage of the bowed unobservant heads during the prayer of Committal and crept beneath the pall into the great actor's tomb. What his feelings were at the time, or afterwards when the vault was bricked up, would require the introspective pen of Mr. Henry James and the curious imagination of Mr. H. G. Wells to describe. I have been assured by the vergers that mysterious sounds were heard for some days after this historical occasion. Distressed by the loss of my friend, I applied to the Dean of Westminster and finally to Scotland Yard. I need not say that I was met with sacerdotal indifference on the one hand and with callous officialism on the other. I hope that under the Royal Commission which I have appointed the mystery will be cleared up. Not that I begrudge poor Siddons a niche with Garrick and Irving.

(1906.)

_To_ PROFESSOR JAMES MAYOR, _Toronto University_.

THE ELETHIAN MUSE.

After chaperoning into Fleet Street the eleventh Muse, the rather Batavian lady who is not to be found in that Greek peerage, Lempriere's Dictionary, an obliging correspondent from Edinburgh (an eminent writer to the Signet in our northern Thebes) inquired if there were any more muses who had escaped the students of comparative mythology. It is in response to his letter that I now present, as Mr. Charles Frohman would say, the thirteenth, the Elethian Muse.

Yet I can fancy people asking, Where is the twelfth, and over what art or science does she preside? According to Apollodorus (in a recently recovered fragment from Oxyrynchus), Jupiter, suffering from the chronic headaches consequent on his acrimonious conversations with Athena, decided to consult Vulcan, AEsculapius having come to be regarded as a quack. Mulciber (as we must now call him, having used the name Vulcan once), suggested an extraordinary remedy, one of the earliest records of a homoeopathic expedient. He prescribed that the king of gods and men should keep his ambrosial tongue in the side of his cheek for half an hour three times a day. The operation produced violent retching in the Capitoline stomach. And on the ninth day, from his mouth, quite unarmed, sprang the twelfth muse. The other goddesses were very disgusted; and even the gods declined to have any communication with the new arrival. Apollo, however, was more tolerant, and offered her an asylum on the top shelf of the celestial library. Ever afterwards Musagetes used to be heard laughing immoderately, even for a librarian to the then House of Lords. Jupiter, incensed at this irregularity, paid him a surprise visit one day in order to discover the cause. He stayed, however, quite a long time; and the other deities soon contracted the habit of taking their nectar into the library. With the decline of manners, the twelfth muse began to be invited to dessert, after Juno and the more reputable goddesses had retired. To cut a long story short, when Pan died, in the Olympian sense very shortly afterwards, all the gods, as we know, took refuge on earth. Jupiter retired to Iceland, Aphrodite to Germany, Apollo to Picardy, but the twelfth muse wandered all over Europe, and found that she was really more appreciated than her sisters. The castle, the abbey, the inn, the lone ale-house on the Berkshire moors, all made her welcome. Finally she settled in Ireland, where, according to a protestant libel, she took the black veil in a nunnery.

She is older than the chestnuts of Vallombrosa. Perhaps of all the ancient goddesses time has chilled her least. Her unfathomable smile wears a touch of something sinister in it, but she has a new meaning for every generation. And yet for Aretino there was some further magic of crimson on her lips and cheeks, lost for us. She is a solecism for the convalescent, and has given consolation to the brave. She has been a diver in rather deep seas and a climber in somewhat steep places. Her censers are the smoking-rooms of clubs; and her presence-lamps are schoolboys' lanterns. Though held the friend of liars and brutes, she has lived on the indelicacies of kings, and has made even pontiffs laugh. Her mysteries are told in the night-time, and in low whispers to the garish day. She lingers over the stable-yard (no doubt called _mews_ for that reason). Her costly breviaries, embellished with strange illuminations, are prohibited under Lord Campbell's Act. Stars mark the places where she has been. Sometimes a scholar's fallacy, a sworn foe to Dr. Bowdler, she is Notre Dame de Milet, our Lady of Limerick.

* * * * *

But it is of her sister I would speak, the thirteenth sister, who was created to keep the eleventh in countenance. She presides over the absurdities of prose. She is responsible for the stylistic flights of Pegasus when, owing to the persuasive eloquence of the Hon. Stephen Coleridge, his bearing-rein has been abolished, and he kicks over the traces.

It was the Elethian Muse who inspired that Oxford undergraduate's peroration to his essay on the Characteristics of St. John's Gospel--

'Furthermore, we may add that St. John's Gospel is characterised by a
tone of fervent piety which is totally wanting in those of the other
Evangelists'--

and she hovered over the journalist who, writing for a paper which we need not name, referred to Bacchus as

'that deity whose identity in Greek and Roman mythology is inseparably
connected with the over-indulgence of intoxicating liquors.'

There are prose beauties, Elethian jewels, hidden away in Baedeker's mines of pregnant information and barren fact. I know it is fashionable to sneer at Baedeker, especially when you are writing little rhapsodies about remoter parts of Italy, where you have found his knowledge indispensable, if exiguous. You must always kick away the ladder when you arrive at literary distinction. I, who am still climbing and still clinging, can afford to be more generous. Let me, therefore, crown Baedeker with an essayist's parsley, or an academic laurel, ere I too become selfish, forgetful, egoistical, and famous.

In _Southern France_, 1891 edition, p. 137, you find--

To the Pic de Nere, 3.75 hrs. from Luz, there and back 6.5 hrs.; a
delightful excursion, which can be made on horseback part of the way:
guide 12, horse 10 fr.; _adders abound_.

For synthetic prose you will have to go to Tacitus to find the equal of that passage. No more is heard of the excursion. 'We leave Luz by the Barege road,' the text goes on to say. Reflections and picturesque word- painting are left for Mr. Maurice Hewlett, Mr. Arthur Symons, and Murray.

In _Southern Italy_, Baedeker yields to softer and more Virgilian influences. The purple patches are longer and more frequent. On page 99 we learn not only how to get to Baiae, but that

Luxury and profligacy, however, soon took up their abode at Baiae, and
the desolate ruins, which now alone encounter the eye, point the usual
moral!

And from the preface to the same guide we obtain this remarkable advice:--

The traveller should adopt the Neapolitan custom of rejecting fish
that are not quite fresh.

But it is certain educational works, popular in my childhood, that have yielded the more exotic Elethian blossoms for my Anthology. There are passages I would not willingly let die. In one of these books general knowledge was imparted after the manner of Magnall: 'What is the world? The earth on which we live.' 'Who was Raphael?' 'How is rice made?' After such desultory interrogatives, without any warning, came Question 15: 'Give the character of Prince Potemki':--

Sordidly mean, ostentatiously prodigal, filthily intemperate and
affectedly refined. Disgustingly licentious and extravagantly
superstitious, a brute in appetite, vigorous though vacillating in
action.

Until I went to the University, a great many years afterwards, I never learnt who Potemki was. At the age of seven he stood to me for what 'Timberio' still is for Capriote children. My teacher obviously did not know. She always evaded my inquiries by saying, 'You will know when you are older, darling.' Suspecting her ignorance, I became pertinacious. 'When I am as old as you?' was my ungallant rejoinder. I had to write the character out a hundred times. Then one Christmas Day I ventured to ask my father, who said I would find out about him in Gibbon. But I knew he was not speaking the truth, because he laughed in a nervous, peculiar way, and added that since I was so fond of history I must go to Oxford when I was older. I loathed history, and inwardly resolved that Cambridge should be my University. My mother admitted entire ignorance of Potemki's identity; and on my sketching his character (for I was proud of the knowledge), said he was obviously a 'horrid' man. His personality shadowed my childhood with a deadly fascination, which has not entirely worn away; producing the same sort of effect on me as an imaginary portrait by Pater.