Chapter III: Front Matter (3)

The name of a Mob-God flashes before the eyes. Suddenly the screen in front vanishes. In its place appears a road stretching away to the sky and lined with trees. The sky is clear. The scene is cool and healthy. The leaves of the trees flutter familiarly. The road smiles like an old friend. And far in the distance a speck appears and moves slowly and jerkily. Wide open mouths and freshened eyes watch the speck grow larger. It takes the form of a man, a little man with a thin cane. At last his baggy trousers and his slovenly shoes are visible. His thick curly hair under the battered derby becomes clear. He walks along carelessly, quietly, with an infinite philosophy. He walks with an indescribable step, kicking up one of his feet, shuffling along.

Laughter is born. The vapid faces respond magically to His presence. Pure, childish delight sounds. The faces are bathed in a human light. A noisy, wholesome din fills the theater. And the little man comes down the road with his calm and solemn face, his sad eyes, his impossible mustache, his ridiculous trousers, and his nervous, spasmodic gait amid the roars and wild elation of idiots, prostitutes, crass, common churls, and empty souls converted suddenly into a natural and mutual simplicity. The stuffy, maddening “bathoes” that clings to the mob like a stink is dispelled, wiped out of the air. Laughter, laughter, shrieks and peals, chuckles and smiles, the broad permeating warmth of the simplest, deepest joy is everywhere.

Charlie Chaplin is before them, Charles Chaplin with the wit of a vulgar buffoon and the soul of a world artist. He walks, he stumbles, he dances, he falls. His inimitable gyrations release torrents of mirth clean as spring freshets. He is cruel. He is absurd; unmanly; tawdry; cheap; artificial. And yet behind his crudities, his obscenities, his inartistic and outrageous contortions, his “divinity” shines. He is the Mob-God. He is a child and a clown. He is a gutter snipe and an artist. He is the incarnation of the latent, imperfect, and childlike genius that lies buried under the fiberless flesh of his worshippers. They have created Him in their image. He is the Mob on two legs. They love him and laugh.

“Fruits to Om.”

“Glory to Zeus.”

“Mercy, Jesus.”

“Praised be Allah.”

“Hats off to Charlie Chaplin.”

“THE SCAVANGER.”

The Theatre

“ROSMERSHOLM”

(_The Chicago Little Theatre_)

I don’t want to write about _Rosmersholm_ or about Ibsen now. I want to write about Mme. Borgny Hammer, who is great in the manner of the great Norwegians.

There is a lot of talk about the Russian soul just at present. I wish the Norwegian soul might come in for its share of analysis and appreciation. It is interesting not because of its dark shudderings but because of its intense light and its clearness. It is like the sun; it is like wild flowers—not the delicate but the hardy ones.

Mme. Hammer is this sort of person. She is an actress because she must act or die. She is so intense that the air about her is always “charged”; and she is so natural and simple that you know right away she must be great. There wasn’t a particle of difference between her presence on the stage as the Ibsen heroine and her manner when she meets you on Michigan Avenue and stops to say that Ibsen is so wonderful it’s impossible to cut a line of his dialogue. In both situations she is the genius. Mrs. Fiske’s Rebecca West was a stunningly-worked-out idea; Mme. Hammer’s was just—Rebecca West. Mrs. Fiske had a theory of the character and presented it in a series of subtle and powerful designs. But what did this wonderful woman do? She didn’t act Rebecca West at all: she just gave you the impression that she is Rebecca every day of her life. She made _Rosmersholm_ a natural scene in the life of some modern family, instead of making it a “study”—an effect in a rather strained psychology.

I wish I could describe Mme. Hammer’s stage conversations—especially the parts where she listens. She is so busy feeling Rebecca West that she has no time to waste in managing her eyes and voice and hands. They take care of themselves just as they would in her own library. When our best actresses “listen” they keep their eyes on the person who is talking with the kind of look that says: “I know it would be bad art now to look at the audience out of the tail of my eye. I must pay close attention to what this actor is saying to me.” Mme. Hammer looks at Rosmer with the same expression she would wear if he were about to say things she hadn’t heard him rehearse every day for six weeks. If she should break out with some dialogue of her own it couldn’t sound any more spontaneous than her reading of the lines Ibsen gave to Rebecca. I know Rebecca’s lines, and yet I forgot them and decided she must be making things up as she went along. What richness of simplicity, and what a sturdy beauty!

I have never seen an actress who cares less about herself than Mme. Hammer and cares so deeply for the character she is presenting. The expressions of her face are marvelous.... She said to me once that she disagreed with critics who thought Hedda Gabler had nothing to give. “She had so much, so very much to give,” she said passionately. No wonder she thinks so: she is a big woman who herself has an infinity of things to give.