Adventures in the Arts Part 8

Ella Shields with her charming typification of "Burlington Bertie from Bow."

The other evening as I listened to Irene Franklin, I heard for certain what I had always thought were notes from the magic voice of dear old Fay. Unforgettable Fay. How can one ever say enough about her? I think of Fay along with my single glimpses of Duse, Ada Rehan, Coquelin. You see how I love her, then. Irene Franklin has the quality of imitation of the great Fay without, I think, the real magic. Nevertheless I enjoy her, and I am certain she has never been finer than now. She has enriched herself greatly by her experiences the last two years, and seems at the height of her power. It was good to get, once again, little glimpses of her Childs waitress and the chambermaid. It seemed to me that there was a richer quality of atmosphere in the little Jewish girl with the ring curls and the red mittens, as also in her French girl with, by the way, a beautiful gown of rich yellow silk Frenchily trimmed in vermilion or orange, I couldn't make out which.

The amusing French girl, who having picked up many f.a.g-ends of English from her experience with the _soldats Americains_--got her "animals"

mixed--"you have my goat, I have your goat, et--tie ze bull outside,"

and so on. I am crossing Irene and Fay here because I think them similar, only I must say I think the magic was greater in Fay, because possibly Fay was the greater student of emotion. Fay had the undercurrent, and Irene has perfected the surface. If Irene did study Fay at any time, and I say this respectfully, she perhaps knows that Fay went many times to Paris to study Rejane. The light entertainer is, as we know, very often a person of real intellect.

If you want distinction, then, you will get it in the presence of Ella Shields. Her "Burlington Bertie" is nothing less than a chef d'oeuvre; "Tom Lipton, he's got lots of 'oof--he sleeps on the roof, and I sleep in the room over him." Bertie, who, having been slapped on the back by the Prince of Wales (and some others) and asked why he didn't go and dine with "Mother," replied--"I can't, for I've just had a banana with Lady Diana.... I'm Burlington Bertie from Bow." Miss Shields shows also that she can sing a sentimental song without slushing it all over with saccharine. She has mastered the droll English quality of wit with real perfection. I regret I never saw Vesta Tilley, with whom the old tops compare her so favourably. Superb girls all these, Fay, Ella, Cissie, Vesta, as well as Marie Lloyd, and the other inimitable Vesta--Victoria.

Among the "coming soon," we have Miss Juliet, whom I recall with so much pleasure from the last immemorable Cohan Revue. I wait for her. I consider myself fortunate to be let in on James Watts. We thought our Eddy Foy a comic one. He was, for I remember the Gibson girl with the black velvet gown and the red flannel undershirt. I swing my swagger stick in the presence of Mr. Watts by way of applause. His art is very delicately understood and brought out. It has a fine quality of broad caricature with a real knowledge of economy such as Grock is master of. The three episodes are certainly funny enough. I find myself caring more for the first, called "June Day," since he reminds me so strongly in make-up of the French caricaturists in drawing, Rouveyre and Toulouse-Lautrec. Mr. Watts's feeling for satirical make-up is a fine shade of artistry in itself. He has excellent feeling for the broad contrast and for fierce insinuation at the same time. If you want real unalloyed fun, Mr. Watts will supply you. Nor will Grock disappoint you. Quite on the contrary, no matter what you are expecting.

I do not know why I think of vaudeville as I think of a collection of good drawings. Unless it is because the sense of form is the same in all of the arts. The acrobat certainly has line and ma.s.s to think of, even if that isn't his primal concern. He knows how he decorates the s.p.a.ce on which he operates. To make another comparison, then, Grock is the Forain of vaudeville. He achieves great plastic beauty with distinguished economy of means. He dispenses with all superfluous gesture, as does the great French ill.u.s.trator. Grock is entirely right about clownery. You are either funny or you are not. No amount of study will produce the gift for humour. It is there, or it isn't.

Grock's gift for musicianship is a singular combination to find with the rest of his artistry. It goes with the remarkably refined look in his face, however, as he sits upon the back of the seatless chair, and plays the little concertina with superb execution. There are no "jumps" in Grock's performance. His moods flow from one into another with a masterly smoothness, and you are aware when he is finished that you have never seen that sort of foolery before. Not just that sort.

It is the good mind that satisfies, as in the case of James Watts, and Miss Shields.

From elephants carrying in their trunks chatelaines of Shetland ponies, curtseying at the close of the charming act like a pretty miss at her first coming out, to such work as the Four Danubes give you as the closing number, with Irene as a lead, you are, to say the least, carried over the dreadful spots, such as the young man who sways out like a burlesque queen and tells you whom he was with before Keith got him. His name should be "Pusher," "Advance Man," or something of that sort, and not artist. What he gives you, you could find just as well if not better done on Fourteenth Street. He has a ribbon-counter, adenoid voice production that no really fine artist could afford. He will "get by," because anything does, apparently.

One turns to the big artist for relief, even though minor artists like The Brown Sisters charm so surely with their ivory and silver diamond-studded accordions, giving very pleasing transitions from grave to gay in arias and tunes we know. Accordions and concertinas are very beautiful to me, when played by artists like these girls, and by such as Joe Cawthorne, and Grock.

There are more dancing men of quality this season, it seems to me, who are obscured by dancing ladies of fame, and not such warrantable artistry. Perhaps it is because male anatomy allows of greater eccentricity and playfulness. There are no girls who have just such laughing legs as the inimitable Frances White. It is the long-legged American boy who beats the world in this sort of thing.

The lovely bit of hockey which James Barton gives is for me far more distinguished than all the rest of his work in the Winter Garden Revue. He is a real artist, but it is work that one sees rather a deal of this season, whereas the hockey dance is like nothing else to be found. A lovely moment of rhythmic leg work. We are now thoroughly familiar with the stage drunk, as we have long been familiarized by Weber and Fields with the stage Jew, which is fortunately pa.s.sing out for lack of artist to present it. Leon Errol is good for once, even twice. He is quite alone in his very witty falls and runs. They are full of the struggle of the drunk to regain his character and manhood.

The act lives on a very flat plane otherwise. It has no roundness.

I have come on my list to Mijares and Co., in "Monkey Business." We have the exquisite criterion always for the wire, in the perfect Bird Millman. "Monkey Business" is a very good act, and both men do excellent work on the taut and slack wire. "Monkey," in this case being a man, does as beautiful a piece of work as I know of. I have never seen a back somersault upon a high wire. I have never heard of it before. There may be whole generations of artists gifted in this particular stunt. You have here, nevertheless, a moment of very great beauty in the cleanness of this man's surprising agility and sureness.

The monkey costume hinders the beauty of the thing. It should be done with pale blue silk tights against a cherry velvet drop, or else in deep ultramarine on an old gold background.

The acrobatic novelty called "The Legrohs" relies chiefly on its most exceptional member, who would be complete without the other two. He is most decidedly a virtuoso in vaudeville. Very gifted, certainly, if at moments a little disconcerting in the flexibility and the seemingly uncertain turns of his body. It is the old-fashioned contortionism saved by charming acrobatic variations. This "Legroh" knows how to make a superb pattern with his body, and the things he does with it are done with such ease and skill as to make you forget the actual physical effort and you are lost for the time being in the beauty of this muscular kaleidoscopic brilliancy. You feel it is like "puzzle--find the man" for a time, but then you follow his exquisite changes from one design into another with genuine delight, and appreciate his excessive grace and easy rapidity. He gives you chiefly the impression of a dragon-fly blown in the wind of a brisk morning over cool stretches of water. You would expect him to land on a lily-pad any moment and smooth his wings with his needle-like legs.

So it is the men and women of vaudeville transform themselves into lovely flower and animal forms, and the animals take on semblances of human sensibility in vaudeville. It is the superb arabesque of the beautiful human body that I care for most, and get the most from in these cameo-like bits of beauty and art. So brief they are, and like the wonders of sea gardens as you look through the gla.s.s bottoms of the little boats. So like the wonders of the microscopic, full of surprising novelties of colour and form. So like the kaleidoscope in the ever changing, ever shifting bits of colour reflecting each other, falling into new patterns with each twist of the toy. If you care for the iridescence of the moment you will trust vaudeville as you are not able to trust any other sort of a performance. You have no chance for the fatigue of problem. You are at rest as far as thinking is concerned. It is something for the eye first and last. It is something for the ear now and then, only very seldomly, however. For me, they are the saviours of the dullest art in existence, the art of the stage. Duse was quite right about it. The stage should be swept of actors. It is not a place for imitation and photography. It is a place for the laughter of the senses, for the laughter of the body. It is a place for the tumbling blocks of the brain to fall in heaps. I give first place to the acrobat and his a.s.sociates because it is the art where the human mind is for once relieved of its stupidity. The acrobat is master of his body and he lets his brain go a-roving upon other matters, if he has one. He is expected to be silent. He would agree with William James, transposing "music prevents thinking" into "talking prevents silence." In so many instances, it prevents conversation. That is why I like tea chitchat. Words are never meant to mean anything then. They are simply given legs and wings, and they jump and fly. They land where they can, and fall flat if they must.

The audience that patronizes vaudeville would do well to be present at most first numbers, and remain for most or many of the closing ones. A number, I repeat, like the Four Danubes, should not be snubbed by any one.

I have seen recently, then, by way of summary, four fine bits of artistry in vaudeville--Ella Shields, James Watts, the Brothers Rath, and the Four Danubes. I shall speak again of these people. They are well worth it. They turn pastime into perfect memory. They are, therefore, among the great artists.

A CHARMING EQUESTRIENNE

I am impelled to portray, at this time, my devotion to the little equestrienne, by the presence of a traveling circus in these lofty alt.i.tudes in which I am now living, seven thousand feet above the sea, in our great southwest. The mere sight of this master of the miniature ring, with all the atmosphere of the tent about him, after almost insurmountable difficulties crossing the mountains, over through the canyons of this expansive country, delivering an address in excellently chosen English, while poised at a considerable height on the wire, to the mult.i.tude on the ground below him, during which time he is to give what is known as the "free exhibit" as a high wire artist--all this turns me once more to the ever charming theme of acrobatics in general and equestrianism in particular, and it is of a special genius in this field that I wish to speak.

I have always been a lover of these artists of bodily vigour, of muscular melody, as I like to call it. As I watched this ringmaster of the little traveling circus, this master mountebank of the st.u.r.dy figure, ably poised upon his head on the high wire, outlined against the body of the high mountain in the near distance, about which the thunder clouds were huddling, and in and out of which the lightning was sharply playing, it all formed for me another of those perfect sensations from that phase of art expression known as the circus. My happiest memories in this field are from the streets of Paris before the war, the incomparably lovely fetes. Only the sun knows where these dear artists may be now.

But I am wanting to tell of the little equestrienne, whose work has for the past five years been a source of genuine delight to me, charming little May Wirth, of Australian origin, with her lovely dark eyes, and captivating English accent. If you have a genuine sympathy for this sort of expression, it is but natural that you want to get inside the ring, and smell the turf with them, and so it was the representative of this gifted little woman who brought us together. It is, in the first place, a pity that there is so little written of the history of these people, so little material from which to gather the development of the idea of acrobatics in general, or of any one phase in particular. It would be impossible to learn who was the first aerial trapezist, for instance, or where high wire performing was brought from, just when the trick of adjusting the body to these difficult and strenuous rhythms was originated. They cannot tell you themselves. Only if there happens to be more than two generations in existence can you trace the development of this form of athletic entertainment. It may have begun with the Egyptians, it may have begun with the first gypsies.

These people do not write their history, they simply make it among themselves, and it is handed down through the generations. When I asked May Wirth for information, she said she knew of none on the subject, save that she herself sprang from five generations of acrobats and equestrians, and that it is terrifically hard labour from beginning to end, equestrianism in particular, since it requires a knowledge of several if not all the other physical arts combined, such as high wire walking, handspring and somersault, trapeze work, bars, ballet dancing, etc.; that she herself had begun as a child, and had run the entire gamut of these requirements, coming out the finished product, so to speak, in all but ballet dancing, which she disliked, and wept always when the time came for her lesson in this department.

When one sees the incomparable brilliancy of this little woman of the horse, watching her marvellous ground work, which is in itself an example of virtuosity, one realizes what accomplishment alone can do, for she is not yet twenty-five, and the art is already in the condition of genius with her. Five handsome side-wheels round the ring, and a flying jump on the horse, then several complete somersaults on the horse's back while he is in movement round the ring, is not to be slighted for consideration, and if, as I have said, you have a love or even a fancy for this sort of entertainment, you all but worship the little lady for the thrill she gives you through this consummate mastery of hers.

"I always wanted to do what the boys could do, and I was never satisfied until I had accomplished it." This was the strongest a.s.sertion the little lady of the horse was moved to make while in conversation, and that the ring is more beautiful to work in than on a mat upon a stage, for it is in the ring that the horse is most at home, it is easier for him, and gives him greater muscular freedom, with the result naturally, that it is easier on the muscles of the human body while in action. I have never tired of this species of entertainment. It has always impressed me as being the most natural form of transposed physical culture, esthetically speaking. It does for the eye, if you are sensitive, what music does for the ear. It gives the body a chance to show its exquisite rhythmic beauty, as no other form of athletics can, for it is the beautiful plastic of the body, harmonically arranged for personal delight.

It is something for so young a woman to have walked away with first honours in her chosen field, yet like the true artist that she is, she is thinking always of how she can beautify her accomplishment to a still greater degree. She is mistress of a very difficult art, and yet the brilliancy of her performance makes it seem as if it were but the experiment of an afternoon, in the out-of-doors. Like all fine artists, she has brushed away from sight all aspects of labour, and presents you, with astounding ease, the apparent easiness of the thing. She is powerfully built, and her muscles are master of coordination, such as would be the envy of mult.i.tudes of men, and with all this power, she is as simple in her manner and appearance as is the young debutante at her coming out function. You are impressed with her sweetness and refinement, first of all, and the utter lack of show about her, as also with her brother who is a dapper young man of the very English type, who works with her, and acts as the dress-suited gentleman in this acrobatic ringplay of theirs. Three other members of her family take part also with her, the ring-mistress, a woman of possibly forty, acting as host, looking exceptionally well, handsome indeed, in grey and silver evening dress, with fine dark eyes and an older sister who opens the performance with some good work. This seems to me to be the modern touch, for there was a time when it was always the very well groomed ringmaster, with top hat and monocle, who acted as host of the ring.

It will likewise be remembered by those who saw the Hannafords at the circus, that they were also possessed of a very handsome ring-mistress, elegantly gowned, both of these older ladies lending great distinction, by their presence, to already brilliant performances. I would be very pleased to make myself historian for these fine artists, these esthetes of muscular melody. I should like very much to be spokesman for them, and point out to an enforcedly ignorant public, the beauties of this line of artistic expression, and to give historical account of the development of these various picturesque athletic arts. Alas, that is not possible, for it must remain forever in the limbo of tradition.

We shall have to be grateful beyond expression for the beautiful art of May Wirth, and devote less enthusiasm to asking of when and how it came about. To have established one's art at the perfect point in one's girlhood, is it not achievement, is it not genius itself?

Charming little May Wirth, first equestrienne of the world, I congratulate you for your beautiful presentation, for the excellence of its technique, and for the grace and fascination contained therein.

Triumph in youth, victory in the heroic period of life, that surely is sufficient. Let the bays fall upon her young head gleefully, for she earned them with patience, devotion, intelligence, and very hard labours. Salutations, little lady of the white horse! How charming, how simple she was, the little equestrienne as she rode away from the door of the huge theatre, in her pale blue touring car. "I love the audiences here in this great theatre, but O, I love the circus so much more!" These were the sentiments of the little performer as she rode away. She is now touring, performing under the huge canvases in the open areas of the middle West, and the little traveling circus is on its way over the mountains. Fascinating people, and a fascinating life for whom there is not, and probably never will be, a written history; the story of whose origin lies almost as buried as that of the primitive peoples. Charming rovers, content with life near to the bright sky, charming people, for whom life is but one long day in which to make beautiful their bodies, and make joyful the eyes of those who love to look at them!

JOHN BARRYMORE IN PETER IBBETSON

The vicissitudes of the young boy along the vague, precarious way, the longing to find the reality of the dream--the heart that knew him best--a study in sentimentality, the pathetic wanderings of a "little boy lost" in the dream of childhood, and the "little boy found" in the arms of his loved mother, with all those touches that are painful and all that are exquisite and poignant in their beauty--such is the picture presented by John Barrymore, as nearly perfect as any artist can be, in "Peter Ibbetson." Certainly it is as finished a creation in its sense of form, and of color, replete with a finesse of rare loveliness, as gratifying a performance, to my notion, as has been seen on our stage for many years. Perhaps if the author, recalling vain pasts, could realize the sc.u.m of saccharinity in which the play is utterly submerged, and that it struggles with great difficulty to survive the nesselrodelike sweetness with which it is surfeited, he would recognize the real distinction that Barrymore lends to a role so clogged by the honeyed sentimentality covering most of the scenes.

Barrymore gives us that "quickened sense" of the life of the young man, a portrayal which takes the eye by "its fine edge of light," a portrayal clear and cool, elevated to a fine loftiness in his rendering.

The actor has accomplished this by means of a nice knowledge of what symbolic expression means to the art of the stage. He is certainly a painter of pictures and moods, the idea and his image perfectly commingled, endowing this mediocre play with true charm by the distinction he lends it, by sheer discretion, and by a power of selection. All this he brings to a play which, if it had been written nowadays, would certainly have convicted its author, and justly too, of having written to stimulate the lachrymal effusions of the shop-girl, a play about which she might telephone her girl friend, at which she might eat bon bons, and powder her nose again for the street. No artist, no accepted artist, has given a more suggestive rendering than has Barrymore here. It would be difficult to say where he is at his best, except that the first half of the play counts for most in point of strength and opportunity.

A tall frail young man, we find him, blanched with wonder and with awe at the perplexity of life, seeking a solution of things by means of the dream, as only the dreamer and the visionary can, lost from first to last, seemingly unloved in the ways boys think they want to be loved; that is, the shy longing boy, afraid of all things, and mostly of himself, in the period just this side of s.e.x revelation. He is the neophyte--the homeless, pathetic Peter, perplexed with the strangeness of things real and temporal--vision and memory counting for all there is of reality to him, with life itself a thing as yet untasted. Who shall forget (who has a love for real expression) the entrance of Peter into the drawing-room of Mrs. Deane, the pale flowery wisp of a boy walking as it were into a garden of pungent spices and herbs, and of actions so alien to his own? We are given at this moment the keynote of mastery in delicate suggestion, which never fails throughout the play, tedious as it is, overdrawn on the side of symbolism and mystical insinuation.

One sits with difficulty through many of the moments, the literary quality of them is so wretched. They cloy the ear, and the mind that has been made sensitive, desiring something of a finer type of stimulation. Barrymore has evoked, so we may call it, a cold method--against a background of what could have been overheated acting or at least a superabundance of physical attack--the warmth of the play's tender sentimentalities; yet he covers them with a still spiritual ardor which is their very essence, extracting all the delicate nuances and arranging them with a fine sense of proportion.

It is as difficult an accomplishment for a man as one can imagine. For it is not given to many to act with this degree of whiteness, devoid of off colorings or alien tones. This performance of Barrymore in its spiritual richness, its elegance, finesse, and intelligence, has not been equaled for me since I saw the great geniuses Paul Orleneff and Eleonora Duse.

It is to be at once observed that here is a keen pictorial mind, a mind which visualizes perfectly for itself the chiaroscuro aspects of the emotion, as well as the spiritual, for Barrymore gives them with an almost unerring felicity, and rounds out the portrayal which in any other hands would suffer, but Barrymore has the special power to feel the value of reticence in all good art, the need for complete subjection of personal enthusiasm to the force of ideas. His art is akin to the art of silver-point, which, as is known, is an art of directness of touch, and final in the instant of execution, leaving no room whatever for accident or untoward excitement of nerve.

We shall wait long for the silver suggestiveness such as Barrymore gives us when Peter gets his first glimpse of Mary, d.u.c.h.ess of Towers.

Who else could convey his realization of her beauty, and the quality of reminiscence that lingers about her, of the rapt amaze as he stands by the mantel-piece looking through the door into the s.p.a.ce where he sees her in the midst of dancers under a crystal chandelier somewhere not very distant? Or the moment when he finds her bouquet neglected on the table in the drawing-room, with her lace shawl not far from his hands? Or when he finds himself alone, pressing his lips into the depth of the flowers as the curtain gives the finale to the scene with the whispered "l'amour"! These are moments of a real lyrist, and would match any line of Banville, of Ronsard, or of Austin Dobson for delicacy of touch and feeling, for freshness, and for the precise spiritual gesture, the "intonation" of action requisite to relieve the moments from what might otherwise revert to commonplace sentimentality.

Whatever the prejudice may be against all these emotions glace with sugary frosting, we feel that his art has brought them into being with an unmistakable gift of refinement coupled with superb style. How an artist like Beardsley would have revelled in these moments is easy to conjecture. For here is the quintessence of intellectualized aquarelle, and these touches would surely have brought into being another "Pierrot of the Minute"--a new line drawing out of a period he knew and loved well. These touches would have been graced by the hand of that artist, or by another of equal delicacy of appreciation, Charles Conder--unforgettable s.p.a.ces replete with the essence of fancy, of dream, of those farther recesses of the imagination.

Although technically and historically Barrymore has the advantage of excellent traditions, he nevertheless rests entirely upon his own achievements, separate and individual in his understanding of what const.i.tutes plastic power in art. He has a peculiar and most sensitive temper, which can arrange points of relation in juxtaposition with a keen sense of form as well as of substance. He is, one might say, a masterly draftsman with a rich cool sense of color, whose work has something of the still force of a drawing of Ingres with, as well, the sensitive detail one finds in a Redon, like a beautiful drawing on stone. An excellent knowledge of dramatic contrasts is displayed by the brothers Barrymore, John and Lionel, in the murder scene, one of the finest we have seen for many years, technically even, splendid, and direct, concise in movement. Every superfluous gesture has been eliminated. From the moment of Peter's locking the door upon his uncle the scene is wrapped in the very coils of catastrophe, almost Euripedean in its inevitability. All of this episode is kept strictly within the realm of the imagination. It is an episode of hatred, of which there is sure to be at least one in the life of every young sensitive, when every boy wants, at any rate somewhere in his mind, to destroy some influence or other which is alien or hateful to him. The scene emphasizes once again the beauty of technical power for its own sake, the thrill of discarding all that is not immediately essential to simple and direct realization.

Little can be said of the play beyond this point, for it dwindles off into sentimental mystification which cannot be enjoyed by anyone under fifty, or appreciated by anyone under eighteen. It gives opportunity merely for settings and some rare moments of costuming, the lady with the battledore reminding one a deal of a good Manet. This and, of course, the splendid appearance of the d.u.c.h.ess of Towers in the first act--all these touches furnish more than a satisfying background for the very shy and frail Peter.

This performance of Barrymore holds for me the first and last requisite of organized conception in art--poise, clarity, and perfect suggestibility. Its intellectual soundness rules the emotional extravagance, giving form to what--for lack of form--so often perishes under an excess of energy, which the ignorant actor subst.i.tutes for the plastic element in all art. It has the att.i.tude, this performance, almost of diffidence to one's subject-matter, except as the intellect judges clearly and coolly. Thus, in the sense of esthetic reality, are all aspects clarified and made real. From the outward inward, or from the inward outward, surface to depth or depth to surface--it is difficult to say which is the precise method of approach. John Barrymore has mastered the evasive subtlety therein, which makes him one of our greatest artists. The future will surely wait for his riper contributions, and we may think of him as one of our foremost artists, among the few, "one of a small band," as the great novelist once said of the great poet.

PART THREE

LA CLOSERIE DE LILAS