Without Prejudice Part 9

"They are starting the Grand Prix," hastily interrupted the Young Fogey.

"Good-bye! Such a delightful talk!" And turning his back on the horses, he hurried off the field to lose himself and perhaps find a new pair of English ears among the parasols and equipages of the sunlit Prater.

XI

CRITICS AND PEOPLE

What is the critic's duty at the play? Does he represent Art, or does he represent the Public? If he represent Art, then he is but a refracting medium between the purveyor and the public, which will therefore be wofully mistaken if it seek in his critiques a guide to its play-going, as it to some extent does. For while people do not always like a play because they are told it is good, they often refrain from going to see one because they are told it is bad. When I was a dramatic critic--a phrase that merely means I did not pay for my seat--nothing struck me more forcibly than the frequent discrepancy between the opinions of the audience at a _premiere_ and the opinions of the papers. Again and again have I seen an audience moved to laughter and cheers and tears by a play which the great outside public would be informed the next morning was indifferent or worse. The discrepancy was sometimes explicable by _claques_, which are almost as discreditable to managements as the keeping of tame critics, who eat food out of their hand. Sometimes it was not professional _claques_, but amateurs come to see a friend's play _en ma.s.se_, and applauding out of all proportion to its merits, not so much perhaps from friendship as from simple astonishment at finding any merits. But putting aside _claques_, it remains true that an audience will often heartily enjoy what a critic will heartily d.a.m.n--sometimes in half a dozen papers, your capable critic being like a six-barrelled revolver. And so--often enough--the piece, after futile efforts to masquerade in the advertis.e.m.e.nt columns in a turned garment of favourable phrases, dies in an odour of burnt paper; the treasury is robbed of its due returns; and numerous worthy persons to whom it would have given boundless pleasure are deprived of their just enjoyment. The obvious truth is that the public and the critics--the people who pay to see plays and the people who are paid to see plays--have different canons of criticism. Sometimes their judgments coincide, but quite as frequently they disagree. It is the same with popular books. And the reason of this is not far to seek. The critic is not only more cultured than the average playgoer, he is more _blase_. He knows the stock situations, the stage tricks, the farcical misunderstandings, the machine-made pathos, the dull mechanic round of repartee, the innocent infant who intervenes in a divorce suit (like the Queen's Proctor), the misprised mother-in-law, the bearded spinster sighing like a furnace, the ingenuous and slangy young person of fifteen with the well-known cheek, and the even more stereotyped personages preserved in Mr. Jerome's "Stage-land." They all come, if not from Sheffield, from a perpetual tour in the provinces. The critic knows, too, which plays are taken from the French and which from the English, where the actor is gagging and when he is "fluffy." A good deal of the disillusionment of the scene is also his: he knows that the hero is not young nor the heroine beautiful, nor the villain as vicious as either.

How different the att.i.tude of the occasional playgoer! Seeing only a t.i.the of the plays of the day, he neither knows nor cares whether they repeat one another. The most hackneyed device may seem brilliantly original to him, the stalest stage trick as fresh as if just hot from the brain; and jokes that deterred the dove from returning to the ark arride him vastly. _Per contra_, for his unjaded imagination absolutely new scenes and dialogues have no more novelty than the comparatively aged.

Probability or truth to life he demands not, perfection of form were thrown away upon him. His soul melts before the simplest pathos, he is made happy by a happy ending, and when Momus sits on a hat "he openeth his mouth and saith Ha! ha!" He is a flute upon which you may play what false notes you will. In some versions of "Uncle Tom's Cabin" he placidly accepts two Topsies. I s'pec's one growed out of t' other. He hath a pa.s.sion for the real as well as the ideal, and in order to see a fire-engine, or Westminster Bridge, or a snow-storm, he will perspire you two hours at the pit's mouth. He could see them any day in the street, but it gives him wondrous joy to see them in their wrong places. How absurd, then, for the average critic to be play-taster to the occasional playgoer! He no more represents him than an M. P. represents the baby he kisses. As well might one ask a connoisseur to choose the claret for a back-parlour supper-party. Thus the critic cannot honestly represent the Public. That he cannot represent Art without injuring the Theatre as well as the Public, has already been shown. The conclusion one is driven to is that the critic has no _raison d'etre_ at all in the topical press. There he should be replaced by the reporter. The influence of cultivated criticism should be brought to bear on the drama only from the columns of high-cla.s.s magazines or books.

Nor am I more certain of the use of the art critic. He is far too conflicting to be of any practical value, and he as often contradicts himself as his fellows. He hides his ignorance in elegant English, sometimes illuminated by epigram, and from his dogmatic verdicts there is no appeal. Not infrequently he is resolved to be a critic "in spite of nature," as Sir Joshua has it in a delicious phrase which was possibly given him by his friend "the great lexicographer." In a letter to the "Idler," the painter recommends those devoid of eye or taste, and with no great disposition to reading and study, to "a.s.sume the character of a connoisseur, which may be purchased at a much cheaper rate than that of a critic in poetry." "The remembrance of a few names of painters, with their general characters," says Sir Joshua, "and a few rules of the Academy, which they may pick up among the Painters, will go a great way towards making a very notable Connoisseur." He goes on to describe a gentleman of this cast, whose mouth was full of the cant of Criticism, "which he emitted with that volubility which generally those orators have who annex no ideas to their words."

When I once expressed to Mr. Whistler my conviction that, with the single exception of religion, more nonsense was talked on the subject of art than on any other topic in the world, that great authority refused to allow religion any such precedence. Certainly during the season when, for the middle-cla.s.s Londoner, art "happens," the claims of art to that proud pre-eminence become overwhelming, if only temporarily so. Everybody gives his opinion freely, and it is worth the price. To criticise painting is only less difficult than to execute it. Fifty per cent. of art is sheer science, the rigid, accurate science of form and perspective, I do not say that accuracy is necessary to art. Still it is what most people presume to judge. But does one person in a hundred know the true proportions of things, or possess the eye to gauge the anatomy of a figure? Owing to the neglect in schools of the rudiments of drawing, our eyes barely note the commonest objects; we remark just enough of their characteristics to identify them. "Consider!" as Mr. John Davidson writes in his "Random Itinerary": "did you ever see a sparrow? You have heard and read about sparrows. The streets are full of them; you know they exist. But you could not describe one, or say what like is its note. You have never seen a sparrow, any more than you have seen the thousand-and-one men and women you pa.s.sed in Fleet street the last time you walked through it. _Did_ you ever see a sparrow?" And then there is colour. Do you really know what the colour of that landscape is, or what complex hues mantle the surface of yonder all-mirroring pool? Do you know that, the appearance of nature is constantly varying with every change of light and every pa.s.sing cloud? Do you know how Primrose Hill looks at night? Perhaps you think you know how a haystack looks in the sunlight; yet across the Channel the ill.u.s.trious Monet devoted months to painting one haystack, making fresh discoveries daily. I do not believe you know how many Roman figures there are on your watch-dial. You probably think there are twelve. But what is far more important, you may be quite devoid of artistic sensibility. Yet you would not hesitate to criticise the Academy or even to be paid for it. I had occasion to buy a doll the other day. It was a she-doll. There seems, by the way, a tremendous preponderance of the fair s.e.x in dolls: what difficult social problems must agitate the Dolls' Houses! This was a pretty doll, with wide blue eyes, and a wealth of golden tow, and an expression of aristocratic innocence on its waxen cheek, faintly flushed with paint, and I bore it home with pride. But when I came to examine it, I found it was but a sawdust abomination. Oh the modelling of the arm, oh the anatomy of the leg, oh the patella proximate to the ankle! I felt that if I gave that doll to the expectant infant, she might grow up to be an art critic.

Thus, then, mused I sorrowfully, is the nation's taste made in Germany.

We are corrupted from the cradle, even as upon our tombs badly carved angels balance themselves dolefully. Let me make a nation's dolls: I care not who makes its pictures. Was it of these dolls a late President of the Royal Academy was thinking, when he said that the German genius did not find its best expression in plastic art? The Academy will not be permanently improved until we improve our dolls.

XII

TABLE-TALK

Now that the world is so full of free dinners for the well-fed, it behoves hostesses to reconsider their methods. With so many dinner-tables open to the lion, or even to the cub, they must do their spiriting dexterously if they would feed him. In these days when seven hostesses pluck hold of the swallow-tails of one man, and the form of grace before meals must be, "For those we are about to receive, Lord make us truly thankful," something more than the average attraction is needed to induce the n.o.ble animal to dine at your expense. There is one improvement in the great dinner function for which I would respectfully solicit the attention of ladies who entertain but do not amuse. "It is a great point in a gallery how you hang your pictures," says the sage of Concord, "and not less in society how you seat your party. When a man meets his accurate mate, Society begins and life is delicious." Yes, but how rarely does a man meet his accurate mate in these minor marriages of the dinner-table! How often is he chained for hours to an unsympathetic soul he has not even made the mistake of selecting. The terrible length of the modern dinner makes the grievance very real, and in a society already vibrant with the demand for easier divorce it is curious that there has arisen no Sarah Grand of the dining-room to protest against this diurnal evil. Suppose that at a dance you were told off to one perpetual partner, who would ever don pumps? Is it not obvious that at a dinner you should have the same privilege as at a dance--the privilege of choosing your partner for each course? It could be done during the drawing-room wait. I give an example of an ordinary menu, marked after the fashion of a gentleman's dance programme, from which it will the seen at a glance how much more delightful a dinner would become if you could change your partner as often as your plate.

MENU, JUNE 15th, 1894.

Plats. Engagements.

1. Hors d'oeuvres . . . . S. S.

2. Soup . . . . . . . . . A. P. S.

3. Poisson . . . . . . . Pinky.

4. Poisson . . . . . . . L. R.

5. Entree . . . . . . . . Blue Bow.

6. Entree . . . . . . . . Red Hair.

7. Joint . . . . . . . . W.

8. Sweet . . . . . . . . Minnie.

9. Sweet . . . . . . . . Minnie.

10. Cheese . . . . . . . Long Arms.

11. Dessert . . . . . . . I. V.

(Interval before ladies rise.)

Extra Entree . . . . . . Agnes.

Extra Joint . . . . . . . Eyegla.s.ses.

Extra Sweet . . . . . . . Minnie.

You perceive at once that you would always put your idol _pro tem_, down for the sweets, which would become as fertile a source of flirtation as "love" in tennis. Of course the same tact and discretion would be needed in filling your menu as in filling your programme. Some ladies who are excellent at the entree may be inadvisable for the joint, which they may sit out, expecting to monopolise your attention to the detriment of your meal. Others who are dull at the soup may be agreeably vivacious towards the later items. A new series of formulae would be added to the language:

"May I have the pleasure of seeing your menu?"

"Will you give me one sweet?"

"Can you spare me the joint?"

"I am so sorry: I have just given it away."

"See me eat the poisson, as Grossmith says."

"Will you put me down for a fish?"

"This is our entree, I think."

"May I have my dessert, Minnie?"

"Are you engaged for the cheese?"

"Yes; but you can have the second entree."

"Don't forget to keep the soup for me!"

"If you don't mind sitting it out!"

"Are you open for the extra joint?"

"Thank you: I am full up."

For hostesses who shrink from such a revolution, a beginning might be made by an automatic change of seats by the gentlemen, say one to the right as in the _cha.s.se-croise_ of the Caledonians. Failing this, the only remaining method of avoiding monotony and the chilling separation of the extremes of the board is to follow the example of King Arthur and employ a round table. The round dinner-table is the only way of making both ends meet.

Having got your round table, what are you to eat upon it? There is hardly any edible known to the menu which some sect or other would not banish from the kitchen, while if you were to follow the "Lancet" you would eat nothing at all, starving like Tantalus amid a wealth of provisions. Of these sects of the stomach I was aware of many. But it is only recently that the claims of "natural food" have been brought within my heathen ken. The apostle of the new creed is an American lady doctor, whose gospel, however, is somewhat vitiated by her championship of Mrs.

Maybrick, so that one cannot resist the temptation of suspecting that she thinks the jury would never have found that interesting lady guilty if they had fed upon starchless food. For this is the creed of the new teaching. All starch foods are chiefly digested in the intestines instead of in the main stomach, and hence are unnatural and morbiferous, and the chief cause of the nervous prostration and broken-down health that abound on all sides. (Herr Nordau gives quite a different explanation of the general breakdown, but no matter.) "The 'Natural Food Society,'" says its official organ, "is founded in the belief that the food of primeval man consisted of fruit and nuts of sub-tropical climes, spontaneously produced; that on these foods man was, and may again become, at least as free from disease as the animals are in a state of nature." How curiously apposite seem Dryden's lines, written in a very different connection!

This was the fruit the private spirit brought, Occasioned by great zeal and little thought.

While crowds unlearned, with rude devotion warm, About the sacred viands buzz and swarm.

And this couplet of his, too, might be commended to the devotees:

A thousand daily sects rise up and die; A thousand more the perished race supply.

What does it matter what primeval man ate? It is not even certain that he was a member of the Natural Food Society. The savage, as we know him, lives on the game he hunts and shoots, and prefers his fellow-man to vegetarianism. No one ever accused the red Indian of nervous prostration, "when wild in woods the n.o.ble savage ran"; nor are leopards and tigers usually in broken-down health. But, in justice to the Natural Food Society, I must admit that it displays a pleasant absence of fanaticism, for there is a proviso in italics: "_All persons about to experiment with the non-starch food system are urged at first not to use nuts, but to use instead whatever animal food they have been accustomed to._" The central feature of the system is abstention from bread, cereals, pulses, and starchy vegetables, for which food fruits are to be subst.i.tuted. All this seems a mighty poor excuse for the formation of a new sect. Fortunately the Society uses up its superfluous energies "in working for the higher life," and in its coupling of health and holiness is sound in its psychology, whatever it may be in its physiology.

You never heard of Peterkin's pudding, by the way, but there is a fine moral baked in it. Johannes came to his wife one day and said, "_Liebes_ Gretchen, could you not make me a pudding such as Peterkin is always boasting his wife makes him? I am dying of envy to taste it. Every time he talks of it my chops water." "It is not impossible I could make you one," said Gretchen good-naturedly; "I will go and ask Frau Peterkin how she makes it." When Johannes returned that evening from the workshop, where Peterkin had been raving more than ever over his wife's pudding, Gretchen said gleefully, "I have been to Frau Peterkin: she has a good heart, and she gave me the whole recipe for Peterkin's pudding." Johannes rubbed his hands, and his mouth watered already in antic.i.p.ation. "It is made with raisins," began Gretchen. Johannes's jaw fell. "We can scarcely afford raisins," he interrupted: "couldn't you manage without raisins?"

"Oh, I dare say," said Gretchen, doubtfully. "There is also candied lemon-peel." Johannes whistled. "Ach, we can't run to that," he said.

"No, indeed," a.s.sented Gretchen; "but we must have suet and yeast." "I don't see the necessity," quoth Johannes. "A good cook like you"--here he gave her a sounding kiss--"can get along without such trifles as those."

"Well, I will try," said the good Gretchen, as cheerfully as she could; and so next morning Johannes went to work light-hearted and gay. When he returned home, lo! the long-desired dainty stood on the supper-table, beautifully brown. He ran to embrace his wife in grat.i.tude and joy; then he tremblingly broke off a hunch of pudding and took a huge bite. His wife, anxiously watching his face, saw it a.s.sume a look of perplexity, followed by one of disgust. Johannes gave a great snort of contempt.