Various
Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 71, No. 438, April 1852
OUR LONDON COMMISSIONER
On presenting our credentials from Maga, we have been received in all quarters with the greatest possible respect. We have had private boxes presented to us at both the Italian Operas, and a free ticket, entitling the bearer to a glass of gin and water, at the Yorkshire Stingo. Museums are thrown open to us on the mere announcement of our name; Kew Gardens burst into bloom on our approach; and with regard to levee and drawing-room, we content ourselves with a distant and respectful allusion to the obliging behaviour of some of the loftiest personages in this realm; we will only say that the Lord Chamberlain and the Lord Steward have behaved in a manner to secure our highest approbation and esteem. May it be long – in the figurative language of the Coal-hole – before they cut their sticks! Nor is it only with regard to the existent objects of art or elegance that we are called upon to express our acknowledgments. Artists have already waited on us to express their anxiety to do honour to our employer by attentions showered upon ourselves. To three of the most venerated members of the Royal Academy we were reluctantly compelled to refuse our consent, when they proposed a peristrephic panorama – eight miles in length – to be called The Commissioner's Voyage to London. We declined the glory of being the central figure in a linked sweetness so very long drawn out, more especially as we are conscious of not being in our best looks if represented at the rougher periods of our experience as passenger in a Leith smack. We omit an enumeration of the tributary offerings from Truman, Hanbury & Co., as also from Sir Felix Booth. A blush of pleasure settles on our countenance when we reflect on these friendly gifts, as you may observe, perhaps, on our return, by a close inspection of our nose. Churches and chapels, no less than distilleries and museums, have vied with each other in the warmth of their reception. From gentlemanly High-Church, as from puritanical Dissent, we have received the most pressing invitations, particularly on occasion of a charity sermon. Country or colour no object, we have been equally addressed by the United-Negro-Mental-Cultivation-Society, and the Red-Republican-topsy-turvy Association, under the presidency of Louis Blanc. With such an "open sesame" in our possession as is supplied by the appointment we now hold, it will be our own fault if a single object worthy of observation is omitted from our report; and we have only to say, before we proceed to the serious business of our commission, that we shall discharge the duties of our office with a high and fearless disregard of all consequences whatsoever. If we are a little too severe on the vanity or other bad feelings of any of the thin-skinned subjects of our remarks, we will observe that we are of an Irish family, in which the shortest of our three brothers is six feet two; and that we are still in the possession of the hair-triggers, with which our grandfather fought his way to the head of the Bar at the expense of twelve meetings with the various leading counsel on the opposite side. For the satisfaction of less belligerent but equally sensitive opponents, we will mention that one of our cousins is an attorney in very little practice, and that his address will be forthcoming on the slightest hint of legal proceedings. After this flourish of trumpets, we toss our hat into the ring, shake hands all round with all the world, and proceed to work.
The objects which we take into our charge in the present communication, are the places of amusement. First in the rank of these are, of course, the theatres; but whether from their now existing merits, or from ancient prescription, it is useless at the present time to inquire. To many the word itself has still a magical charm; and, in spite of what is called the decadence of the stage, the inferiority of actors, and the general change of taste, to them the theatre has still unequalled attractions: the poorest side-scenes are superior to Stanfield's finest landscapes; orange-peel is sweeter than Sabæan odours from the spicy shores of Araby the blest; and something, a sentiment, a regret, a recollection, rises to them from the seediest of dresses, and dirtiest of boards, and,
"Like the memory of the just,
Smells sweet, and blossoms from the dust."
There are others to whom the theatre is an abomination, who see nothing in it but the abode of misery and the school of vice, who frown upon the steadiest of people sitting quietly in the boxes, and look fiercely down on the humbler tenants of the pit. Let us have a few words, as used often to be observed by a witty and oleaginous friend of ours, on the "general question." People must be amused. That is a universal proposition. It is impossible for all mankind to be for ever bending over books, or calculating ventures, or studying mathematics, or writing history or other works of imagination. "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy," and Janet an insufferable girl. All metaphysics and no liveliness, would make them incredibly stupid. All sermons and no relaxation would make them very wicked. Imagine a world of statists and geometricians, strong-minded women and intellectual young ladies, a whole generation of M'Cullochs, and Lardners, and Jellibies, and Miss Bunions! The thing is impossible. We have too many of that sort of people already; and if it were the type of the English character, and we were all condemned by law to the same dreary, useful, honourable, dull, elevated, worthy-of-an-immortal-being and detestable existence, we can only say that a French invasion would to us lose all its terrors, and that we would instantly sell our minié rifle for half price. If people are to be amused, how are we to amuse them? – Respectably of course; improvingly by all means; intellectually if possible. Now, in this united Rome-Babylon-and-Nineveh which rejoices in the name of London, there are two millions and a half of the most active, energetic, bustling, sagacious, and exacting human beings who were ever assembled together before. The variety of tastes must be infinite in the style of their amusements, as in all other things. Mr Muggleton Stentor derives the greatest possible gratification from roaring to a dimly-lighted audience a series of denunciations and forebodings, which excite his congregation like gin; but it would be very hard if Mr Muggleton Stentor were the "arbiter of the elegancies" for everybody else, and there was no way whatever left of getting through an evening unless by listening to the howls and bellowings that are the delight of his warm and philanthropic heart. Would we put an end to the eloquence of Stentor? By no means. Horrible as may be his discord, and bitter as may be his sentiments, his auditors are better employed there than in swilling beer or cheering Bronterre O'Brien. There must be a hundred and fifty thousand people in this city who require relaxation, mental, or bodily, after the toils of the day; or some healthful stimulant after the idleness and listlessness of a rich and luxurious existence. What is to be done for them? You say you can't ask them, or even permit them, to go to the theatre, for there is nothing there to be heard but ribaldry, and nothing learned but immorality and vice. The people who tell you this will tell you in the same breath they have never been in a theatre in their lives! Oh, no! it is too shocking a place for such holy personages to visit; and the ninth commandment is rolled firmly up into a sharp and angular parcel, and sent with all their might against the faces of Henry Hart Milman, Henry Taylor, and Justice Talfourd.
This squeamish horror of the theatre is the result, we are willing to believe, of mere ignorance and stupidity. The word theatre itself is partly to blame for this; for the old meaning has never altogether eradicated itself from the half-educated mind. The amphitheatre still rises up with its burning Christians, its murdered gladiators, and fights of wild beasts. Before another class of objectors, the theatre rises as the chosen headquarters of the irreverence, iniquity, and debauchery of the wits of Charles's time. The one class of entertainments is just as much exploded as the other. It is not more likely that the lovers of Congreve and Wycherly will be restored to the stage, than the slaughtering of French prisoners, or the conversion of oily churchmen into a row of lamps. Depend upon it, in no play of English manufacture within these twenty years, has there occurred a line, or a thought, which the most fastidious censor would be inclined to blot. The force of ancient custom, or the prestige of long-established fame, may still cause a play to be represented which is not adapted to the pure taste or morals of the present day – the spectator may have the pain of seeing equivocal situations received with applause, or coarse expressions escaping the condemnation they deserve; but if the lofty in station and mind, the matrons and daughters of England, the highly-polished gentlemen who keep the drawing-room and ball-room as pure from the whispers of evil as the inner court of Diana's temple, were to frequent the theatre, a still farther advance would be made in the refinement of the drama; vice would be shown its own image, but stript of all its allurements; and no better school of truth, or honour, or morality, could possibly be imagined, than a stage teeming with the poetic fancies of our noblest authors, and subdued and chastened by the presence and approbation of our best and wisest men. The faults, then, such as they still exist upon the stage, are caused, not by the people who patronise the theatre, but by those who desert it. It is really too bad to hear a stiff-neckclothed individual, who can spout you off a few hundred lines from the Greek dramatists that would make the gods in the shilling gallery shudder with horror and indignation, find fault with the productions of the modern playwrights as licentious or revolting. A man perhaps has gained his mitre by a knowledge of the scanning of the lines, and an intimate acquaintance with the most frightful allusions of Aristophanes, and would disfrock his chaplain if that worthy dignitary were seen in a box at the Princess's, laughing at the honest humour of "She Stoops to Conquer." This is by no means a light question, if you grant our first postulate, that people must be amused. Not more necessary to village children are national or parochial schools – not more beneficial to mechanics and artificers are literary and scientific institutes – not more useful to the humble classes are lectures on temperance or education, than the elevation of the theatre to the hundreds of thousands in populous city pent, who fly to them for information – for a lifting up of their thoughts into a world of imagination, and run the risk, through the negligence, the pharisaism, the ignorance, or the pride of those who should regulate public taste, of finding poison set before them in the place of wholesome food – of having the melodies and humanities of Shakspeare supplanted by "Dick Turpin" and "Jack Sheppard." As long as "Macbeth" and "Hamlet" are looked upon with the same detestation as the "Fiend of the Hollow," and the "Mysteries of Paris," so long will the chances be equal that the angel of darkness will expel the angel of light. Remember, therefore, O ye who indiscriminately abuse the theatre, and sanctimoniously turn away your eyes from the stage! that you are not only deserting a strong post, but basely surrendering it to the enemy; that you are building up the school-room door, and transferring the possession of it to people who may perhaps convert it into a gin-shop. Let us therefore hear no more hootings against theatrical performances in the abstract, but let them stand or fall by their own merits.
These are our wise saws; now for our modern instances. The night is cold. We have been busy all day, no matter in what occupation, even if it were writing a few pages in Maga; our chop is done; our lodging looks "lone and eerie;" of books for the moment we are tired; besides, our eyes require repose – our spirits need refreshment – the sight of human faces will be a charm – the sound of human voices will teach us to answer, as of old, to the "still, sad music of humanity;" we will wend our way to a theatre, and take an interest in the fates and fortunes, the loves and sufferings, of some lovely imaginary beings – and forget our bills, our labours, our disappointments, in following the strange eventful history that shall be unrolled before us, without any effort of our own. Muffling ourselves in our paletôt, and well enwrapt in a belcher fogle, we pursue our way through the still crowded streets, illuminated by the gorgeous windows, and find ourselves in the Haymarket. We are in ample time, and find the house only now beginning to fill. Let us look at the irreligious and disreputable pagans who occupy the boxes. Did you ever commit a murder, you old ruffian with the benevolent countenance so tenderly taking charge of those three blooming grandchildren of yours? You are a frightful hypocrite, sir, to look so calm and happy when you know very well that you come very often into this hotbed of iniquity, where you have constantly been taught to poison your oldest port in order to hocus and rob your friends. And as to you, you Messalina Manning! in the black satin, do you think all your graceful manners and pleasant smiles will conceal your real character from the Jeremiah Tawells and Doctor Dodds, who saw you bring your own nieces in your own quiet family coach into this high-school of Satan, where they will be most powerfully advised to deceive any husband they may catch, and elope with a captain in the Blues? The pit also is now nearly full. How we shudder to think of the forgers, swindlers, housebreakers, horse-stealers, drunkards, and smugglers, who are all looking so intolerably respectable, many of them accompanied by dowdy comfortable-looking companions, who pass themselves off for their wives, but all assembled here for the express purpose of taking lessons in depravity! Our eye is upon you – you there on the sixth bench from the orchestra! You are a farmer, sir, fresh from Essex; and having achieved an unenviable notoriety in Colchester, by perjury and highway robbery, you come up to perfect your education by listening to the shameful instruction communicated to you by an atrocious play. Yes, pig-stealer, our eye is upon you, and we give you up already, in spite of your expanse of greatcoat, and your shiny top-boots, your joyous face, and rubicund complexion, as a rascal fit only for transportation or the gallows. Mr Rush was once seen at a play! See, there is a quiver of expectation in the house – the curtain rapidly rises, and the play of "Woman's Heart" is begun. We are in a sculptor's studio; statues are placed all round the room; on a table is a block of marble just beginning to feel the breath of genius and flush into life; and on a sofa reclining in a graceful drapery, and watched by the intense eyes of the enraptured artist, we see a tall poetic-looking girl, with fine light hair parted on her majestic forehead, and an expression on her countenance as if she listened with her heart as well as with her ears. That is Isolina, a foster-sister of Angiolo the artist; his model, his all in all, his bride. Their language is charming, from its purity and affection; her voice is soft and low, an excellent thing in woman – but her motions have a strange constraint. She puts out her arms uncertainly; she stretches forth her feet searchingly; and with a full winning trustingness, places her hand on Angiolo's shoulder – for she is blind. But all other senses are sharpened to a painful degree. She feels his coldness in a single tone of his voice; detects the waning of the sympathy that once existed between them in the slightest motion of his form, and inquires with those sightless eyes, and scarcely in articulate words, what can be the reason of the change? He offers her the affection of a brother – the carefulness of a guardian; and she feels that she is deserted. Ambition has entered his heart. Princes invite him to their tables; the sovereign himself is honoured in the friendship of the artist and man of genius, who will bestow an immortality on his reign. There is no room for love in a heart so occupied, and he casts her off; not angrily, not even unkindly, but selfishly, and at the instigation of his pride. She throws herself for consolation on the kindness of the old peasant, the father of Angiolo, and the protector of her infancy; she utters no word against the deserter, but, as is the nature of woman's heart, loves him still. One interview she resolves to have, and finds her way to the magnificent palace in which the sculptor now pursues his art; fatigued with her walk, and overcome by her emotions, she lies down upon the sofa concealed in her cloak, and falls asleep. Angiolo comes in; his great friends visit him – a noble – a prince – and finally the duke. The beautiful girl is discovered, and makes an impression on the sovereign; but Angiolo is unyielding – a struggle there evidently is; but the world comes between him and the tenderness of his affection, and the blind girl finds that she is hopelessly forsaken. Two years have passed; her father, the Marquis of Albrizzi, has recognised her, taken her from the hands of the peasant, educated her, refined her, and by the touch of science removed the cloud from her sight, and she is now the noblest heiress in the land, and her hand is petitioned for by the duke. She rejects his suit, but agrees, at her father's request, to sit for her portrait to the most celebrated artist of his time. She has never seen Angiolo; the Marquis has made it imperative on the painter not to speak; for he dreads the effect of the recognition on his child, and in dumb show a very pretty scene takes place. But envy has been at work against the painter: a seditious picture, imitating his style, and even containing his forged initials on the canvass, has been exhibited in the market-place; a warrant has been issued for his arrest, and in the very midst of Isolina's vague anticipations and involuntary expectations – mysterious intimations, conveyed to her by magnetic sympathies, that her lover is before her – all doubts are converted into certainty, when the emissaries of the police rush into the room, attaint him of treason, and extract from him the indignant exclamation of his innocence. The voice has done it all! That sound has brought back all the past. Angiolo is hurried off to prison; but the purpose of Isolina is fixed. She follows him to his dungeon – obtains his pardon from the duke, who magnanimously foregoes his pretensions to her hand, brings better thoughts to Angiolo, whose infatuation was only momentary, and who had dearly paid, by two years of misery, for the heartlessness of his ambition; and even the proud Marquis is reconciled to the nuptials by the pleadings of his daughter, and the fame and genius of her lover.
Such is the feeble outline of the story. The language sometimes rises into exquisite poetry – is at all times smooth and graceful – and conveys a lesson, we think, that must "mend the manners and improve the heart." The authoress is the performer of the part of the heroine; and a charming performer of it she is. Never was anything more pure and classic than her appearance in the earlier scenes. The same feminine softness continues through the play, but elevated by occasional force and dignity when she "shapes her heart with woman's meekness to all duties of her rank." We will be bound to say, that not one thought unfit for cloistered nun or vestal pale was awakened throughout that play. The audience took a touch of decorum from the subdued and melting tenderness of the story; and even the oranges, soda-water, and ginger-beer, were announced to a thirsty and pleased audience in quieter tones than usual. The painter-sculptor was represented by Mr Barry Sullivan, a gentleman with a most Milesian name, but an unimpeachable English pronunciation. In this character there was no room for the display of tempestuous passion or energetic declamation; the flow of his words, as of his actions, was calm and equable; and if it had not been for the pleasantness of his look, and the gentlemanly propriety of his movements, it would have been impossible for him to regain the sympathies of the audience, after his cold rejection of the blind girl's affection. We confess we have not forgiven him for it yet; and if Isolina had been a sister of ours, nothing should have prevented our having a shot at him at twelve paces. Several of the other characters were executed in a very remarkable manner; and by the word "executed" here, we mean that they were fairly put to death. Some men have blank impassive features – mouths and eyes that have no expression at all; but compensate for it by the possession of legs of the most marked individuality, which there is no possibility of mistaking for anybody else's legs; regular, round, unfeatured sausages, which entirely destroy the assumption of any part by the unfortunate being who is perched upon them; but in this unchanging, stiff, unimaginative stolidity always reduce the Italian prince or Roman senator, or Grecian hero, to be nothing more nor less than plain Jack Vickers, or whatever his name may be, with his unimpulsive, unintellectual pins. A sad misfortune this; and the misery is aggravated by the apparent obtuseness of the owner of them, to the obvious bar they interpose between him and success in his profession. Can't those miserable individuals stuff the sawdust into different shapes, so as not to torment us for ever with Jack Vickers's legs? Come, let us off to the Adelaide gallery, and take a look at the Marionettes.
A pretty place this. A long narrow room, with a slight elevation from the stage, filled with comfortable seats, and closed in at the upper end with a few private boxes. A snug warm habitable apartment; and the stage so small, so low, so narrow, that any of the magnates of Baker Street could find room for it at the end of their drawing-rooms. It doesn't seem more than about nine feet wide, and the proscenium not more than eight feet high. But the proportions throughout are excellently kept; and when the manager walks in, drest in the first style of fashion, and makes a bow to the audience, it is difficult to believe he is about a foot and a half in height; and not very easy to remember that he is merely a stuffed doll. There are some peculiarities, to be sure, about him, which lead you to perceive that he differs from other men. For instance, he comes in rolling sideways, and planting his feet upon the floor in a manner not usual among gentlemen of the present day; nor have we observed that he is imitated by this generation in having his motions steadied by a rope of considerable size attached to the top of his head. But he begins: his attitudes are very good; he suits the action to the word with unfailing correctness, and passes judgment on the different actors, who display their skill before him, with a force and acumen which we look for in vain in the Edinburgh Review. Signor Bari Tone is a singer of extraordinary power, and has a perception of the humorous yet unattained by Lablache. He expresses his sentiments on the legitimate drama with an uncompromising truthfulness, which gains our respect even when we differ from him in opinion; and, for our own parts, we consider that his annotations and emendations of the Swan of Avon are worthy of the earliest attention of Mr Charles Knight. A tremendous drama succeeds these introductory flourishes, and the actors exert themselves to the utmost in the Bottle Imp. They enter, we are bound to say, more into the spirit of the author than is usually the case at larger theatres among larger performers. Here there is no underling bending his listless eyes towards the pit in the midst of the very agony of the action, nor any apathetic murderer standing utterly unconcerned when on the eve of executing the fatal deed. Here all is in excellent keeping. The dull dead eyes of the puppets are all turned to the proper part of the stage; their stiff arms are raised in horror, or extended in surprise, at the fitting moment; and, with the exception of four, or perhaps five, of the principal actors in the real stage, we consider that there is less appearance of sawdust and wool in the dramatis personæ at this theatre than at – or – . Here, in this chosen temple of originality and genius, there is nothing to tempt the principal tragedian into tricks of voice or style: the wooden attitude and timber tones are here natural property of the intelligent puppet; no sudden contractions of the countenance convulse the features into an ideal ugliness, such as Fuseli might have envied after his supper of raw pork; no sudden exclamations distend these leather-covered bosoms, like alarms of fire and battle, to subside as suddenly into low whispers or inarticulate groans, like the last agonies of an expiring trombone. No, charming, natural, and truly business-like Marionettes! if one thrill of gratified ambition pervades your hearts at the perusal of these lines, our purpose will have been fully obtained. We pronounce you in your tout-ensemble the most perfect corps of artistes in London; and though we are bound to confess that your performance is tiresome after the first ten minutes, that after the first display of your mechanism you become positively a nuisance, from your imitating humanity so abominably, justice compels us to pass the same judgment on the great majority of your living brethren, larger than you – as merely mechanical, and not a whit more intelligent.
For, after all, what is the use of our Commissionership if we do not speak the truth? We say, then, that in few theatres of London can a fair representation be presented to the public of any dramatic work whatever, which contains more than one principal part; there is scarcely one theatre, in short, where a play can be acted. Let us not blame the unfortunate modern author, therefore, if he accommodates himself to circumstances, and produces a drama with one strongly developed character surrounded by nonentities. It is the sad necessity of his condition, entailed on him by the fact that there exists no power on any one stage of doing justice to more than one part. Mr Phelps, to whom every one interested in the British stage owes a deep debt of gratitude, may illuminate the suburban shades of Islington with flashes of power or pathos, with Hamlet or Othello – such as awakened the rapture or evoked the tears of the thousands of Drury Lane – but how is he supported? The Marionettes would be more natural, the Bateman monstrosities more richly endowed with the human voice divine! And the same holds good in almost every other theatre, unless that in some of them even the one redeeming actor is wanting. But are we less prepared to defend the stage for this? nay, are we less hopeful of its eventful restoration? By no means. The very darkness that has settled upon it at present, foretells the near approach of dawn. It will be found that the free trade in theatres, which was to fill our land with the highest works of art and noblest specimens of acting – which has scattered in a thousand small streams, too shallow to be fertilising, too slow to be sanitary, the majestic river which (contained within its just banks) was deep enough to bear the merchandise of Shakspeare and the war-galleys of the ancient dramatists – it will be found, we repeat, that Dramatic Free Trade has been a failure, and that we must go back to the grand old days of Protection, when native talent was supported by applauding millions in the companies of the larger houses; when the Keans and Kembles were not surrounded by shades and phantoms, but by the largest "thews of men;" when Young, Macready, Kemble, Elliston, Dowton, Liston, and Munden, trod the same boards; where Mrs Jordan's merry laugh had scarcely ceased to vibrate in our ears, till our eyes and hearts began to pay tribute to O'Neil.
That theatres as places of amusement should die out we hold to be impossible. What is, therefore, to be done, is to fit them for the high uses to which they may be applied, by obtaining for them the support of a class of people, whose mere presence would be at once a cause and a guarantee of the improvement both of plays and actors. One noble personage, whom it is every Englishman's privilege to "love, honour, and obey," sets a good example in this behalf. In the halls of Windsor, Shakspeare's voice is heard; surrounded by knights and nobles, by dames and demoiselles, she disdains not to shudder at the villanies of King John, or melt at the relentings of Hubert; to glow with patriotic pride at the denunciation of the Italian priest, or to refresh herself, after the excitement of "Macbeth," with the sparkling wit and genial humour of some of our modern dramatists. Who are the audience there? Her sage cousins and counsellors, her statesmen, warriors, nobles, matrons as spotless as Cornelia, maidens with their blue veins filled with the blood of Saxon Thanes and Norman conquerors: nor are there lacking the representatives of law and learning; the masters of the noble seminary beyond the walls, the dignitaries of the most tolerant, the most pure, the most intellectual Church that ever was set up as a guide and teacher among men: and what is the result? Is there any shock given to the most sensitive feeling by word or act? Are the young scions of the house, the future hopes of England and the world, contaminated by what they see or hear? Not at all. They hear
"The quality of mercy is not strained,
But droppeth like the gentle dew from heaven."
They hear