The Galaxy, April, 1877 Part 16

incantation scene, which was worked up till the pa.s.sion was torn to tatters. But I feel convinced that the incantation scene, the dances, the novelty of ladies in tights, would have failed to make the "Black Crook" a success but for the broad humor and farce of that comic slave and the old housekeeper and steward. That humor was so simple, so like the well remembered ringmaster and clown of our childhood, that we all laughed at it, wise as well as foolish. I remember well during the second run of the venerable Herzog and his slave, talking to a very acute and learned gentleman--a man of the world too--who actually had never seen the "Black Crook" till the previous evening, and he was convulsed with laughter every time he recalled the figure of the man who shouts, "I want to go home!" That figure remained with him out of all the play, in his memory, as something irresistibly comic, just as the weird and uncanny elements remained with the minds of smaller calibre. For the children who saw it, I will venture to say that the parts which pleased them most were the parts which made the success of the play, the obtrusion of broad farce in one place, the beauty of the grotto scene and really poetical dancing of Bonfanti in another.

Strange that of all the dancers, many more agile and supple, no one should ever have replaced Bonfanti, or even come near her in the "Black Crook." She gave the play what it lacked, poetical beauty and grace, and thus completed the secret of its success, which was--_variety_. Its rivals and followers tried to beat up the narrow channel that leads to public favor, in one or two long tacks, and ended by running aground, while the "Black Crook" kept hands at the braces all the time, and "went about" as often as the water showed a symptom of shoaling.

The same secret of _variety_ accounts for the great success of Boucicault's Irish dramas as compared with those of other dramatists, and even with his own plays on other subjects. The regular old-fas.h.i.+oned Irish drama had interest only to an Irishman. It dealt with rebellions of half a century and more gone by, stamped out, and in which few took interest outside of Ireland. A certain element, that of traditional abuse of the traditional Briton, who was supposed to be always wandering over the United States with his pockets full of _Berrritish gold_, trying to corrupt patriotic Americans and regain King George's colonies, gave a certain interest to the Irish drama in America for the half century before the dedication of the Bunker Hill monument, but that faded out as time obliterated early jealousies. Then came Boucicault and did a wonderful thing, taking hackneyed and ridiculous Fenianism and making out of it one of the greatest successes of modern times, that bids fair to remain a stock play for years--the "Shaughraun." In "Arrah-na-Pogue" he took the old thin story of the Irish patriot of '98, and achieved an equal success, while in the "Colleen Bawn" he made a tremendous. .h.i.t with even poorer materials. The secret of the success of all three plays is found in _variety_, produced by contrasting the broad unctuous humor and sharp wit of the Irish peasant, familiar to the English-speaking world, with the quiet delicacy and refinement of the Irish upper cla.s.ses, by using a few strong melodramatic situations, but nothing very long, the pathos always relieved by humor before it drags. The whole play--any of the three--rattles off without a hitch. In the last and most perfect, the "Shaughraun," a very happy hit is made with the _comic_ villain, a new creation in the drama, though as old in the pantomime as Clown and Pantaloon.

If variety be the leading element of success in the "Black Crook" and the Irish dramas of Boucicault, wherein lies that of Bulwer's trio of stock plays by which he will be remembered? The first of his successes was the "Lady of Lyons," and we have already seen how skilful is the mechanical construction of this play, leading the suspense from act to act; but that will not account for the whole of the interest. A saying of Boucicault as to this play gives us also a key to the whole three Bulwer plays, for we find the same element pervading them all--the central idea of two, and only slightly modified in the third. Boucicault has remarked that the interest of the "Lady of Lyons" really depends on the fact that the completion of Claude's marriage is delayed from the second to the end of the fifth act; and a little reflection will show this to be the case. The whole interest of the play before the close of the second act turns on whether Claude will obtain his lady-love; the interest thereafter on his resistance to the temptations that draw him toward Pauline against honor. Look at "Richelieu," and the same element intensified pervades it. Adrian de Mauprat marries Julie at the close of the first act, only to be separated from her all the rest of the play till the climax. Richelieu himself, as far as the main action of the play is concerned, is secondary to Adrian, the end of all plays being "to make two lovers happy." In "Money" nearly the same motive runs through the play. In the first act Evelyn finds that Clara loves him, and all real obstacle to their marriage is removed by his sudden accession to fortune; yet all the rest of the play sees them kept apart by the most flimsy obstacles, just to tantalize the audience, and make them wonder if those two fools will ever come together. The means are very simple, and yet quite powerful enough, as much so as the first part of "Romeo and Juliet," where, by the by, almost all the interest dies out after the balcony scene. The main secret of Bulwer then reveals itself, like that of flirtation, to reside in the _art of tantalization_.

We next come to Sheridan, the man who wrote the best comedy in the English language, "School for Scandal." The secret of that play and the "Rivals" has been thought by some to consist in the dialogue, but dialogue alone never made a play run before a mixed audience. The worst dialogue in the "Black Crook"--and G.o.d knows it was bad enough--could not kill that play any more than the finest dialogue could make Tennyson's "Queen Mary" into a real play, or galvanize it into a semblance of interest before an audience. Sheridan has more than witty dialogue. His situations are always capital, and his characters are without exception real living beings, only very slightly caricatured.

To be sure they are rather too sharp and clever as a cla.s.s, for we seldom or never meet in society such a perfect galaxy of smart, keen-witted people, Mrs. Malaprop not excepted; but the secret of Sheridan lies below dialogue and character. It lies, I think, in the natural sympathy felt by all mixed audiences in favor of youth and high spirits, through all their pranks, as exemplified in Captain Absolute, Charles Surface, Lydia Languish, and Lady Teazle, against respectability, honest or the reverse, embodied in Sir Anthony Absolute, Sir Peter Teazle, and Joseph Surface. It is the protest of honest animal spirits against conventionality, ending in the reconciliation of the rebels to society. Some people talk of the bad moral of the "School for Scandal," never thinking that it is identical in spirit with that of the parable of the Prodigal Son. A broad feeling of charity and toleration for honest error, with a grimly sarcastic treatment of all shams, pervade Sheridan's work just as they do those of all the great satirists, whether novelists or dramatists. Goldsmith, Fielding, d.i.c.kens, Thackeray, all run in the same track when they once get started, and we must confess that they have pretty high authority for their kindness toward the returning prodigal and their sneers at his eminently respectable brother, Joseph Surface, Esq.

This secret of Sheridan in the "School for Scandal" is the main element of only one modern drama that I now remember--"Rip Van Winkle"--but it is quite common in the "old comedies," as they are called. These old comedies generally make their appearance at least once in two years at such theatres as Wallack's and Daly's of New York and the Arch Street at Philadelphia. I forget the name of the Boston "legitimate" place.

When well acted they always "take," and there are so many stage traditions of how to act them that they are seldom badly done. The forgiveness of repentant prodigals, it will be remembered, forms the basis of most of them, an element which has gradually disappeared from the modern drama in deference to the increasing Philistine element, represented by the Y.M.C.A. and the T.A.B.

Ascending from the modern English drama to its parents in the Elizabethan era, we encounter the only dramatist of those times whose works still hold the stage, and ask what is the secret of "Richard III.," "Macbeth," "Oth.e.l.lo," "Lear," "Hamlet," and the Shakespeare comedies. The first general answer that most people will give is--the genius of Shakespeare; his power of drawing character, his wonderful language, his mastery of human pa.s.sion. All these, it seems to me, are true, but it is to the last element that the success of Shakespeare's plays _on the stage_ is mainly due. No other dramatist, French, English, or German, with the single exception of Goethe in "Faust," has succeeded in making men and women, under the influence of tremendous pa.s.sion, talk and act so _truly_, so _realistically_. We notice this on the stage when we see "Richard III." well acted. The man becomes a real live man, a great scamp no doubt, but an able scamp, so able that he actually excites our sympathy, when a really good actor plays him. The main power of Shakespeare's tragedies to-day, and their superiority to the tragedies of any other dramatist, lies in their _realism_. Where a modern dramatist like Boucicault confines his realistic treatment to matters with which most of us are familiar, Shakespeare flies at any game, no matter how high, and impresses us with the presence of _real_ men and women, whether they be kings and queens or only common folk.

This seems to be Shakespeare's one secret which makes his plays hold the stage to-day in spite of faulty construction, in spite of all the modern advances in stage management. Modern dramas are realistic, but they deal with common emotions, cramped by the restraints of an artificial state of society, where all our feelings are more or less artificial. Shakespeare takes human nature untrammelled, and paints it as it is, unshackled by the commonplace laws of modern society. Compare his pathos with modern pathos, and see the difference. The staple element of modern pathos is the contrast between poverty and riches, hunger and fulness, cold and warmth. The greatest pathos of Shakespeare, in "Lear," comes out not in the storm scene, but in the meeting of Lear and Cordelia amid luxury and comfort. The old king hurls curses and contempt at the mere physical discomforts of the tempest; they serve to divert his thoughts from the far greater torture of his mind; but when his conscience makes him crave pardon of his own child, then indeed the limit of human pathos is reached. There is nothing artificial there. Lear might be any old man as well as a king, and the situation would be just as terrible in its justice of atonement. It is _truth_.

That _realism_ is the whole secret of Shakespeare's success as a dramatist, is made more evident by the fact that he avows it himself in "Hamlet," as the mainspring of dramatic success, in the celebrated "advice to the players." This being the only pa.s.sage on record in which Shakespeare lays down his principles of art, has always been held as of great value, and has probably done more to improve the English stage than most people imagine. It has been always available as a canon to which to refer unnatural ranters, and to prevent the robustious school from tearing a pa.s.sion to tatters. It sobered down Forrest in his old age into a model Oth.e.l.lo, and const.i.tutes the secret that has placed Lester Wallack and Joseph Jefferson at the head of their respective lines of light comedy. I think, however, it has hardly been recognized fully enough as the principle on which Shakespeare worked, for here at least he does seem to have held to a rigidly defined and artificial principle of action. This was to take a given pa.s.sion and treat it with the utmost realism from every point of view, making that the _motive_ of a play, being otherwise careless of construction.

This principle appears very clearly in "Lear," the most artificial in construction of all Shakespeare's tragedies. His theme was _filial ingrat.i.tude_, and hardly a scene in the whole drama turns aside from that theme. It appears in the two plots about Lear and Gloucester, both having exactly the same lines of actors, the last obviously a reflex of the first. It is perhaps the only play of Shakespeare in which the _moral_ obtrudes itself forcibly all through the action, as plainly as in the stories of an old-fas.h.i.+oned primer, and I cannot help thinking that if the whole story of Edgar and Edmund had been left out, the play would have gained in unity and nature.

In "Richard III." ambition is the ruling pa.s.sion, treated in the same realistic fas.h.i.+on, conjoined with the extreme sensitiveness of personal deformity to strictures on itself. In "Macbeth" ambition pure and simple is treated from every point, first in man, then in woman; afterward remorse is dissected with equal skill. The ruling pa.s.sion in "Hamlet" is somewhat more difficult to a.n.a.lyze than the rest, but I think that the renowned soliloquy of "To be or not to be" discloses it more clearly than any other part of the play. It is _fear_. Fear appears in Hamlet all through the play, from the first ghost scene to the death of Ophelia--an excessive caution, a hesitation, a timidity, a want of resolution, mental more than physical, which lasts till he returns from his travels and is stung into manliness over poor Ophelia's grave. Then at last he does what he ought to have done at first, but for his lack of good, honest pluck--gets savage and breaks things, and so works poetical justice.

If the tragedies of Shakespeare reveal their princ.i.p.al secret to be the realistic treatment of master pa.s.sions, what shall we say to such comedies as "Midsummer Night's Dream," "As You Like It," "Much Ado About Nothing," and such? It is very difficult to define in what consists their success, apart from the beauty of their love stories, their dainty language, their charming feminine characters, and a cloud of accessories, none of which can properly be called the main secret.

The first two, I think, owe their beauty princ.i.p.ally to the dissection of that pa.s.sion of love which forms the motive of "Romeo and Juliet."

The author treats us to nothing but love scenes and scenes in mockery of love, and yet we never tire of them. In "Much Ado About Nothing," to be sure, there is an artificial plot of villany to hinder the love-making, but after all it is Bened.i.c.k and Beatrice, making fun of love and getting caught in its toils, that make the charm of the piece, and the same device, minute a.n.a.lysis of love, makes "Twelfth Night"

what it is. When we come to look below the surface we find, in the comedies as in the tragedies of Shakespeare, that the realistic treatment of some ruling pa.s.sion forms the ultimate secret on which he works.

To sum up in the aphoristic form the secrets affecting the motives of the greatest dramatic successes of the English stage, we can, I think, partially agree on one more canon:

XV. Variety, suspense, satire, and realistic a.n.a.lysis of human pa.s.sion are the secrets, so far discovered, of lasting dramatic successes.

The subject of dramatic success, however, has one more very important branch, still to be considered. As an artist cannot work without colors and brushes, so a dramatist cannot work without actors. Good actors cannot permanently lift a bad play out of the mud, but bad actors can murder the best drama ever written, and even the best actor cannot make a hit if his part does not fit him and his physical appearance. I remember once a ludicrous instance of this, with Boucicault's "Flying Scud," which I happened to see in Buffalo. Nat Gosling, the venerable jockey, was there played by a man weighing at least a hundred and eighty pounds, in the dress of an old farmer; and the absurdity was so glaring that the whole play fell as dead as ditchwater, though by no means badly played. The same play in New York was first fitted exactly with Young for its Nat Gosling--a little, dried-up, weazen-faced man, who identified himself so perfectly with the character that the piece became quite a _furore_. It is a very common superst.i.tion among actors that a good actor can act anything, and can "make up" to look like anything, and no doubt this is partially, but only partially, true.

There are actors, with flat, commonplace faces, figures of medium size, voices of no particular character, who, by dint of a little paint and pomatum, some false hair, some padding, and considerable study, can adapt themselves to play almost any character after a fas.h.i.+on; but it is a significant fact that such men are not to be found among the leaders of their profession, but only in the second rank. _Great_ actors take a line and stick to it, one that exactly suits their individuality, and such find their mark. If they leave it, they deteriorate, if they stick to it, they become identified with it, and no one can rival them in their specialty. They become _real_ "stars."

Jefferson found in Rip Van Winkle his _fit_, and has been wise enough never to leave it. Sothern did the same in Lord Dundreary. Lester Wallack has his own recognized line, the _blase_ man of the world, which he never leaves, save to his misfortune. Edwin Booth keeps his face, figure, and voice the same in all his characters, and people crowd to see him. Why? Because he has a delicately handsome face and figure, a melodious voice, and a clear, intellectual conception of every part. They go to see Booth, not Bertuccio, or Brutus, or Oth.e.l.lo, and it is noticeable that his Hamlet is one of his most successful pieces, because in it he is less disguised than anywhere else. The greatest success Barrett ever made was in Ca.s.sius, because the part fitted him, and no one has ever come near him in that part, where his face and figure appeared as nature made them. Any one who has ever seen Charles Fisher act Triplet in "Masks and Faces" must have realized the same sense of entire completeness and fitness which attended Barrett's Ca.s.sius, Jefferson's Rip Van Winkle, Lester Wallack's Elliott Gray, Sothern's Dundreary, Harry Placide's Monsieur Tourbillon, Booth's Iago and Richard III., Mrs. Scott-Siddons's Viola, f.a.n.n.y Davenport's Georgette in "Fernande," Mary Gannon's "Little Treasure," Maggie Mitch.e.l.l's "Fanchon" and "Little Barefoot."

In all these undoubted successes, old and new, with the sole exception of Sothern's Dundreary, the actors and actresses appeared and appear undisguised, talk in a natural voice, and fit their characters like a glove, face, figure, and all. This essential of fitness between character and physique is sometimes ignored by managers, with disastrous effects, while its observance has made a success of many a play, bolstered up by the influence of a single character. T. P.

Cooke's Long Tom Coffin in the "Pilot" was such an instance of phenomenal success attained by the physique of one actor, carrying a rubbishy play through. Charlotte Cushman's Meg Merrilies was another such instance, the mere power of face, figure, and voice making a triumph, spite of poor play, and even spite of unmitigated and unnatural rant on the part of the actress. I have mentioned one instance in my own observation of the consequences of putting actors into ill fitting parts, in "Flying Scud." If the reader can imagine Lester Wallack in Rip Van Winkle, Jefferson in Elliott Gray or Hugh Chalcote, Barrett in Dundreary, Sothern in Ca.s.sius, Booth as Monsieur Tourbillon or Solon s.h.i.+ngle, Owens as Iago, he will have the salient points of our argument in strong light. The best example of a well fitted play I ever saw was Lester Wallack's "Veteran," as first acted, with James W. Wallack for Colonel Delmar, Mrs. Hoey for Amina, Mary Gannon for the other young woman, Mrs. Vernon for Mrs. MacShake. Every part, down to the very slaves, was perfectly fitted, and nothing has since come near it in completeness except Boucicault's plays, written at different times for the same theatre, "Jessie Brown" and the "Shaughraun." The full consideration of all these facts, and especially a retrospect of the relative rank of versatile actors and of specialists, has led to the following further aphorism:

XVI. If the actors fit the play, expect success; if they do not, disaster.

The consideration of actors as affecting the success of a play brings us to the last branch of the whole subject affected by the dramatic canons, which is _the qualifications required by the dramatist_ to secure success. When we have considered them we shall have finished our task--the completion of an essay to arouse thought in others. When we consider the literary construction of such plays as "Black Crook,"

"Buffalo Bill," as well as the hosts of nameless dramas that are constantly making their appearance at minor and first-cla.s.s theatres, their flat dialogue and general insipidity when merely read, not acted, we begin to realize that genius or even talent in the author are not the first requisite. He may lack both and still succeed. He must, however, have one thing, or he might as well keep out of the box office altogether, for his plays will be there pigeon-holed for good if he possesses it not. This something is _stage experience_. He may be an actor, no matter how bad, a scene painter, a carpenter, a musician, but he must have been about a theatre in some capacity, no matter how humble, to see how things work. One week behind the curtain is worth a year in front. The mere acquaintance with the ways of managers and actors is worth a good deal of time, but the familiarity with the working of a piece is the main thing. The most successful American comedy that has yet appeared was written by a walking lady who never would have made an actress if she had staid on the stage forty years, but who utilized her experience to some purpose on quitting the stage.

The most successful money-making sensational piece of late years was written by a scene painter, and the poorest actors frequently write very good pieces, while good actors who possess talent for scribbling, almost always do well as playwrights. Only one fault do they all exhibit, without any exception, so far as my experience has run: they are all utterly oblivious of the meaning of the eighth commandment, and seem to regard plagiarism not as theft, but as a favor to the author whose literary property they steal. This is the worst that can be said about actor-authors, and to the rule there are no exceptions that ever I heard of. Actor-authors are unmitigated pirates of the most utterly unscrupulous sort, who crib whole chapters out of novels, word for word, without shame or acknowledgment, and write successful plays by filching other men's ideas, making a patchwork. Perhaps the most shameless of the whole raft of these actor-authors is Lester Wallack, whose two plays, the "Veteran" and "Rose-dale," are marvels of patchwork of this sort. In the first all the Arab characters and several scenes, language and all, are taken straight out of Captain James Grant's nearly forgotten novel of the, "Queen's Own," and in the second most of the plot and the most successful comic scene of the play come bodily from Colonel Hamley's "Lady Lee's Widowhood," another military novel. The provoking part of all this thieving in Wallack is, that other parts of his plays show that the man has talent enough to write, if he were not too lazy to work; but this preference of theft to labor is so common among actor-authors that nothing will ever check it but an extension of the copyright law in the interests of justice; for moral sense in the direction of the eighth commandment seems to be utterly unknown among them. The truth of the old adage about "hawks pikeing out hawks 'een" is, however, curiously exemplified in the scruples which the same men display as managers toward appropriating a play, no matter how much of a piracy in itself, without payment to the playwright, unless he be a Frenchman, when the case at once becomes altered. Novelists and foreign dramatists having no legal rights, actor-authors appear to think they have also no moral rights ent.i.tled to respect. This is the one stain on the character of actor-authors from which not one of them is free, or ever has been free, no matter what his time and nation. From Shakespeare to Brougham, from Moliere to Boucicault, the l.u.s.tre of all their talents has been dimmed by this one dirty vice of filching the product of other men's brains; and the only dramatists free from the reproach have been those who have come to the boards from outside, like Bulwer and Sheridan. I do not here mean to include avowed translations like "Pizarro" and the "Stranger," nor avowed dramatizations of novels like Boucicault's "Heart of Mid Lothian." Such things are not thefts, any more than the use of history for the basis of a novel; they are open to all. But the unavowed stealing of unknown French plays, the surrept.i.tious filching of chapters from forgotten novels, no more becomes right after quoting Shakespeare and Moliere as exemplars, than cowardice and treason become n.o.ble because St. Peter sneaked out of Caiaphas's petty sessions once on a time.

Spite of this degrading meanness, however, there is no doubt that actor-authors have so far written the greatest number of good plays that hold the stage, in consequence of just one thing, their _experience_, which reveals itself as the first quality necessary in the dramatist. After experience of the stage, the next qualification that meets us in such dramatists as Shakespeare, Dumas, Lope de Vega, and Boucicault, is their marvellous fecundity of invention, implying an amount of information on various subjects simply amazing. Nothing comes amiss to them, and they seem to have a smattering of every science, to have skimmed the private history of the whole world. Variety of information comes next after stage experience. A man may be a great fool on most subjects, and yet write a fair acting play from stage experience alone, if he filches enough, but if he have plenty of general information, he will be able to double the value of his play, while some plays have been made quite successful by the use of nothing but stage experience and some special line of information, by men who could not have written an original story to save their necks.

Last of the qualifications for dramatic success come _ideas_, and the possession of ideas implies also genius or at least talent, without which, after all, the really successful dramatist cannot work and leave enduring work behind him. All the ephemeral successes of the stage lack this one element, the one thing that cannot be taught, but must be born in a man. With genius, with real talent, everything is at last possible to a writer ambitious of stage success. Like Bulwer, he may make failure after failure, before he gets the _entree_ to theatrical life, but once there he will get past the portal and command success at last.

Experience and information will be acquired with more or less labor, but he will get them at last, and then will be content to add his voice to the last canon of theatrical conditions to success:

XVII. Stage experience, varied information, and talent, are the _sine qua non_ of the dramatist who hopes for success.

FREDERICK WHITTAKER.

SAINT LAMBERT'S COAL.

Wild hordes had sacked the minster: scattered Upon the broken pavement, lay The crash of blazon'd windows, shattered By barbarous knights in wanton fray, Who wrought the wreck and went their way.

Across pale, pictur'd faces, gashes Showed where their G.o.dless blades had thrust Profane defiance; and with ashes Strewn was the altar, and encrust Was chalice, pyx, and urn with rust.

No lamp shed forth its sacred glimmer, No incense breathed its hallowed fume; And as the rudded eve grew dimmer, Shadows as ghostly as the tomb Wrapped choir and nave and aisle in gloom.

Anon athwart the murk came stealing Far floatings of a chanted hymn, Up-borne in gusto from floor to ceiling, As faintly a procession dim Out of the darkness seemed to swim.

Onward it wended--nor did falter, Till from their midmost, one cried--"Who Bethought him of the quenched altar?

Alas! how guide the service through?

Would G.o.d might light the lamp anew!"

"_Amen!_" came through the silence drifting: And from the train, therewith, out stole A little acolyte, who, lifting His surplice hem, displayed a coal That glowed, yet left the garment whole.

"_Christus illuminator!_" kneeling, The astonied Bishop cried. "From whom Can light else come? Thyself revealing.

Flash forth that faith to chase our gloom, Which burns and yet doth not consume!

"Such faith is thine, O Lambert! Kindle Thereat the altar-lamp, and let Its l.u.s.tre, henceforth, never dwindle!"

He took the coal, the light reset, And there, they tell, 'tis burning yet.

MARGARET J. PRESTON.

ENGLISH TRAITS.

One of the earliest records of modern history in regard to the race which peopled the old England and the New refers to its beauty. Most of us have heard the story: how three young captives, brought from an almost unknown island on the verge of civilization, and indeed at the western limit of the then known world, were exposed for sale in Rome, and how Gregory the Great, not yet Pope, seeing them, was struck by their beauty and asked what they were, and being told, _Angli_ (English), replied "_Non Angli, sed angeli_" (not Angles, but angels); which was a tolerable pun for a future Pope and saint. This was twelve hundred years ago; and since that time the English race has enjoyed the reputation (subject to some carping criticism, due to the self-love of other peoples) of being the handsomest in the world. It is well deserved; indeed, if it were not, it would long ago have been jealously extinguished. Not improbably, however, the impression made upon Gregory was greatly due to the fair complexion, blue eyes, and golden brown hair of the English captives, which, indeed, are mentioned in the story. For southern Europe is peopled with dark-skinned, dark-haired races; and the superior beauty of the blonde type was recognized by the painters, who always, from the earliest days, represented angels as of that type. The Devil was painted black so much as a matter of course that his pictured appearance gave rise to a well-known proverb; ordinary mortals were represented as more or less dark; celestial people were white and golden-haired; whence the epithet "divinely fair." When therefore the good Gregory saw the fair, blue-eyed English youths, his comparison was at once suggested, and his pun was almost made to his hand. And I am inclined to believe that it is of much later origin, although he ought to have made it; just as Sidney Smith ought to have said to Landseer, when he asked the Reverend wit to sit for his portrait, "Is thy servant a dog that he should do the thing?" and as the innkeeper ought to have said to Mr. Seward that he was not Governor of New York, but "Thurlow Weed, by thunder?" but did not. In each of these cases, however, and in all such, a significant fact is at the bottom of the story, which otherwise would have no reason for its being.

It is hardly true, however, that other races do not produce individuals approaching as nearly to an ideal standard of beauty as any that are seen among the English. These are found, as we all know, among the various Latin races, the Celts and the Sclaves, and even, as Mr. Julian Hawthorne himself would hardly venture to deny, among the Teutons, the very Saxons themselves. Who has not seen French women and French men, Italians, Spaniards, Russians, Poles, Irish, and even Germans of both s.e.xes, distinguished by striking and captivating personal beauty both of face and figure? But the average beauty of the English race appears to be in a marked degree above that of all others. Among a thousand men and women of that race there will not only be found more "beauties"

than among the same number of other races, but the majority will be handsomer, "finer," more symmetrically formed, better featured, with clearer skins, and a more dignified bearing and presence than the majority of any other European race with which they may be compared.

A notion was for some time in vogue that this English distinction did not obtain in America, but that the race had degenerated here. It was a mere notion, having its origin in a prejudiced perversion of isolated facts; in the desire of book-writing travellers to find something strange, and also derogatory, with which to spice their pages; and in a craving, which amounts to a mild insanity, among European people, and particularly among all cla.s.ses of the British nation, to lay hold of some distinctive "American" quality, whether physiological, literary, political, or other, and label it, and file it away, and pigeon-hole it for reference by way of differencing "Americans" from themselves.

The notion, I venture to say, was essentially absurd. That a race of men should materially change its physical traits in the course of two centuries, under whatever conditions of climate or other external influence, is inconsistent with all that we know upon that subject. The very pyramids protest against it by their pictured records. According to the history of mankind, as it is thus far known to us, such a change could not take place within such a period, unless to external influences of great modifying power there were added such an intermingling of races as has not yet taken place here more than in England itself, although plainly it is to come in future generations.

Up to thirty years ago the intermarriage of Yankees--by which name, for lack of another, I designate people of English blood born in this country--with Irish and Germans was so rare as practically, in regard to this question, not to exist; and at that period there was not in England itself a more purely English people than that of New England.

This notion of English degeneracy in "America" has, however, been rapidly dying out in Europe, and even in England during the last ten or fifteen years. The change has been brought about partly by the events of our civil war; for the blindest prejudice saw that that war was not fought by a physically degenerate people; and partly by the increase of knowledge obtained, not from carping travellers writing books to please a carping public, but from personal observation. This I know, not by inference, but from Englishmen and others who have been here, and who have not written books. The belief, formerly prevalent, that "American"

women had in their youth pretty doll faces, but at no period of life womanly beauty of figure, is pa.s.sing away before a knowledge of the truth, and I have heard it scouted here by Englishmen, who, pointing to the charming evidence to the contrary before their eyes, have expressed surprise that the travelling book-writers, who had given them their previous notions on the subject, could have so misrepresented the truth. A colonel in the British army, who had been all over the world, and with whom I was in New England during the war, at a time when a large number of our volunteers were home on furlough, expressed constantly his surprise at the "fine men" he saw going about in uniform, the equals of whom he said that he had never seen as a whole in any army; although he did not hesitate to express his dislike of their uniform, or his disgust at the slouchy, slovenly way in which they carried themselves. I was ready to believe what he said; for I had then just seen the Coldstreams in Montreal; and I had before seen the Spanish regular troops in Cuba, who, even the regiment of the Queen, were so small that they looked to me like toy soldiers to be kept in a box; and a very bad box they soon got into. During my recent visit to England, after I had been in London a week or two, having previously visited other places, a London friend who had twice visited "the States," said to me, "Well, I suppose you've been looking at the people here and comparing them with those you've left at home?" "Yes, of course." "Do you find much difference in them really?" "No; very little; almost none." "You're right--quite right. There may be a little more fulness of figure and a little more ruddiness; but it's been greatly exaggerated--greatly." One reason for this exaggeration I learned from the remarks of two English friends to me in this country.

Some years ago I took one, a gentleman who had travelled a good deal, and who held an important position in the Queen's household--and a very outspoken man he was--to a "private view," at which for a wonder there was not a miscellaneous throng, but just enough people to fill the rooms pleasantly. As we sat together after a tour, looking at the company, I asked him to tell me the difference between the people he saw there and those he would see on a like occasion at the Royal Academy. He sat looking around him in silence for so long a time that I thought he was going to pa.s.s my question unnoticed, when he said, "I can see no difference; none at all; except that there would not be quite so many pretty women there, and that there would be more stout old people." The other, a lady, who also did not hesitate in her criticisms, remarked that the chief difference in appearance between people of the same condition here and in England was that here she "didn't see any fat old men." _She_ said nothing about fat old women; not, however, that she herself was either fat or old.