Backlog Studies Part 10

There isn't a finer or purer church than ours any where, inside and outside Gothic to the last. The elevation of the nave gives it even that "high-shouldered" appearance which seemed more than anything else to impress Mr. Hawthorne in the cathedral at Amiens. I fancy that for genuine high-shoulderness we are not exceeded by any church in the city.

Our chapel in the rear is as Gothic as the rest of it,--a beautiful little edifice. The committee forgot to make any more provision for ventilating that than the church, and it takes a pretty well-seasoned Christian to stay in it long at a time. The Sunday-school is held there, and it is thought to be best to accustom the children to bad air before they go into the church. The poor little dears shouldn't have the wickedness and impurity of this world break on them too suddenly. If the stranger noticed any lack about our church, it would be that of a spire.

There is a place for one; indeed, it was begun, and then the builders seem to have stopped, with the notion that it would grow itself from such a good root. It is a mistake however, to suppose that we do not know that the church has what the profane here call a "stump-tail"

appearance. But the profane are as ignorant of history as they are of true Gothic. All the Old World cathedrals were the work of centuries.

That at Milan is scarcely finished yet; the unfinished spires of the Cologne cathedral are one of the best-known features of it. I doubt if it would be in the Gothic spirit to finish a church at once. We can tell cavilers that we shall have a spire at the proper time, and not a minute before. It may depend a little upon what the Baptists do, who are to build near us. I, for one, think we had better wait and see how high the Baptist spire is before we run ours up. The church is everything that could be desired inside. There is the nave, with its lofty and beautiful arched ceiling; there are the side aisles, and two elegant rows of stone pillars, stained so as to be a perfect imitation of stucco; there is the apse, with its stained gla.s.s and exquisite lines; and there is an organ-loft over the front entrance, with a rose window. Nothing was wanting, so far as we could see, except that we should adapt ourselves to the circ.u.mstances; and that we have been trying to do ever since. It may be well to relate how we do it, for the benefit of other inchoate Goths.

It was found that if we put up the organ in the loft, it would hide the beautiful rose window. Besides, we wanted congregational singing, and if we hired a choir, and hung it up there under the roof, like a cage of birds, we should not have congregational singing. We therefore left the organ-loft vacant, making no further use of it than to satisfy our Gothic cravings. As for choir,--several of the singers of the church volunteered to sit together in the front side-seats, and as there was no place for an organ, they gallantly rallied round a melodeon,--or perhaps it is a cabinet organ,--a charming instrument, and, as everybody knows, entirely in keeping with the pillars, arches, and great s.p.a.ces of a real Gothic edifice. It is the union of simplicity with grandeur, for which we have all been looking. I need not say to those who have ever heard a melodeon, that there is nothing like it. It is rare, even in the finest churches on the Continent. And we had congregational singing. And it went very well indeed. One of the advantages of pure congregational singing, is that you can join in the singing whether you have a voice or not. The disadvantage is, that your neighbor can do the same. It is strange what an uncommonly poor lot of voices there is, even among good people. But we enjoy it. If you do not enjoy it, you can change your seat until you get among a good lot.

So far, everything went well. But it was next discovered that it was difficult to hear the minister, who had a very handsome little desk in the apse, somewhat distant from the bulk of the congregation; still, we could most of us see him on a clear day. The church was admirably built for echoes, and the centre of the house was very favorable to them. When you sat in the centre of the house, it sometimes seemed as if three or four ministers were speaking.

It is usually so in cathedrals; the Right Reverend So-and-So is a.s.sisted by the very Reverend Such-and-Such, and the good deal Reverend Thus-and-Thus, and so on. But a good deal of the minister's voice appeared to go up into the groined arches, and, as there was no one up there, some of his best things were lost. We also had a notion that some of it went into the cavernous organ-loft. It would have been all right if there had been a choir there, for choirs usually need more preaching, and pay less heed to it, than any other part of the congregation. Well, we drew a sort of screen over the organ-loft; but the result was not as marked as we had hoped. We next devised a sounding-board,--a sort of mammoth clamsh.e.l.l, painted white,--and erected it behind the minister.

It had a good effect on the minister. It kept him up straight to his work. So long as he kept his head exactly in the focus, his voice went out and did not return to him; but if he moved either way, he was a.s.sailed by a Babel of clamoring echoes. There was no opportunity for him to splurge about from side to side of the pulpit, as some do. And if he raised his voice much, or attempted any extra flights, he was liable to be drowned in a refluent sea of his own eloquence. And he could hear the congregation as well as they could hear him. All the coughs, whispers, noises, were gathered in the wooden tympanum behind him, and poured into his ears.

But the sounding-board was an improvement, and we advanced to bolder measures; having heard a little, we wanted to hear more. Besides, those who sat in front began to be discontented with the melodeon. There are depths in music which the melodeon, even when it is called a cabinet organ, with a colored boy at the bellows, cannot sound. The melodeon was not, originally, designed for the Gothic wors.h.i.+p. We determined to have an organ, and we speculated whether, by erecting it in the apse, we could not fill up that elegant portion of the church, and compel the preacher's voice to leave it, and go out over the pews. It would of course do something to efface the main beauty of a Gothic church; but something must be done, and we began a series of experiments to test the probable effects of putting the organ and choir behind the minister. We moved the desk to the very front of the platform, and erected behind it a high, square board screen, like a section of tight fence round the fair-grounds. This did help matters. The minister spoke with more ease, and we could hear him better. If the screen had been intended to stay there, we should have agitated the subject of painting it. But this was only an experiment.

Our next move was to shove the screen back and mount the volunteer singers, melodeon and all, upon the platform,--some twenty of them crowded together behind the minister. The effect was beautiful. It seemed as if we had taken care to select the finest-looking people in the congregation,--much to the injury of the congregation, of course, as seen from the platform. There are few congregations that can stand this sort of culling, though ours can endure it as well as any; yet it devolves upon those of us who remain the responsibility of looking as well as we can.

The experiment was a success, so far as appearances went, but when the screen went back, the minister's voice went back with it. We could not hear him very well, though we could hear the choir as plain as day. We have thought of remedying this last defect by putting the high screen in front of the singers, and close to the minister, as it was before. This would make the singers invisible,--"though lost to sight, to memory dear,"--what is sometimes called an "angel choir," when the singers (and the melodeon) are concealed, with the most subdued and religious effect.

It is often so in cathedrals.

This plan would have another advantage. The singers on the platform, all handsome and well dressed, distract our attention from the minister, and what he is saying. We cannot help looking at them, studying all the faces and all the dresses. If one of them sits up very straight, he is a rebuke to us; if he "lops" over, we wonder why he does n't sit up; if his hair is white, we wonder whether it is age or family peculiarity; if he yawns, we want to yawn; if he takes up a hymn-book, we wonder if he is uninterested in the sermon; we look at the bonnets, and query if that is the latest spring style, or whether we are to look for another; if he shaves close, we wonder why he doesn't let his beard grow; if he has long whiskers, we wonder why he does n't trim 'em; if she sighs, we feel sorry; if she smiles, we would like to know what it is about. And, then, suppose any of the singers should ever want to eat fennel, or peppermints, or Brown's troches, and pa.s.s them round! Suppose the singers, more or less of them, should sneeze!

Suppose one or two of them, as the handsomest people sometimes will, should go to sleep! In short, the singers there take away all our attention from the minister, and would do so if they were the homeliest people in the world. We must try something else.

It is needless to explain that a Gothic religious life is not an idle one.

EIGHTH STUDY

I

Perhaps the clothes question is exhausted, philosophically. I cannot but regret that the Poet of the Breakfast-Table, who appears to have an uncontrollable penchant for saying the things you would like to say yourself, has alluded to the anachronism of "Sir Coeur de Lion Plantagenet in the mutton-chop whiskers and the plain gray suit."

A great many scribblers have felt the disadvantage of writing after Montaigne; and it is impossible to tell how much originality in others Dr. Holmes has destroyed in this country. In whist there are some men you always prefer to have on your left hand, and I take it that this intuitive essayist, who is so alert to seize the few remaining unappropriated ideas and a.n.a.logies in the world, is one of them.

No doubt if the Plantagenets of this day were required to dress in a suit of chain-armor and wear iron pots on their heads, they would be as ridiculous as most tragedy actors on the stage. The pit which recognizes Snooks in his tin breastplate and helmet laughs at him, and Snooks himself feels like a sheep; and when the great tragedian comes on, s.h.i.+ning in mail, dragging a two-handed sword, and mouths the grandiloquence which poets have put into the speech of heroes, the dress-circle requires all its good-breeding and its feigned love of the traditionary drama not to t.i.tter.

If this sort of acting, which is supposed to have come down to us from the Elizabethan age, and which culminated in the school of the Keans, Kembles, and Siddonses, ever had any fidelity to life, it must have been in a society as artificial as the prose of Sir Philip Sidney. That anybody ever believed in it is difficult to think, especially when we read what privileges the fine beaux and gallants of the town took behind the scenes and on the stage in the golden days of the drama. When a part of the audience sat on the stage, and gentlemen lounged or reeled across it in the midst of a play, to speak to acquaintances in the audience, the illusion could not have been very strong.

Now and then a genius, like Rachel as Horatia, or Hackett as Falstaff, may actually seem to be the character a.s.sumed by virtue of a transforming imagination, but I suppose the fact to be that getting into a costume, absurdly antiquated and remote from all the habits and a.s.sociations of the actor, largely accounts for the incongruity and ridiculousness of most of our modern acting. Whether what is called the "legitimate drama" ever was legitimate we do not know, but the advocates of it appear to think that the theatre was some time cast in a mould, once for all, and is good for all times and peoples, like the propositions of Euclid. To our eyes the legitimate drama of to-day is the one in which the day is reflected, both in costume and speech, and which touches the affections, the pa.s.sions, the humor, of the present time. The brilliant success of the few good plays that have been written out of the rich life which we now live--the most varied, fruitful, and dramatically suggestive--ought to rid us forever of the buskin-fustian, except as a pantomimic or spectacular curiosity.

We have no objection to Julius Caesar or Richard III. stalking about in impossible clothes, and stepping four feet at a stride, if they want to, but let them not claim to be more "legitimate" than "Ours" or "Rip Van Winkle." There will probably be some orator for years and years to come, at every Fourth of July, who will go on asking, Where is Thebes? but he does not care anything about it, and he does not really expect an answer. I have sometimes wished I knew the exact site of Thebes, so that I could rise in the audience, and stop that question, at any rate. It is legitimate, but it is tiresome.

If we went to the bottom of this subject, I think we should find that the putting upon actors clothes to which they are unaccustomed makes them act and talk artificially, and often in a manner intolerable.

An actor who has not the habits or instincts of a gentleman cannot be made to appear like one on the stage by dress; he only caricatures and discredits what he tries to represent; and the unaccustomed clothes and situation make him much more unnatural and insufferable than he would otherwise be. Dressed appropriately for parts for which he is fitted, he will act well enough, probably. What I mean is, that the clothes inappropriate to the man make the incongruity of him and his part more apparent. Vulgarity is never so conspicuous as in fine apparel, on or off the stage, and never so self-conscious. Shall we have, then, no refined characters on the stage? Yes; but let them be taken by men and women of taste and refinement and let us have done with this masquerading in false raiment, ancient and modern, which makes nearly every stage a travesty of nature and the whole theatre a painful pretension. We do not expect the modern theatre to be a place of instruction (that business is now turned over to the telegraphic operator, who is making a new language), but it may give amus.e.m.e.nt instead of torture, and do a little in satirizing folly and kindling love of home and country by the way.

This is a sort of summary of what we all said, and no one in particular is responsible for it; and in this it is like public opinion. The Parson, however, whose only experience of the theatre was the endurance of an oratorio once, was very cordial in his denunciation of the stage altogether.

MANDEVILLE. Yet, acting itself is delightful; nothing so entertains us as mimicry, the personation of character. We enjoy it in private.

I confess that I am always pleased with the Parson in the character of grumbler. He would be an immense success on the stage. I don't know but the theatre will have to go back into the hands of the priests, who once controlled it.

THE PARSON. Scoffer!

MANDEVILLE. I can imagine how enjoyable the stage might be, cleared of all its traditionary nonsense, stilted language, stilted behavior, all the rubbish of false sentiment, false dress, and the manners of times that were both artificial and immoral, and filled with living characters, who speak the thought of to-day, with the wit and culture that are current to-day. I've seen private theatricals, where all the performers were persons of cultivation, that....

OUR NEXT DOOR. So have I. For something particularly cheerful, commend me to amateur theatricals. I have pa.s.sed some melancholy hours at them.

MANDEVILLE. That's because the performers acted the worn stage plays, and attempted to do them in the manner they had seen on the stage. It is not always so.

THE FIRE-TENDER. I suppose Mandeville would say that acting has got into a mannerism which is well described as stagey, and is supposed to be natural to the stage; just as half the modern poets write in a recognized form of literary manufacture, without the least impulse from within, and not with the purpose of saying anything, but of turning out a piece of literary work. That's the reason we have so much poetry that impresses one like sets of faultless cabinet-furniture made by machinery.

THE PARSON. But you need n't talk of nature or naturalness in acting or in anything. I tell you nature is poor stuff. It can't go alone. Amateur acting--they get it up at church sociables nowadays--is apt to be as near nature as a school-boy's declamation. Acting is the Devil's art.

THE MISTRESS. Do you object to such innocent amus.e.m.e.nt?

MANDEVILLE. What the Parson objects to is, that he isn't amused.

THE PARSON. What's the use of objecting? It's the fas.h.i.+on of the day to amuse people into the kingdom of heaven.

HERBERT. The Parson has got us off the track. My notion about the stage is, that it keeps along pretty evenly with the rest of the world; the stage is usually quite up to the level of the audience. a.s.sumed dress on the stage, since you were speaking of that, makes people no more constrained and self-conscious than it does off the stage.

THE MISTRESS. What sarcasm is coming now?

HERBERT. Well, you may laugh, but the world has n't got used to good clothes yet. The majority do not wear them with ease. People who only put on their best on rare and stated occasions step into an artificial feeling.

OUR NEXT DOOR. I wonder if that's the reason the Parson finds it so difficult to get hold of his congregation.

HERBERT. I don't know how else to account for the formality and vapidity of a set "party," where all the guests are clothed in a manner to which they are unaccustomed, dressed into a condition of vivid self-consciousness. The same people, who know each other perfectly well, will enjoy themselves together without restraint in their ordinary apparel. But nothing can be more artificial than the behavior of people together who rarely "dress up." It seems impossible to make the conversation as fine as the clothes, and so it dies in a kind of inane helplessness. Especially is this true in the country, where people have not obtained the mastery of their clothes that those who live in the city have. It is really absurd, at this stage of our civilization, that we should be so affected by such an insignificant accident as dress.

Perhaps Mandeville can tell us whether this clothes panic prevails in the older societies.

THE PARSON. Don't. We've heard it; about its being one of the Englishman's thirty-nine articles that he never shall sit down to dinner without a dress-coat, and all that.

THE MISTRESS. I wish, for my part, that everybody who has time to eat a dinner would dress for that, the princ.i.p.al event of the day, and do respectful and leisurely justice to it.

THE YOUNG LADY. It has always seemed singular to me that men who work so hard to build elegant houses, and have good dinners, should take so little leisure to enjoy either.

MANDEVILLE. If the Parson will permit me, I should say that the chief clothes question abroad just now is, how to get any; and it is the same with the dinners.

II