THE SUCCESS OF MRS. LANGTRY.
THE success of Mrs. Langtry in attracting audiences in New York does not strike us as surprising ; it is the English interest in that success which requires to be accounted
for. By a consent which might be termed unanimous, but that Mr. Oscar Wilde thinks himself a critic of dramatic representa- tion, and likes to stand alone in opinion, Mrs. Langtry is not a great actress, or even a good one, and is not likely ever to establish a reputation as an artist; but the Americans are naturally eager to see a very ladylike woman, who was pro- establish a reputation as an artist; but the Americans are naturally eager to see a very ladylike woman, who was pro- nounced by the highest society in England and by many artists exceptionally beautiful. The provincial desire to know what the mother-country admires, mingles, in Mrs. Langtry's case, with the instinctive wish to see, if not the most beautiful thing in nature—for women, however fair, have still rivals in trees and lakes, and as some artists pretend, in horses and birds—at least that object in nature about the beauty of which human consent has been most universal and longest-lived. Helen was admired before mountain scenery was. The audi- ences, therefore, are large, and as the Americans, who have among them some of the most beautiful faces in the world—though the special beauty of American women's faces is not of Mrs.
Langtry's kind, being• dependent on their charm when in move- ment, and not on their charm in immobility—have endorsed the English verdict, we should not wonder if appreciation gradually rose, as the actress moves westward, into a fiery enthusiasm, such as followed Jenny Lind. Americans have a capacity for admiration which is very often ridiculed, but which is, perhaps, of all signs of the freshness of nations, one of the very strongest.
Men who can admire are young, and that sort of receptiveness marks peoples who have a future before them, and are riot "ex- perienced " until half their faculty of emotion is dead. All that is natural, and so far as we see, unobjectionable, admiration for a beautiful work of God being at least as innocent as admiration for a beautiful work of man ; but what is the cause of the English interest in it at all P Why does it pay the journals to send long telegrams about Mrs. Langtry, and the audiences she attracts,
and the prices paid for stalls in her theatre when they are put up to auction, in that American way which is surely, of all ways, the one least creditable to the land of Equality P The French give a blouse his chance, if only he will stand en queue long.
enough; but the Americans openly declare that earth, in- cluding the pew nearest the preacher, belongs to the moneyed man. Those telegrams are not forwarded for the actress's friends only, for did they include all society, their pennies would hardly repay the proprietors' expense. They must be intended to interest the public at large, the whole circle of newspaper buyers, and whom do they interest P We suspect that they interest a very great many who do not say so, that they are read quite as much as telegrams about Mr. Secretary Foulger's gold operations, and that they are much longer remembered. A great many people are interested in gossip, to begin with, gossip
of any sort, if it is only about people of whom they have ever heard, and nearly as many " like to know " how Americans deport themselves in social affairs. The English never acknowledge the truth frankly, but they are as keen to know what Americans do, as the Americans are to know what the English do, keener to watch them, we begin to think, than they are to watch Parisians. They like to hear of a Parisian rush for stalls to see Victor Hugo's drama, Le J?oi 8'amuee, prohibited for fifty years ; but they are more interested in seeing that
scores of New Yorkers camped out all night in the porches of a theatre, in order to be early enough to ,buy the much sought-for tickets. They have, we believe, a grandfatherly feeling about the matter, a kind of pleasure, or it may be pain, in seeing that the New World, in •its frivolities at least, is so very like the Old. Here arc those children of ours, with a continent to conquer, and the future of the world, perhaps, in their hands, sitting up all night, and spending thousands, to make sure that they will see a beautiful face ! Chester did precisely the same thing—or was it Shrewsbury, for we have half-forgotten the legend P—to see "the beautiful Miss Gun- flings ;" and Chester is great-grandmother of New York. It is of interest to note how, if knowledge grows, wisdom lingers and folly remains as of old, especially if the foolishness is not very harmful, is not at our expense, and is exhibited by our own descendants. One smiles then, and if there be a little scorn in the smile, there is also regret for one's own past. This semi-paternal interest in things American is, we are convinced, quite genuine, and exceedingly deep; and will one day make the fortune of some observant traveller's book. If some Mr. Pidgeon would only tell the young generation how American boys and girls dress, flirt, disport, and educate themselves, what a success he would.
have. English men and women get bored to death with those accounts of American institutions plentifully studded with statistics which are the temptation of English travellers, and the besetting weakness of most American visitors who, with faces brimful of humour and keenness, must still tell you how the free-schools are managed; but the moment social facts are mentioned, the moment some charitable American girl ex- plains why she has more of a "good time" in Philadelphia than her sister has in Liverpool, how the indifference disappears !
Dozens of competent persons with pens have reviewed "Demo- cracy," and " The Europeans," and most of them, no doubt, have done itwell; but none of them hit the special interest of the readers without pens, who remarked unanimously that Mrs. Lee was obivously more free from comment than she would be in England, that Miss Dare was intolerably vulgar, and that Gertrude, in " The Europeans," for all her separateness, was altogether a lady.
Then, besides these sources of interest, there is the greater one,—the interest felt by almost all women in what is essentially a triumph of beauty, a vindication of the idea that it is a power, like genius, and a gift, like the capacity to keep an audience hanging silent on your tongue, surely the most enjoyable of the Creator's gifts. All women, oven the ugliest, feel that beauty is a weapon on their side in
the battle of life; like to see it exert a force, and when it is great and, so to speak, beyond criticism, admire it with genuine heartiness, heartiness as real as that which men show in their admiration for strength manifested in any conspicuous way. It is usual to say women decry beauty, but that is a blunder, caused by stretching instances into a law. Of all decorations, the one least grudged by men is the " V.C.,!' and that whether the admirers be in themselves brave or timid; and of all sources of success, women grudge beauty the least. They may deny it is beauty, but if they admit it, they are so far content. Let any one of the thousand cynics now lounging in London ask himself whether an English Prince who made a mdsalliance for money or for beauty would be sooner forgiven, or whether the love-match of Napoleon III. was not one main cause of that popularity with Englishwomen which outlasted everything but his surrender. They thought he should have performed the impossibility of " cutting his way through." To this very hour, the deep feeling of Englishwomen for the French Empress, though founded, of course, on pity, is greatly assisted by the recollection among the middle-aged of a triumph so conspicuous, and so visibly owing to personal charm. This kind of female interest is universal, and extends in a more languid degree to the men, who find in any national appreciation of beauty not only the charm which springs from kinship in taste, but an excuse for a secret imbecility, a powerlessness in presence of the attraction, which they all resent, and feel. We wonder if, besides all this, there is any residuum of the old Greek feeling that beauty was a clear good in itself, a harmony, something which indicated that the Gods or Nature were not essentially and at heart hostile to man, Many artists say so, and to judge by the extent of feeling, almost of pious feeling, excited by the beauty of scenery—the positive esteem felt in England for Switzerland, for instance, for being so beauti- ful a place—the feeling should be general, but we doubt if it is so. If it were, we should more often hear of the beauty of Kings and men in high places, but it is a remark never made by the most abject courtier. The next Prince who ascends a throne anywhere will have his praises and qualities hymned on all the European wires, but if he were an Apollo or a Jove, the bulletin-makers would feel instinctively that to say so would be regarded not as adulation, but as ridi- cule. It is for women to be beautiful, for men to be dignified, —the latter a credit arising from a different order of ideas, the idea of harmony between place and appearance in the world. We should doubt if beauty were admired iu the abstract very consciously, but that the interest excited by beautiful women rivals the interest excited by beautiful scenery, and this among those who never see either, except in pictures, we have no doubt whatever.
Previous page
