BOOKS OF THE WEEK
Young Mr. Beerbohm
Around Theatres. By Max Beerbohm. (Hart Davis. 30s.) BEFORE Sir Max Beerbohm became an institution—one of those institutions that the English see fit to call by its Christian name— there existed a young Mr. Beerbohm who, as successor to Mr. Shaw, wrote about the theatre in the Saturday Review from 1898, when he was twenty-five, until 1910. This volume is the abundant cream of what he wrote. At the beginning of it is Will Rothenstein's portrait of the extremely elegant young critic at the outset of his twelve years' journey, and very necessary the portrait is to a just appreciation of the pages that follow.
There are no legs, but they would have been superfluous, Mr. Beerbohm's métier being, in essence, sedentary. The likeness (work- ing upward) begins at the cuff—one of those superb cuffs, like Arctic continents, thattnay be seen, to this day, at Rapallo, and in England, uniquely perhaps, about the wrists of Mr. Allan Aynesworth ; but Mr. Aynesworth, it must be remembered, played a leading part on the first night of The Importance, whereas young Mr. Beerbohm is so young that he writes only of a revival.
From the cuff one ascends, through decent blackness to a white- slip, a cravat, and one of those columnar collars that failed to choke George Moore at about the time of Esther Waters. Presently, still ascending, one reaches the undulating brim of a top-hat, and this hat goes on and on gleamingly, until, like the end of a story by Flaubert or a film by Mr. Chaplin, it leads the mind out of the picture and con- tinues towards an ever-luminous infinity. Between brim and collar there is, inevitably, a face. The round eyes of the fairy-tale, the eyes like saucers, like cart-wheels, like great round towers, are, in deference to Mr. Walter Pater, " a little weary " at twenty-four ; but one looks in vain in the portrait for that spice of diffidence which Sir Max has 'so disarmingly acquired. Encountering the young man, one would whip out one's rapier and be on guard. He is urbane and charming ; 'he will hit no one, not even Mr. Pinero, with a blunt instrument ; but he is unblushingly self-confident, delightedly pugnacious. If the feels contemptuous, he will run anyone through with a steely 'subjunctive.
How the readers of the Saturday must have enjoyed themselves— always provided that they didn't wish always to be informed about the play in question. Not for Mr. Beerbohm the grave and scrupulous ,inalysis of Mr. Archer, nor even the sometimes dutiful impressionism of Mr. Walkley. He can write of—or, rather, " around "—play after play without giving, or attempting or wishing to give, the least ;notion of what it is about. And yet what he writes is genuine criticism. 1To take an extreme example. On February 27th, 1909, he writes an article called " Mr. Henry James' Play." We learn that its name is The High Bid, and that in it a certain Captain Yule says to an aged butler : " What are you exactly ? I mean, to whom do you beautifully belong ? " Mr. Forbes-Robertson's treatment of this line is described brilliantly : " In his eyes, as he surveyed the old butler, and in his smile, and in the groping hesitancy before the adverb was found, and in the sinking of tone at the verb, there was a whole world of good feeling, good manners, and humour. It was love seeing the fun of the thing. It was irony kneeling in awe. It was an authentic part of the soul of Mr. James."
And then follow three pages on the soul of Mr. James as exhibited in his tales—as discerning and as wise a three pages on that complex but lovable subject as I ever hope to read ; but of " Mr. Henry James' Play " not a word, apart from two or three generalisations of avoidance at the very end. My excuse must be that of all that I love in Mr. James' mind so very little can be translated into the sphere of drama." So be it ; evidently the play was, theatrically, a disaster, and young Mr. Beerbohm had no heart to say so. But it would have been pleasant to us, and perhaps to the readers of the Saturday, and perhaps even to the Master, if Mr. Beerbohm had beautifully indi- cated what Mr. James was trying to say. He was always trying to say something.
This tendency to discuss a play, when he discusses it at all, as if his readers had already seen it, is young Mr. Beerbohm's limitation. Of course he transcends it when the play interests him enough—when, for instance, he goes to The Voysey Inheritance. There is, too, a full account of Mr. Joseph Conrad's One Day More, with an illuminating comparison between the play and the short story from which it sprang. Mr. Beerbohm admired both. Why, he asks himself; since the play is " a powerful tragedy," well-performed and not technically defective, was he less moved by the play ? Because, he answers, " the dramatic form is, generally and essentially, inferior to the literary form." This strikes deep. It explains what I will no longer call his " limitation " but the nature of his perspective.
His general discussions of the dramatic art and the visual and oral qualities of his criticism have, at a distance of fifty years, extraordinary freshness. There is a masterly description of Coquelin, without facial expression and with no gesture but that scrape of a foot which alone would be available to, him in " the complete outfit of a cock," rehearsing the Alexandrines of Chanticler. How actors, (when Mr. Beerbohm approved of them, must have enjoyed themselves ! He makes them visible on the stage. He says, in detail, why they please him ; he picks out " That Bit When " and makes a voice audible as it speaks a line. The same particularity, when used in attack, can be more destructive than all the bludgeoning adjectives ; the rapier of quotation goes to the heart of " Mr. Pinero's Literary Style," and of Mr. Alexander's theatrical mannerism as he thunders an exit-line (carefully quoted) which "ought, of course, to have been spoken in a calm, deliberate, slightly bitter tone." Young Mr. Beerbohm has always (except when he is providing Mr. James with a mat to fall on or is trying to enjoy. Mr. Shaw a little more ardently than his temperament will permit) the courage of his opinions, and always the style—easy in effect because accurate in structure—with which to express them. In his book, as in Mr. Forbes Robertson's treatment of Mr. James, there is " a whole world of good feeling, good manners, and humour." And let no one call him an ineffectual angel. He complained that actors spoke too slowly in those days. With what an exaggeration of ardour they have taken his, and the
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