An Actor's Reminiscences and Other Poems :: :: University of Virginia Library

And choose it with deliberate preference.
There are but two professions in the world,
Acting and writing: and these two indeed
Are in their highest noblest issues one.
You act: I write:—but were we but combined
Nought could withstand our mingled potency!
The perfect marriage of the two ideas
Is yet to come,—we shall not see it yet;
But when its consummation-hour is reached
There will be a new force within the world.
The offspring of this marriage of two arts
Will be a Drama and a Poetry
Such as the world has neither seen nor dreamed.

“I have lived long”—so he went on to say—
“Lived long, done much, seen much,—and suffered much;
I have seen Paris and I have seen Rome;
Revelled in the blue skies of Italy;
Walked knee-deep for long sultry happy hours
In the bright heather of Scotland and of Wales;

Gathered lush hart's-tongue in Devonian lanes;
Watched the grey granite boulders cropping up
Amid the shining leagues of golden gorse
In Cornwall, near Tintagel and the sea;
Yes, and I've known the fair delight of love
And the strong joy of passion,—many times,—
I've seen the women whom you style so fresh
And pure and paintless (there I have my doubts!)—
Seen them in England, Berlin, Italy;
Admired a thousand, and made love to some;
But still for all that I would give the half
Of my life, full and vivid though it has been,
For just one month of fullest freest fling
And unchained measureless passion on the Stage.

“For, look you, take in parts and analyse
The real true essence of a poet's life:
Lift it and separate it in your hand
As one divides the petals of a flower:
Consider what it really means and is:

Think of the long sad hours of loneliness,
Of voiceless suffering, which the Stage would cure
(Or, if it would not, nothing will but death)—
What is the wandering over dreary hills
Or up the sandy ferny Sussex lanes
Or over wolds where the far heather gleams,—
What is it to be one with butterflies
And placid anglers and dull silvery brooks
And rush and sedges, and the twinkling wren,
And stags in Richmond Park with liquid eyes
And boats that climb the ridgy crests of seas
And all those sunsets that you speak about
(Sunrise I do not mention: poets know
As little of sunrise as an actor perhaps!)—
What is it to be one with all these things,
Dull, dreary, mute, inanimate, most of them,
Compared to being one—for but one night—
With the blood-pulses of one's fellow-men
And of one's fellow-women,—lifting these

By the majestic force within one's soul,
And thus, by seizing and absorbing theirs,
Expanding so one's personality
That at the last it does in truth become
The mingling of our manhood with a God?

“Yea, most of all the greatest poet-souls
Have ever yearned for action. Never yet
Was there a greater poet-soul than she
Who wrought her work in prose and not in song,
Wonderful Charlotte Brontë: and she felt
Within herself the spirit of acting, fierce
And clamorous and aggressive oftentimes—
Read of the ‘acting’ in Villette, and see.

“This, like so many poets, she retained
Unused, scarce conscious of it to herself

Save when at seasons underneath the stars
Or watching miles of purple heather wave
At Haworth, or the great sea-meadows wave,
She felt within herself a power unknown
That could be used, but might not upon earth:—
The power of drawing all men unto her,
As in that Brussels drawing-room some she drew,
Not by mere written words,—but, greater far
And sweeter, by the actual glance of eye
And actual swift inflections of her voice
And actual rhythm of her neck and hand.”

“Well,” said I—thinking so to comfort him—
For he had grown impassioned, and his eyes
All full of fire and half afloat with tears
Showed that his fervent yearning rankled deep;
“Well,” said I, “perhaps, like Charlotte Brontë, you
Will do your acting in another world
And on a better Stage”—but he flamed out:

“Nonsense! a hopeless sapless sort of hope!

The very vaguest dream of all things vague!
What, join the angels with their golden wings
And golden lyres, and act a play with them!
Cast Moses for Hernani, and St. Paul
For Macbeth, and St. Peter and St. James
For Romeo and Orlando, and some grim
Stiff strait-laced angel-woman for Rosalind!
Ezekiel for a bandit; Gabriel
For the persistent ‘villain of the piece,’
And the slim seraphs for your ballet-girls!
No, that won't do. No, I would rather be
(Thank you) in gas-lit dingy Drury Lane
Carrying a banner, or high-horsed upon
Some glittering tinsel pantomimic car
At Covent Garden, than thus mixed with these
Unhistrionic seraphs up on high!

“That always is the way”—so he went on—
“The longed-for things we cannot compass here,
In the next world we shall be sure to have

We say,—and win some comfort from the thought.
No: give me no vague next world; give me this
To act and love and write in; give me thorns
If that's the only way to win a rose,
And rough fierce breezes if they be the breath
Of the blue wholesome everlasting sea!”

Designing then to turn his mind away
From the sad thoughts that held him for a time,
I said, “What think you of the present age,
Its art, its sculpture, and its poetry?”

“Its sculpture?” he repeated scornfully:
“It has no sculpture. Having lost the eye
For form, what noble sculpture can it have?
Look at your public buildings; worst of all
Your public statues,—those damned sooty things
That shame the summer in your dusty squares,
Standing erect, each with its inky scroll
Of parchment tightly held in outstretched hand;
Each with its wrinkled stony trousers; each

With stony black frock-coat, and stony boots,
And stony waistcoat (full), and stony gaze!
Good God! the sense of form is wholly lost,
Wholly, I say; or how could men endure
To see true form blasphemed on every side?

“A woman's body is the divinest thing
God ever made: but boots and narrow stays
And heavy cumbrous clothes have changed it quite.
No woman walks:—they crawl and limp along,
Fashion's devoted and most helpless slaves.
Can any woman dance upon your Stage?
I trow, not any. Oh, if Greeks were here,
How would they hide their horror-stricken eyes
At such unheard-of travesties of form!
Just in some two or three—'tis hardly more—
Studios the true tradition lingers yet;
But that is not the chief point; for no race
Has ever yet produced true poets of form
Save when the forms around wrought through the eye

Upon the heart, and stamped themselves therein.

“Now, looking round them, what do sculptors see?
Indeed, it seems a mockery to ask.
All that they see must dim their sense of form,
Or else create a wrong sense (this it does
Too often): never was there city yet
With such divine potentialities
Within it both of matter, and of flesh
And soul, as London,—which at the same time
So heedlessly threw all these gifts away,
Clothed in its own perennial hideousness.

“Black, black, and grey; and black again, and grey,
And grey and black—such are the colours mixed
Upon our London palette:—Notice how
The mere coarse green or red or dirty blue
Head-shawl or apron of an organ-girl
Lights up the street, and take your hint from that
Of how the city might be lighted up
By seemly dress, artistically worn.

“As to the æsthetes, and the ‘cultured’ dames,—
The china-worshippers,—the idle girls
Who, when they might be mending socks at home,
Try hands at mending modern Art instead—
Form ‘mutual admiration’ cliques, and think
That true great poets' fame can be enhanced
By gossipping small-talk societies—”
“Well, as to these?”—“Well, as to all of these,
May God deliver us from all of these,—
The God of simplest plainest common sense!

“'Twas but the other day they had a show
Somewhere in the West End; a wondrous show.
What had they, think you? Garibaldi's shirt
Much torn and tattered,—and a broken tooth
Of his (‘decayed: a molar: stopped with gold’:—
So said the label fixed with infinite care
By some fair female æsthete's loving hands)—
And then another tooth—(and this one ‘stopped
With best “amalgam”’; so the label said)—

And then a rag: this had been round his foot
When he was wounded, and his sacred blood
(Too sacred for this fatuous sort of thing!)
Was sprent upon it:—this immortal rag
(It looked just like a pocket-handkerchief
With which some schoolboy's nose had been concerned)
Was closed in carefully by silken doors,
And only one might see it at a time!

“Well,” said the poet, “all this sort of thing
Is rankest folly; and, at the same time,
We have for critics such a virtuous crew
That when the mighty German brings the old tale
Of Tristram and of Iseult,—old as the hills!—
And with his priceless music girds it round,
We are straightway told, ‘His opera is wrong:
All Wagner's work is sensual: Tristram,—fie!
Fell madly in love with his own uncle's wife!’

“With critics so supremely virtuous,
And women the reverse of virtuous

(Too many), we are likely soon to see
Strange things; and perhaps may even live to see,
Some of us, the beginning of the end
Of England's ocean-wide supremacy.

“For nations, like ourselves, must have their day;
Be born and wax and reach their destined height,
Then pass their zenith, their fair golden noon,
Grow old, decay, and perish. Will the sight
(Not seen before) of the best cricket team
We know, completely beaten by the young
Australian gang of nameless vigorous men,
Be ever repeated on a wider field?

“And will they ever beat us not alone
In cricket, but in greater weightier things?
In Science, Culture, Sculpture, Music, Art,
The Drama, Painting? Will those nobler ends
Which you yourself opine the Stage will reach
Be reached not in our London, but in some
Chicago or some Sydney of the West?

I think it may be so. I think that match
When at the Oval our best English team
Was beaten,—aye, and very shamefully,—
I deem that match historic: for it shows
That there are men as keen of eye and hand,
As tough of sinew and as bold of heart,
As steady and persevering, and as strong
In all the points that make a winning game,
As any of our vaunted English race,
Our Graces and our Hornbys, after all!

This great match was historic then, I say.
For what these men with might of muscle and hand
Did, their descendants may most surely do
With the superber might of brain and heart!
Why not? The green Australian glades may see
Their Miltons and their nascent Shakespeares yet:
Their dawning Cleopatras who may win

One day the passionate homage of a world:
Their Newtons and their Bacons who may push
The realm of Science o'er a wider sphere:
Yes, and their actors who may quite surpass
The highest we have seen or hope to see.

“For just consider what a worn-out thing
Is English civilisation after all!
What men, what women, meet us here in town
Or in the country; men all cut and dried,
And women on a certain model shaped
(The dressmaker's; as bad a model as they
Can get by trying!)—all divisible
Into some obvious classes two or three,
With nought original outside these bounds.

“There are the men of science—Tyndall's set—
A lively pleasant joyous sort of set—
Men whose chief glory it would be to kill
The living universe (if but they could!)
And then dissect it. Men who'd take the stars,

The eyes of heaven, from heaven to analyse,
And, having cast their petty sounding lines
Across the blue infinity up there,
Would come and tell us that there is no God
Because, forsooth, God took no heed of them!

“And then there are the clergy:—some engaged
In a strange warfare about copes and albs
And chasubles and many mystic things
That the lay heart quite fails to understand:
And some crying out,—‘The world is on its way
To swift perdition; every soul is damned
By nature. If you would escape the fires,
Believe . . . believe . . . believe.’ . . . Believe in what?
In Mr. Tomkins, or in Mr. Smith,
Or Mr. Noddy: yes, it comes to that.
And then there is the Broad Church lusty school,
The school of Canon Kingsley (greater man
Than they); the tribe of stalwart priests with big
Biceps and sunburnt cheeks and freckled hands;

The men who'd save the world by making it
‘Believe’ in cricket and athletic sports;
The men who rush away in intervals
Of their hard toil (yes: they work very hard)
To climb the Alps, or take a scamper through
The far-stretched lonely desert of Sinai.
Or else they take a tourist ticket: run
And snatch a glimpse of Rome: then home they come,
Prepare some ‘sermons for the people,’—give
Their shallow impressions to a shallow crowd,
A congregation at their beck and call.

“And then the women; we must not forget
The women in thus summing up the age!—
The women: oh, the women! You will find
That, like the men, they are divided too.
For some preach faith, and some are atheists,
And some are antivivisectionists;
And some are ardent vivisectionists
(I used to wonder at this: but I have lived

Two years in London now, and so of course
By this I never wonder at anything):
And some are good and ugly: some are bad
And handsome,—some are good and handsome too:
And some assist in getting up, to help
The poor, Art-Exhibitions at the East End,
And label all the pictures daintily,
As this—‘A breezy day at sea. A good
Picture to look at on an August day
In Whitechapel’ (a carper might remark
The show was held at Easter). Then again
They send Art-needlework, which all must know
Is very grateful for poor starving folk
To gaze on,—fills their bellies through their brain,—
And gives them useful patterns for the socks
And shirts and waistcoats of their men at home.

“Oh, if our ladies,—if they only knew
The worth of their own womanhood! If they
Would use their splendid birthright; mix their souls

With the sea-wind that lifts their golden hair,
And blend their being with our stars and waves!
If they would see that nobler work is theirs
Than just to copy Paris fashions,—strive
Each day to pinch within a smaller shoe
A still more shapeless hoof! If they would rise
To the full stature of their destiny!
But now they follow along the easy path
Of hollow false Conventionality,
And, if one steps aside, it is to seek
Some alien strange æsthetic edifice,
Or pseudo-scientific edifice,
Or ritualistic gaudy temple perhaps:
Never to seek for Nature; never that.

“And then there are the country Rectors: men
Who spend their days in planning harvest-homes,
And smoking pipes, and taking country walks.
Most worthy men: yet what can these men know
Of all the strife and stress of modern thought

That roars its way along the streets of towns
And lifts our spirits upon its tidal waves?
They marry and bestow in marriage: these.
God and the angels when they find in towns
No Churches left, but all these given away
To modern scientific lecturers
And Comtists, and to Health Societies,
Will surely have to beat a swift retreat
To Surrey or to Yorkshire; finding there
Still a surviving island-Church or two
Stemming the flood of infidelity!

“And then the Spiritualists: a wondrous flock
Of gaping, credulous, but earnest men,
Who see strange visions, and bring Shakespeare back
And Milton, to declaim and rant and spout
And utter frothy nonsense by the yard
Or write it (if so, damnably misspelt!)
In dusty airless rooms in Bloomsbury.
Wonderful creatures, these! You pay your fee

And take your choice. ‘Will you have Moses up,
Or Peter, or perhaps Aaron?—Moses? Good.’
And in a twinkling, with a long grey beard
(‘Of course it's Moses. Look at the grey beard!’
So some believing dear old lady says),
Moses appears, and he lays down the law
Not on ten tablets, but with fingers ten
That rap upon the table in the dark.
Or, if you'd rather see a female ghost
—Many would rather see a female ghost,—
There is less danger: for the strong male ghosts
Can sometimes rap your knuckles very hard!—
If you would rather see a lady ghost,
You've but to say: there are so many ghosts
Waiting; kept waiting just outside these rooms
Always. They stand in rows like Hansom cabs
Outside the doors, until the medium calls
And, at their proper moment, they appear.
Proper, or half improper: for they come

Sometimes just covered with a scanty shawl
Or bit of lace—the mere ghost of a dress—
As if they'd fled, and fled precipitately,
From sitting as nude models up in heaven,
Or elsewhere, to angelic sculptors.—Well,
You pay your money, and you name your ghost:
Queen Mary, Cleopatra,—any one:
The odds are that that very ghost will come
And,—if you're nice and show your interest,—
That very ghost will answer queries all
And, ere she melteth, kiss you on the cheek.
Now if that is not cheap for such a show
—The real great Scottish Mary,—only think!—
The very Cleopatra tawny-skinned
(The ghost was tawny-skinned; or dirty-skinned)—
The very Cleopatra who o'erthrew
The whole world for the pleasure of her kiss.
Natures change fast in heaven. Some lose pride,
And some lose sense; and some forget the parts

Of speech, and mix their grammar woefully!—
But all their natures change,—else how should she,
The proud sweet Queen of Egypt, hurry down
At the coarse bidding of this medium
To kiss a casual clerk in Bloomsbury!—
Well, as I said, I think that such a show
Is cheap, dirt-cheap (no dwelling on the word!)—
It is so pleasant just to pay your bob
And thus to be allowed to summon up
The Queen of Sheba, or an ‘Indian girl’—
There are such lots of ghostly ‘Indian girls’!—
While ‘Gather at the River’'s slowly sung,
Sung out of tune (it must be out of tune;
Or else the ghosts would recognise it not).

“And then they tell you such delightful things
About yourself; things that convince you quite
(Unless you're the most sceptical of men,
A Donkin or a Lankester indeed!)—
Things that convince you fully once for all

That you are dealing not with flesh and blood
But with real disembodied entities!

“They'll tell you, just for instance, that one day
Ten summers since you pulled a grey hair out
At half-past eight in the morning. While you look
Aghast, and struggle to fling memory back
And realise this most important deed,
The circle grows impatient: and at last
The former faithful dear old lady says,
‘Depend upon it, Sir, the spirit is right:
They always are’. At which you quite subside.

“Enough of spirits. The æsthetic band
Of pseudo-poets claims attention next:
The men whose souls are so intensely wrought
That they can watch a lily all the day
Open, and watch it folded all the night,
And never tire nor hunger,—no, nor thirst,—
Feeding their souls on sweetness and on dreams.
These are great men: and they inspire the age

Greatly. They teach it that of nothing worth
Are virtue, heroism, love of man,
Courage and self-denial, purity,
Compared to just the curving of a neck,
Or arch of eyebrow, or the tender tints
Upon the crispèd petals of a rose.
They live not on the vulgar bread and cheese,
Beefsteak and chops, of ordinary men:
They live on blossoms, and they feed their souls
On sunsets, and they follow along the shore
The dimpled marks of Aphrodite's feet
With long hair streaming in the laughing wind!

“And they have women-worshippers who throng
Their churches—the æsthetic lecture rooms—
And who to carry out their precepts, dress
In clothes of many colours: peacock green
And terra-cotta red, and many shades
Of subtle sweet intense alluring brown.
These are grand women: giant intellects:

Great followers of the great apostles: fit
Seductive sage-green social missionaries
To spread the æsthetic gospel through the world.
If they were beautiful or really knew
Deep things of Art, they would not preach so well.
Not for the first time the best preachers are
The shallowest and most ignorant of all.”

“Well, you should go upon the Stage,” I said
(I thought by this time he had stormed enough),
“And work your spleen off. Perhaps before you die
You'll hold the listening people spell-bound yet,
And add the laurels of dramatic fame
To your undying green poetic bays.”
The mere thought flushed him. What strange sensitive
Half-morbid curious minds these poets have!
“Nor,” I went on, “do I entirely hold
Your view (I hold it partly); for I think
That, though the æsthetic movement has its fill
Of folly and of arrant childishness,

It has its wholesome healthy side as well.
The ladies who assist at Whitechapel
For instance, do this just because they feel
The insufficiency of common life.
They do it to escape themselves; as you
Would seek forgetfulness upon the Stage.
They do it just because—to quote from you—
‘To feel the sea-wind mingling with their hair
And to blend beings with the stars and sea’
Is sweet (I doubt it not), but rather vague
For English active energetic girls
To find support in: and in the same way
They've taken up this strange æsthetic craze
That you're so hard on, just to give themselves
Something outside themselves to dwell upon;
Just to give outness to their inward thought.
Even a flimsy dubious form of Art
Is better perhaps than quite no Art at all,
And they may climb by these æsthetic steps

To higher places whence may burst upon
Their startled vision Nature's very self.

“And then again there never was a time
(Though we've no noble sculpture, I admit)
When landscape-painting reached a grander height
Or landscape-vision marked so many things.
Go to the Royal Academy: then go on
To the French Salon: you will note two things.
First you will note,—and sorrow as you note,—
How far diviner, and more subtle far,
Is the French average eye for human form.
This finer eye undoubtedly they have,
In spite of all their nude extravagances
(Wrought through a love of form and deep desire
To win the glory of new modes of form
And ever newer modes, which we in our
Form-disregarding folly never quite
Appreciate or fully understand).
But, secondly, you cannot fail to note

How though the glory of form is hidden as yet
From us—yes, even of pure Grecian form,
A thing apart from French fantastic form—
Still, all the glory of Nature and the sea
Is ours: the splendour of the sunsets' fire,
The golden long shores, and the rustling reeds
And steel-blue mountain-tarns and heathery slopes
And ferny deep dim fairy-haunted woods:
These, perfectly, our painters reproduce.

“And then what women there are! in spite of ‘form’
Decried and mocked at and misunderstood.
‘Our civilisation is a worn-out thing’
You say: but can it be a worn-out thing
When 'spite of boots and stays and Fashion's laws
Such women every moment may be met,
Their feet deformed and shapeless certainly,
But otherwise unspeakably divine.
I saw one in Bond Street the other day,
A woman to go mad about,—if I

Were a susceptible quick bard, like you!—
She leant back in her carriage (I admit
I did not see the shapeless pointed feet
Which tapped the carriage-rug below no doubt)—
She leant back; and I marked the shapely head
So full of breeding,—small, and nobly set
Upon the firm white pillar of a neck;
An olive-clear complexion: clear brown eyes:
Lips curved, and somewhat haughtily: the hair
Just of that very loveliest of all shades
(To me)—the deep brown verging into black,
But not quite black; ‘black-brown’ you poets call,
If I remember right, the lovely tint:—
And, with consummate and delightful taste,
The bonnet poised upon her dainty head
(A steely glittering spangled kind of thing)
Had in its centre a broad velvet band
Of black, jet-black,—the harmonious complement
Of colour to the brown-black of the hair.

A very lovely woman she was indeed:
A woman of the brunette darker type.
And then I met another; a fair girl
More of the pink-cheeked average English type,
Less lovely and less striking, much, to me.
But perhaps she would have been to many eyes
More pleasing; she was in a carriage too
And she was in Bond Street: she had light-brown hair
And bright grey eyes and girlish happy smile.

“Well, there are just as many as you like
To look for of these fair-cheeked handsome girls
In London and in England; and there are
(No, not so many) but a goodly crowd
Of the dark-eyed black-brown-haired sweet brunettes
Besides:—and so I say that England still
Has hope (in spite of the lost cricket-match!),
Since still her women are so very fair,
And full of grace as ever in the old days.
Yes: when the Irish steamer darts across

The weltering Channel, think you that it brings
Not often and often Irish girls across
(Still with the immemorial Irish eyes
Of keen clear grey, and ‘black-blue Irish hair’)
As fair as Iseult when with Tristram she
Crossed that same Channel, and the blue waves laughed
To see their lips cling so inseparably
After the love-draught from the golden cup?

“So much for bodily grace. But when you come
To mental quality, there I own you have
A case: and that reminds me I have here
A letter shown me some few days ago—
Written by a lady in London to amuse
Her sister in the country:—she describes
(Particularly well, as you will see)
Her visit to some London Theatres.
I'll read the letter. This is how it begins:—

“‘My very dear old Charlotte, I received
Your letter gladly, and I hasten now

To send the promised answer long-deferred.
I hope so that you're well, and that the “Chicks”
Are well: kiss Tottie will you, dear, for me,
And please tell Willie that I've got a box
Of wonderful tin soldiers,—quite alive
They look, each man of them!—which he shall have
(If only he's good!) as soon as I return.
And, Charlotte, did I leave that Spanish fan
(With the green-petticoated girl; you know
The one I mean?) upon the mantel-piece?
I somehow fancy that I left it there,—
At least I have not got it: kindly look.
And then I want some flowers to wear at night;
I think that if you would explain this, dear,
To Steel the gardener, he might manage perhaps
To cut some every morning the first thing
And send them (nicely packed in cotton-wool:
Be sure you don't forget the cotton-wool!)
To London for me by the early train.

I'm sorry to be such a bother, dear,—
I'm really sorry; but you see that girl,
That horrid Hunter girl, wore flowers last night,
Real flowers (they made her fat cheeks look so pale!)—
And so I'd better get some, had I not?
Oh, by the bye, that just puts me in mind—
They say that Mr. Verger's teeth are false!
You'd never think so, would you? Mrs. Crewe
Was talking quite by chance the other night
To thin Miss Brown (she is a skeleton!)
And she, Miss Brown—so curious it is!—
Knows several people who know the Fergussons,
And at the Fergussons' the other day
A Mr. O'Tolmach (such a pretty name!
Whenever anybody's name begins
With O', I think of claymores and of kilts!
Send me that kilting, do. I want it so.
I've asked you for it in every letter yet!)—
Where was I?—Mr. O'Tolmach knows a man

Who goes to Mr. Verger's dentist: so
You see it must be true he has no teeth.

“‘But now you'll want to know about the play.
Yes, we have been to the Theatre several times,
And thoroughly enjoyed it. Do you know
How very low the dresses are this year,—
Low-necked I mean? Of course one has to be
Quite in the fashion: but one catches cold.

“‘We went to the Lyceum, Tuesday night.
The scenery was most magnificent;
So were the dresses: and oh, Charlotte dear,
There was a lady sitting in the stalls
So fat she filled them both—“the fatted calf
Installed” rude Charlie (you know Charlie Bruce)
Kept calling her: he made me laugh quite loud
And all the people looked: he is great fun.
He dressed up like a gipsy the other day
And came round begging with a real guitar
And made us give him pennies: 'twas at that

Delightful Fancy Fair at Bedford Park,
When, you remember (did I tell you, dear?
Oh this is my first letter: so it is)
That Mr. Barnes the great tall clumsy man
Dressed as a bearded woman: it wasn't nice.

“‘And now I think I've written you a long
And interesting letter, have I not?
Please send the letter on to Cousin Anne,
Will you? She wanted so to know about
The acting. Oh, by the bye, there's one thing more,
The French Plays—I thought Sarah Bernhardt poor
And disappointing: women mostly do:
They're better judges of acting than the men.
And now I'll say Good-bye. Best love to you,
And to Papa,—and kiss the kitten for me,
Will you? (I do wish we could dress it up
Like Charlie Bruce, and give it a guitar,
And have it photographed, and send him one,—

One of the photographs,—d'you think we could?
It would be such real rich delightful fun!)

“‘Well now, Good-bye again. I'm going out
First in the Park and then to make a call.
Think of me at the Theatre to-night.
Your very very loving sister, Jane.

“‘P.S. Be sure you find the Spanish fan
And have the roses wrapped in cotton-wool.
And, if you find the fan, you might send too
That other fan,—I think t'would be of use,—
The one I've had so long—the ivory one;
I think I left it somewhere in my room.’”

“Well, do you know,” the poet smiling said,
“I have a letter in my pocket too,—
In fact I have a couple,—and the first
Is from a lady devotee of Art
(I'm the recipient of some hundreds such).
I will not read it all: don't be afraid.
This is a passage from the middle of it.

She's at the sea-side; and she writes like this:—
‘The red sea-weed is most adorable,
And there are mollusks with resplendent shells
Dyed in the fiery sunsets: do you know,
I think that you could write great sonnets here,
Far greater than the foggy dreary town
Will ever inspire you with. I saw to-day
A fisher-maiden coming back from shrimps’
(From catching shrimps, she means. Her style is terse)
‘With such a face and brow! She might have sat
To Raphael for Madonna. On her back
She bore the pink pellucid crispy shrimps
Encradled. How they twisted, these, and leapt
And fought just like a herd of struggling snakes,
Small wriggling boa-constrictors of the sea’—
Enough. You see the style. And, after this,
It gets more confidential: 'twould be wrong
If I made public all her wondrous heights
Of aspiration and ideal dreams.

Only I would remark—a mere remark
En passant; nothing of much consequence;
That shrimps are brown, not ‘pink,’—until they're boiled.

“And then I have a letter,—wonderful
And dim and great and learned and obscure
(To all save only the writer, but to her
Translucid doubtless; let us trust it is!)
It is from a female Spencerian
(You know the species?)—listen; thus it runs.

“‘I've read your letter; but I can't agree.
Why, there is not the slightest evidence
In all creation of a conscious God!
Not God created man: nay, man made God
In his own image surely: from the first
Adding to Godhead every attribute
That he himself deemed noble and of worth.
You ask me “am I satisfied?” oh yes.
I am content: yes more than that, I am
Triumphant at the thought that we shall pass

Like summer flowers and leave no trace behind.
Will you read Herbert Spencer? Never man
Yet thought as he thought, or expressed himself
As this vast genius has expressed himself,
Bringing the Cosmos into concrete form.
The man's a god: he is not merely man.
For, taking up the rough chaotic world
Dispersed as it were in floating nebulæ,
He has condensed and focussed and arranged
The wandering atoms in a perfect whole,
And given the world a priceless final gift,
His new Synthetic grand Philosophy.
When man has slowly learnt to do without
That old immoral figment of a God
(The certain cause of every kind of crime)—
When he at last has learnt to stand alone
Without the aid of priests and churches, then
The earth will garb her for her wedding-day
And all the rocks and hills and streams will sing.

It is this tiresome fiction of a God
—To which men cling incomprehensibly—
Which, acting like a brake upon the wheels
Of progress, makes us move so slowly along
The glittering far-stretched iron rails of Time.
Once fairly cast it off, and we shall rise
Into a larger and more liberal air,
And be our own gods; praying not to God
But to the silent god within ourselves,
And worshipping the holy eternal Soul
Revealed continuously within the race’—
So on, and so on.”

“Well,” I said, “this makes
One reason why you yearn for acting, plain.
It would be, certainly, a vast relief
After high abstract arguing such as this
To turn one's sleeves up, turn one's trousers up,
And turn one's nose up, and perform a part
In some rich modern realistic play,

If only the part of some poor stable-man
Who by the light of a lantern overhears
The villain plotting, and frustrates him quite.”

And then he left me: and that brings me back
To my own proper subject, viz., the Stage.
Directly or indirectly, now, I think
I've mooted most of my own theories.
Now I must go and dress. I have to-night
To play Othello: 'tis my benefit.

The passage relating to the School Theatricals in Villette makes it abundantly clear to me that there was a fund of fiery dramatic genius in Charlotte Brontë, which never found its full outlet or development in this life: which indeed she instinctively repressed and held back: and which could only have found its goal of full and perfect freedom upon an Ideal Stage.

On June 22, 1882, and the two successive days, the Australian Eleven defeated a magnificent team of the Gentlemen of England in one innings and one run: an unparalleled event in the annals of English cricket.