The English Stage Part 12

When Mr. Pinero was content to write a _denouement_ of this kind, who could have divined in him the future creator of _Mrs. Tanqueray_?

But at this very moment he had discovered another vein, which he worked for a number of years with increasing success. This was a kind of hybrid production, which partook of farce in regard to plot, and of the comedy of manners in regard to ideas and to dialogue. In short, it belonged to the same province of the drama as _Divorcons_, sometimes on a higher plane, sometimes on a lower. You would say that characters from Dumas and D'Augier had fallen by accident into a scenario of Lab.i.+.c.he. _The Magistrate_ is thoroughly French in character. A London Magistrate, who finds it necessary to hide himself under a table in a restaurant of doubtful reputation, and who, under this table, knocks up against his own wife, and who, in the following act, having escaped by a miracle from this fearsome situation, finds himself called upon to p.r.o.nounce judgment upon this guilty spouse of his (who, needless to say, is guilty only in appearance),--this kind of thing does not belong to English life or even to English humour. In _Dandy d.i.c.k_ and in _The Hobby-Horse_, I find, in the midst of fanciful incidents, a number of delicate and noteworthy sketches of provincial life, of clerical society, of the racing world, and those who belong to it, including a queer kind of female centaur,--a woman jockey,--whom Mr. Pinero has certainly not borrowed from our _repertoire_. There are many brilliant features really, much ingenuity of invention, as well as a real sense of fun and fertility of resource in _The Times_ and _The Cabinet Minister_. I have read these two pieces a number of times, and found them amusing in their deliberate exaggeration.

But when I look into them closely, I ask myself whether the phase of social evolution through which we are pa.s.sing is really like that which the author holds up to ridicule, and whether his caricatures are not a generation or two behind the time. And it is always thus. In the matter of satire, it is the newspaper always that opens the way; the novel comes after it, and then, after a long interval, the theatre. The manners it describes have often ceased to exist; the types it portrays have disappeared, or have become changed. We laugh over Egerton Bompas, the rich shopkeeper, who wants to marry his daughter to a peer of the realm; and over Joseph Lebanon, the vulgar little stockbroker, who dreams of getting invited, through the influence of his sister, the fas.h.i.+onable modiste, to a shooting-party at a castle in the Highlands. But we know quite well that nowadays it is the other way about. It is the peers of the realm who seek to ally themselves with Bompas; and, instead of trembling before them in Parliament, he imposes his social and political programme upon them, turning against land, which is in extremity already, the storm which has been threatening capital. Mr. Joseph Lebanon's part is not to accept invitations, but to give them. It is he who gives shooting-parties, and invites the peers; he allows his house to be used for aristocratic dances, and if he does not appear at them himself, it is from disdain, not from discretion. If he be distinguishable from his new companions, it is through his carefulness in aspirating his h's, his punctiliousness in the matter of etiquette, of his dress, of his servants' livery, of his stud, and of his table. And then if he does make solecisms, they are thought delightful. The only failing for which he could not be forgiven would be--failure. And he is on his guard.

I am afraid, therefore, that Mr. Pinero's comedies, although very pleasant, are already somewhat aged at their birth. It is in vain to get them up in the latest fas.h.i.+ons; their age is evident, especially when they are looked at side by side with that first act of _The Crusaders_, in which the satire is so modern and so full of life.

Mr. Pinero had not renounced the serious drama, and all his theatrical friends, watching his progress in light comedy, yet expected to see him in this field in which, so far, he had achieved but half-successes. On April 24, 1889, the Garrick opened its doors with a drama of his, ent.i.tled _The Profligate_. Marvels were expected from the new theatre which John Hare had erected for himself and his company. As had been the case with the opening of the Prince of Wales's, it was felt that the first night at the Garrick ought to mark a date in the history of the drama. The critics, "old" and "new," were enthusiastic. "At last," exclaimed Mr. Archer, "we have a real play; a play which has faults, with a third act which has none!" Those triumphant a.s.sertions, made in the heat of the moment, must unfortunately be taken with a considerable discount. _The Profligate_ is a melodrama, treated with delicacy and distinction, but incontestably a melodrama in every aspect and in every part, that wonderful third act included; it is even one of the most fanciful, most romantic melodramas that have been written in England for fifteen years.

Whom shall I recognise as an English character, or even as a human type?

Hugh Murray, the sentimental lawyer, who loses his heart at first sight to a schoolgirl, and who buries this beautiful pa.s.sion in the depths of his heart, to disinter it just at the wrong moment? Janet?--who has given herself, without the temptation of love, to a seducer in the forties, and who, during the remainder of the piece perseveres in the accomplishment of acts of delicacy, of renunciation and of self-abnegation without number, veritable _tours de force_--_morale_. Leslie?--the heroine of the play, a schoolgirl who giddily exclaims, a quarter of an hour before her wedding, that she wonders whether the world will seem of the same colour when she is the wife of Duncan Renshaw; and who, after a month spent _tete-a-tete_ with her husband in a villa near Florence, where a fresco of Michael Angelo is to be seen, seems to know life better than we do ourselves. I know, of course, the explanation that is forthcoming: only a single moment was required to alter this character, to bring light to that one. It is precisely in this explanation that I find the mark of melodrama. In serious psychology, it is not so easy to believe in these "moments"--in these sudden revelations, these flash-like crises, which transform an individuality completely, annulling nature and education.

And what is one to say of the "Profligate" himself? He is just the traditional libertine of all the innumerable English novels published during the last fifty years, nor is he unknown to our own old Boulevard du Crime. We see him coldly and deliberately cynical up to the moment when love touches him with its magic ring. That is a kind of conception that has pa.s.sed its prime. Nowadays we are inclined to regard Don Juan as a kind of dupe, the plaything of woman from p.u.b.erty to decrepitude. We picture him to ourselves more engaging when he first begins to sin, and less easy to convert when he has become hardened to it. We find it difficult to believe that thirty days of wedded bliss suffice to awake a conscience which has lain dormant for forty years. If the sense of morality were innate, it must have shown itself earlier; to have been acquired and to have reached such a degree of perfection and sensitiveness, it would have needed more time than the average duration of a honeymoon.

The situation which delighted so the English critics may be thus described. The seducer's wife has, without knowing it, given shelter to his victim. She wishes to help her to confront the man who has wronged her, and her heart breaks when she sees upon whom the penalty has to fall.

I admit that the scenes leading up to this discovery, contrived with great ability, produce a veritable anguish in the spectator's mind, and that the scene between the husband and the wife, which follows after it, is on the same plane of emotion. But by what a number of improbable coincidences had this precious moment to be bought! Chance had to take Janet to Paddington station at the same moment as Leslie and her brother; Chance had to give this same Janet as "companion" to Miss Stonehay, Leslie's school friend; to send the Stonehays travelling towards the environs of Florence and the villa of the Renshaws; to synchronise Janet's illness and Dunstan's departure so that the two women may interest themselves in each other. And it is Chance again that makes Janet see Dunstan in Lord Dangars' company in order that the confusion may arise regarding the two men, and that this Lord Dangars, who is Dunstan's friend, may become engaged to Irene Stonehay, the friend of Leslie. And even after Chance has made all these thoughtful arrangements, Renshaw's happiness might yet be saved, and this terrible danger by which it is threatened be avoided (and this great scene of Mr. Pinero's never come to pa.s.s), if only Janet were allowed to go as she desires, and as good sense and modesty make it right that she should.

What is it that makes her stay? Who is it that advises her to bring about this scandal? No one but Leslie, and I cannot but think her ideas on the subject singularly gross for so refined a person. This advice she gives is grounded on the slenderest and most irrational of arguments; a score of conclusive replies could be given to the pitiful considerations she puts forward. But Janet has to be convinced. Otherwise, what would become of the crisis of this "Faultless Third Act"?

What surprises me most of all is the number of useless excrescences with which the author has enc.u.mbered his piece. What is the point of this solicitor who bores us, and who gives himself such important airs throughout the play without having the slightest influence upon the development of the plot? When, by a final stroke of chance, Leslie has come to know of the absurd love of which he is the victim, why should she let him see that she has heard? All she can find to say to him is, "Good-night." And "Good-night" is all he has to say in reply. This scene in four words could only be sublime or grotesque: I am inclined towards the latter view of it.

Had I been present at one of the first performances of _The Profligate_, I should have imagined myself in the presence of a talent that had lost its way, turning its back on the goal to which it should direct its steps, seeking beyond the confines of reality for some imaginative source of tears. I should have been wrong. Mr. Pinero is of a reflective turn of mind; he learns from his mistakes, and is not blinded by his successes.

Before the echoes of the applause which greeted _The Profligate_ in London had yet died out in the provinces and abroad, Mr. Pinero was at work upon another drama, conceived after a fas.h.i.+on quite different--quite contrary, in fact--a drama in half tints, with realistic touches; a sort of novel in dialogue. This was _Lady Bountiful_, produced on March 7, 1891.

In _Lady Bountiful_ there is no question of any great fundamental truth, no great human interest. It is a very unequal piece of work, in turn very moving and very irritating, for of the two women in whom its interest centres, it happens unfortunately that one has the sympathy of the author and the other that of the public. But it showed, at least, that its author had found its way into the domain of psychological observation.

It was on May 27, 1893, that _The Second Mrs. Tanqueray_ was performed for the first time at the St. James's Theatre. It must be said, to the credit of the public, that its success was immediate, universal, and continued.

The critic whom I have quoted so often exclaimed in a burst of joy, that here was a piece "which Dumas might sign without a blush." No one is ent.i.tled to speak in the name of our greatest dramatist; but quite recently, when I re-read _The Second Mrs. Tanqueray_, I said to myself that if the greatest gift of M. Alexandre Dumas was that of embodying deep psychological and social observation in splendid eloquence or dazzling wit, this rare faculty is to be found almost in an equal degree in Pinero's masterpiece.

"The limitations of _Mrs. Tanqueray_," Mr. Archer goes on to say, "are really the limitations of the dramatic form." I would go further still, and say that such a piece enlarges the province of the theatre. Minute details are to be found in it, brought out by intelligent and carefully thought-out acting, which one would have regarded as too small to attract attention on the stage, shades that the theatre had left to the novel up till then. _The Second Mrs. Tanqueray_ is, like _Lady Bountiful_, an acted novel, but a novel excellently constructed. Its four acts are its four chief chapters, and it should be noticed that the first two of these chapters are purely a.n.a.lytical; but emotion is introduced imperceptibly into the play, and we step from psychology into drama without being conscious of the pa.s.sage.

It is not the old, old subject of the courtesan in love, but that of the mistress raised to the dignity of wife. One of Mr. Pinero's clever notions is that of having in a sense left pa.s.sion out of the question. It is clear, of course, that Tanqueray is very sensible of Paula's personal attractions. Who would not be, in the presence of so charming a woman?

But there is another feeling mingled with this. He is neither a satyr nor a stoic, he a.s.sures his friend Cayley; he has a quite rational affection for "Mrs. Jarman"; hitherto she has never met a man who has been good to her; he, Tanqueray, will be good to her, that is all. Is he absolutely sincere? Is his affection quite so rational as he a.s.serts? Cayley has his own ideas upon the subject, and so have we. Mr. Pinero has been charged with not having told us to what extent philanthropy--the craze for redeeming--entered into Tanqueray's marriage, to what extent the desire to have a pretty woman all to himself. But after all, was it inc.u.mbent on the author to give us Tanqueray's psychology? Was it not rather an indication of his aesthetic sense to keep the husband in the background, to leave him in half-tints so as not to mar the effect of the princ.i.p.al figure? That excellent actor, Mr. Alexander, seems to have felt this, for he effaced himself in the presence of Mrs. Campbell, though quite capable of filling the stage una.s.sisted, as he showed in _The Masqueraders_ and many other pieces. In regard to Tanqueray's character, this, however, should be noted, that, being rich and young enough to keep a mistress without looking ridiculous, he might, if he chose, have become Paula's lover. If he decided to make her his wife, it was first of all to give her pleasure, but also to satisfy a sense of devotion and of virtue in himself. This I believe to be quite true to life. He was born to believe in women--not to be deceived by them, but to deceive himself in their regard: which is a different thing, and perhaps more serious. His first wife was like a nun.

He ends with a courtesan. The law of moral oscillation requires that he should go from the iceberg (it is thus the first Mrs. Tanqueray is described to us) to a volcano. Like all weak men, he would play the part of _un homme fort_. With Paula's arm pa.s.sed through his, he is ready to look the world in the face; but when on the eve of their wedding she comes to see him at eleven o'clock at night, his first remark is, "What will your coachman say?" This remark lights up his whole character, and for my part I require nothing more.

But Paula! What a complex character is hers, and how true in all its aspects! How important to the delineation of this character, and how suggestive, is everything she says--even her most trifling remarks; with what tact and cleverness are her very silences contrived! And with what an infinity of deft and delicate touches has the masterpiece been brought to perfection! She is a courtesan, but with an elegance of manners which imparts to her an air of poetry, and which makes her more akin to a Gladys Harvey than to a Marguerite Gautier. There are women who traverse muddy ways with so light a step that they do not sink in them, and that one but guesses where they have pa.s.sed from little stains upon the tips of their shoes. One or two traits reveal to us the irregularity of Paula's life; the mobility of her impressions, the manner at once fanciful and pa.s.sive in which she allows chance to regulate her actions. She has forgotten to order her dinner; her cook, a "beast" who "detests" her, has pretended to believe that she was not dining at home, and has given himself an evening out. So she has got herself up in _grande toilette_ and has taken up her position in her dining-room, her feet on the fender. Here she has fallen asleep and dreamt. She tells us her dream later, the while she sups off the dessert of the farewell dinner Tanqueray had given to three old bachelor friends. To sup instead of dining, does not this in itself suggest a whole conception of life? Whoever gets into the way of it will never be able to reconcile himself to the respectable regularity of the family joint.

Thus it is with her in everything. She has acquired a certain _ton_, now brusque, now bewitching, an air of Bohemianism, and a whole host of opinions which could never tally with the role of married woman; and these characteristics have become embedded in her nature. Her irregularity of word and deed goes with a like incoherence of thought and feeling. Sombre moods succeed suddenly to extreme gaiety and vanish as suddenly again. The idea of suicide comes to her; next moment she bursts into laughter at the sight of the mournful expression she has evoked on Aubrey's countenance.

She has so serious a way of saying the wildest things, and says the most serious things so frivolously, that you don't know what to believe; her every word leaves you under her spell, and this effect is intensified more and more. She is a really "good" woman, Tanqueray will declare just now to his friend. It is neither an illusion on his part nor even an exaggeration. Paula is "good" and loyal; she has kept back from Aubrey nothing of her past. Better still, she has spent this last day writing out a general confession, with a precision and scrupulousness in which there is a touch of childishness, a touch of cynicism, and a touch, I think, of heroism. She weighs the letter with a smile. It is heavy! She wonders if the post would take all that for a penny! She says to Aubrey, quite simply, without affectation of any kind, without any airs of tragedy about her, that she wants him to read this letter and to think over it; and then, on the morrow, at the last moment, if he changes his mind, let him send her a line before eleven o'clock, and--"I--I'll take the blow!"

Aubrey puts the letter into the fire and she throws her arms round his neck; she tells him quite frankly she had counted upon his doing so, an admission which would quite spoil her "effect," had she sought one.

Has the question ever been better set? Think of the _Mariage d'Olympe_.

The insolent and hypocritical _gueuse_ stood revealed before she had uttered half a dozen words. We knew she could never become acclimatised to that family of honest folk, amongst whom fortune had thrown her. Where, then, was the problem? All Augier's wonderful cleverness hardly sufficed to make us await during two hours the punishment of the wretched woman.

Paula is sincere; she is a woman of heart and brain; she is as good as the women of that world in which she hopes to take her place. In the absence of a _grande pa.s.sion_, she feels a grateful tenderness for the gallant fellow who would lift her up; she is fully resolved to be faithful to him and to make him happy. We desire ardently her success. Why should she not succeed?

We learn in the second act. First of all, because, once she is married, Paula gets bored. The world will not visit her, and custom does not permit of her taking the initiative. She is a kind of prisoner in the beautiful country-house in Surrey. The monotonous tranquillity of "home" oppresses her after the feverish, exciting existence she has led; the quiet wearies her to death. Here is her account of her day's occupations from hour to hour.

"In the morning, a drive down to the village, with the groom, to give my orders to the tradespeople. At lunch, you and Ellean. In the afternoon, a novel, the newspapers; if fine, another drive--_if_ fine! Tea--you and Ellean. Then two hours of dusk; then dinner--you and Ellean. Then a game of Besique, you and I, while Ellean reads a religious book in a dull corner. Then a yawn from me, another from you, a sigh from Ellean, three figures suddenly rise--'Good-night! good-night! good-night!' (_Imitating a kiss._) 'G.o.d bless you!' Ah!"

With Cayley she speaks out more strongly. He asks her how she is.

_Paula_ (_walking away to the window_): "Oh, a dog's life, my dear Cayley, mine."

_Drummle_: "Eh?"

_Paula_: "Doesn't that define a happy marriage? I'm sleek, well-kept, well-fed, never without a bone to gnaw and fresh straw to lie upon.

(_Gazing out of the window._) Oh, dear me!"

_Drummle_: "H'm, well, I heartily congratulate you on your kennel. The view from the terrace is superb."

_Paula_: "Yes, I can see London."

_Drummle_: "London! Not quite so far, surely?"

_Paula_: "I can. Also the Mediterranean on a fine day. I wonder what Algiers looks like this morning from the sea? (_Impulsively_) Oh, Cayley!

do you remember those jolly times on board Peter Jarman's yacht, when we lay off"--(_Stopping suddenly, seeing Drummle staring at her_).

Has she ceased to love her husband and to appreciate the sacrifice he has made for her? By no means. When he asks her tenderly what he can do for her, she tells him he can do nothing more. He has done all he could do. He has married her. She accuses herself. Fool that she was, why did she ever want to be married? Because the other women of her world were _not_. The t.i.tle of married woman looked so fine, seen from afar. Instead of trying to make her way into a circle of people who would have nothing to say to her, why not have lived happily with Aubrey in her own sphere, in which she would have experienced neither the cold insolences of well-bred people nor the inexorable uniformity of well-to-do, respectable life?

But these are Paula's least serious trials. There is another woman in the house--the daughter by the first marriage. She has shut herself up in a convent, but just when her father is marrying again she decides to resume her place in his household. This young girl inspires in Paula a double jealousy. Paula envies her the tenderness shown her by Tanqueray; she feels that this tenderness is very different from the love she herself inspires. Then she would fain win the love of this child, who, warned by some instinct, draws away from her and shrinks from her caresses. It is a shame, she cries, for after all the girl knows nothing--she ought to love her. Then, forgetting that love does not come to order, that advice cannot produce it, that it is begged for in vain, she exclaims to Tanqueray, that he should command Ellean to love her. This love would do her so much good.

It would expel from her nature that mischievous feeling which carries her into deeds of rashness and folly.

A neighbour, a lady who has for long been a family friend of the Tanquerays, comes to call on her at last, but it is only to take her step-daughter to some extent from under her care. What is it intended to do? To find some distractions for Ellean and get her married if possible (it being obvious that Paula cannot take her into society), and thus to bring about a freer and quieter time for Paula and her husband. But Paula can see in all this nothing but a conspiracy formed behind her back, and in which her husband is mixed up. Then ensues a pa.s.sionate scene in which bursts out all the terrible violence of this spoilt-child-like character, embittered by a false position. Now there remains nothing more for us to learn about her.

When we see Ellean again in the third act, a great change has come over her. On her travels she has come across a man whom she loves and who wants her to marry him. Paula is overwhelmed with delight. She sees an opportunity of playing the part of a mother. She will help on this love-affair, and Ellean will love her out of grat.i.tude. Already the ice in which the young girl's heart has been locked is beginning to melt. She is to be found acknowledging to Paula the feeling of repulsion she at first had entertained for her, and trying to explain away, and express her sorrow for, her conduct. But the man who has gained the love of the girl is one of the former lovers of the woman!

This is the situation which forms the subject of the last two acts, and which leads Paula in the end to suicide. The circ.u.mstance which brings her face to face with a man whom she had known before her marriage is likely enough; that which makes of him a suitor for the hand of Ellean is less natural, but not impossible, and it would be ungracious--after the author has so richly catered for our psychological curiosity by his rare gifts of a.n.a.lysis--to carp at the means he has employed of stirring our sensibility. He has made it clear to us from out the close of the second act that the domestication of the courtesan is an impossible dream; and the appearance of Captain Ardale, bringing things to a crisis, does but render the antagonism between Past and Present, visible, palpable, crus.h.i.+ng. And the Future, what of it? We are to be shown it; for nothing has been overlooked by the stern logic which informs this play, underlying and disguising itself, but not altogether hidden, under the aspect of humour and emotion. Paula, her mind already full of those thoughts of death she had, as it were, flirted with in the first act, replies to her husband, who has suggested as a remedy their migration to some distant land:--She sees her beauty, she tells him, fading little by little, her beauty that was her one strength, her one unfailing excuse; she sees herself _tete-a-tete_ with this cruel and insoluble problem, with the bitter memory of her misdeeds, with the consciousness of the harm she had suffered and had wrought.... I shall never forget this scene. How her hoa.r.s.e voice vibrated, and its accents of despair! How her every word went to the heart and sank in it! The actress had her share in this great triumph, and it was one of the strokes of luck attending this fortunate play that it was the means of revealing a great artist.

Mrs. Patrick Campbell is a woman of Society who was led by circ.u.mstances and an unusually strong vocation to embrace the stage. She is said to have Italian blood in her veins; hence, no doubt, that nervous delicacy of hers, that _morbidezza_ which shades, veils, tempers, refines her talent no less than her beauty. She has neither the originality, nor the knowledge, nor the voice of Sarah Bernhardt, but she possesses that magnetic personality of which I have spoken with reference to Irving, and with which there is no such thing as a bad part. If this personality must be described, I would say that Mrs. Campbell's province as an actress is more particularly that of dangerous love. That voice of hers, though it has but little sonorousness, power, or richness, produces in one a sense of disquiet and distress, straitens the heart with a kind of fascinating delicious fear that I would describe as the _curiosite de souffrir_. You feel that if you love her you are lost, but once you have seen her it is too late to attempt resistance. The generations which believed in the human will, which asked for simple tenderness, pert coquetry or imperious pa.s.sion in a heroine, would never have understood her. She has come just in time to lull our dolorous philosophy, to show incarnate in woman the victim and the instrument of destiny.

It was with the same ally that Mr. Pinero risked his next battle, in January 1895, at the Garrick. I shall not a.n.a.lyse _The Notorious Mrs.

Ebbsmith_. I acknowledge that the piece is full of charming traits, and that the melodramatic element has been carefully eliminated from it. But I am obliged also to say that the author has seized one of the serious questions of the time, the emanc.i.p.ation of woman, and her revolt, justified in some respects, against marriage, and that this great subject has been allowed to slip through his fingers. Agnes Ebbsmith is on the point of seeking consolation in free love for the troubles and humiliations of her married life. She has rejected a copy of the Bible which a friend has offered as a last resource. She has thrown it into the fire, then in a sudden reaction she rushes to the fireplace, plunges her arm into the flame, rescues the sacred book, and falls upon her knees. The scene is a very fine one, and Mrs. Patrick Campbell never failed in it to bring down the house. But the conversion of Agnes is a _denouement_,--not a solution, unless Mr. Pinero would have us believe that the modern woman will find in the Bible a response to all her anxieties, a remedy to all her ills. It is a delicate thesis, and not wis.h.i.+ng to discuss it I shall remain silent. I prefer to bring my account of his talent to a stop, provisionally, with this admirable _Mrs. Tanqueray_, which submits and solves a moral problem at the same time that it sets forth and brings to its natural close a drama of domestic life.

CHAPTER XII

Ibsen made known to the English Public by Mr. Edmund Gosse--The First Translations--Ibsen acted in London--The Performers and the Public--Encounters between the Critics--Mr. Archer once more--Affinity between the Norwegian Character and the English--Ibsen's Realism suited to English Taste; his Characters adaptable to English Life--The Women in his Plays--Ibsen and Mr. Jones--Present and Future Influence of Ibsen--Objections and Obstacles.

"There is now living at Munich a middle-aged Norwegian gentleman, who walks in and out among the inhabitants of that gay city, observing all things, observed of few, retired, contemplative, unaggressive.

Occasionally he sends a roll of MS. off to Copenhagen, and the Danish papers announce that a new poem of Ibsen's is about to appear."

It was by these characteristic lines that England learnt of the existence of the singular man who exerts to-day so great an influence over the art and the thought and the moral life of the whole of Europe. He was shut up at that time in his meagre Dano-Norwegian glory, like that genie whom the Eastern tale shows us imprisoned in a bottle. As for the author of the article which brought him before the English public, he was a quite young man, a subtle poet and delicate critic, Mr. Edmund Gosse. Nowadays he occupies in the literary world one of the foremost places amongst those who create and who criticise, but the best pieces of good fortune fall to one's youth. In his distinguished career as a critic, he has had no more precious stroke of luck than that of the finding of Ibsen, at an age at which as a rule one has been hardly able to find oneself.

Mr. Gosse made known Ibsen's published works, his historical and historico-legendary dramas, his first efforts towards taking up his position in the domain of modern realism. He showed an indulgent partiality towards _The Comedy of Love_, and justified it by ingenious translations into verse of his own. He condemned _Emperor and Galilean_ as only a half-success, although his faithful and penetrating a.n.a.lysis of it did no wrong to any of the beauties of the piece. He rendered full justice to the sombre grandeur of _Brand_ and the dazzling fancy of _Peer Gynt_.

In short, he heralded a poet and a satirist. Ibsen has long ago renounced the first of these t.i.tles, and as for the second, Mr. Gosse must find him somewhat _grele_ for the part. He could not, in 1873, foresee the realistic dramatist, the reformer, the psychologist, and the symbolist, who in turn have appeared before us. But he touched the right note, I think, when he paid his homage to Ibsen as "a vast and sinister genius"--"a soul full of doubt and sorrow and unfulfilled desire."

Ibsen entered into correspondence with his young critic, as Goethe before him had done under a.n.a.logous circ.u.mstances with Carlyle. Mr. Gosse was one of the first to be informed of the internal crisis which was transforming the poet's talent, and which was to be a starting-point for the series of social and psychological dramas. "The play upon which I am now at work, he wrote,"--it was _The Pillars of Society_,--"will give the spectator exactly the same impression as he would have watching events of real life running their course before his eyes." The stage was to be merely a room, one of whose walls had been taken down that two thousand people might look on at what was happening inside it. Mr. Gosse entreated the author of _Brand_ and _Peer Gynt_ not to abandon poetry, but Ibsen followed his destiny.