New York Letter

(A scattering of words anent Washington Square, “Henry VIII”, Yvette Guilbert, “The Merry Wives of Windsor”, and sundry other things and people, as far as space and time allow.)

ALLAN ROSS MACDOUGALL

From my garret window I look out on Washington Square. Snow and ice still lie there, and the trees are black and mean.

On the first page of his new book, “Moby Lane and Thereabouts”, Neil Lyons says: “Spring has many ushers, and is heralded by divers signs. Some people look for these signs among the hedgerows; others seek them in the sky, or listen for them in the night, whilst other people neither look or listen, but go smelling about, or stand upon hill-tops, tasting.” My sign shall be, I think, the grimy trees of the Square. And sometimes as I sit here looking out on the icy barrenness I wonder if, when Spring’s breath does touch the earth, whether flowers will come up—flowers that I long to see: crocuses, anemones, daffodils. It’s all very well to see them in shop windows, but God! to see them come up out of the earth and unfold! But I fear our Square is too sophisticated. I know a man will come—a common tobacco-chewing man with a stunted soul who belongs to a Union and gets paid so much coin by the hour—and he will arrange squares, and oblongs, and diamond shaped plots of earth. Then will he proceed laboriously and without joy to stick tulips or some other straight official flower into these geometrical, soulless patterns. And throughout the year in the Square, nature will be kept in bounds and orders.

“Henry VIII”

It seems scarcely possible that Sir Herbert Tree would have the calm artistic audacity to come to this country and present his production of “Henry VIII” in the moth-eaten scenery and costumes that were used in the London production in the year 1910. Yet he did, and oh! the wearisome drab antiquity of it all! But the “People” liked it and gave the beknighted actor-manager “one of the greatest premieres that New York has witnessed these many years”.

Mention is made in the programme of “the inspiring aerchiological advice” of Percy Macquoid, R. I. The advice may have been quite inspiring. I do not doubt it. But the results of that advice! That medley of costumes! Those photo scenes of Windsor Castle and Blackfriars Hall and Westminster Abbey! They were bad when first conceived and painted, and five years in a London storeroom has not improved them to any degree compatible with their presentation to an audience that has looked upon the work of Bakst, Urban, Jones, Sime, and Rothenstein.

And what can be said of the lighting? There was one comic spotlight that followed Sir Herbert (or ought I to say Wolsey? I hardly know; they were never quite distinct) around the stage like a little motherless puppy. Sometimes it went before, sometimes it frisked after, on the tail of his magnificent scarlet gown. It had a grand time! But it never seemed to be doing the thing it ought to be doing.

But let me not bore you as these things bored me. Pass we now to the acting. In London the honors of the play were carried off by Arthur Bouchier as Henry, and his wife, Violet Vanburgh, as Katherine. A repetition was performed here. Lyn Harding as Henry, and Edith Wynne Matheson as Katherine, carried every one before them. And Tree? Well, he had his moments. There was his superb entrance with the look he flashed at Buckingham: fine too was the acting in the scene of his downfall. Between these two highlights such ordinary acting has seldom been seen in a man of Tree’s reputation. In a cold classic way Miss Matheson was splendid. I liked her much, and but for her some of the scenes in the play would have been colourless. There was the usual mob of supers who got caught in doorways and tripped over furniture, but on the whole they behaved as well as an ordinary stage manager can make such people behave.

Yvette Guilbert

Five years ago I saw Yvette Guilbert in London. I loved her all. Her red hair; the skinny arms of her, clothed in long black gloves; and her Gallic body with the low-necked white crinoline that gowned it. And how she sang!! And her acting! For five years I have carried the memory of her around with me, matching other people up with her but never finding her equal. On Sunday, March nineteenth, I saw her again. The black gloves and the white crinoline were gone, and she had grown a little stouter. The red hair was there, and the smile. Her voice had changed a bit and her personality had mellowed. She sang songs that were grave and moving, like Fiona Macleod’s Prayer of Women, and others that were gay and jocular, like The Curé Servant. But whatever she sang—and I didn’t know a word of what she sang—carried me away completely. Not a mood did I miss—not a suggestion of a mood. Perfect is her art. She has my adoration.

“The Merry Wives of Windsor”

The latest addition to the Shakespeare Festival that is being thrust upon the apathetic people of this place is the Hackett-Allen production of The Merry Wives of Windsor. Three things can be said without any further comment. Joseph Urban did the stage settings. Richard Ordynski directed the production. Willy Pogany designed the costumes. Gordon Craig says somewhere that any medium is easier to work in than human beings. After seeing the work expended on The Merry Wives of Windsor by three geniuses, and watching the actors in that play, we understand completely.

Soulless New York

Witter Bynner, grown somber and blase,—the effect of living in soulless New York, he says—has become a sort of Greek Chorus to me. In various strophes with divers variations, in sundry public and private places, he chants the dismal fact that New York is soulless and that there is a danger of it robbing me of my joy in life. Not while its streets remain as they are will I lose the joy I possess! I cannot remember any city that I have been in where my sense of the comic has been tickled so often by happenings in the streets. So many comedies are enacted by the curbstone, so many quaintly funny things happen every hour on the streets, that it would be impossible for me to forget how jolly life really is. Of course I see tragedies too, but they seem to be there only for the purpose of balance!

For some time to come I’ll Dalcroze down the avenues and numerical by-ways of this “soulless” city. And my smile will always be handy; and my whistle wet, ready to pipe Gathering Peascods or The Parson’s Farewell or anything merry and bright to dance to.

To save the theatre, the theatre must be destroyed, the actors and actresses must all die of the plague. They poison the air, they make art impossible. It is not drama they play, but pieces for the theatre. We should return to the Greeks, play in the open air; the drama dies of stalls and boxes and evening dress, and people who come to digest their dinner.—Eleonora Duse.