1865.]

AND FROM GERALDINE JEWSBURY.

279

that was exhaled in that result, one would not have believed you could have done otherwise.

I fear perfect contentment is a lazy emotion, for I did not want anybody to speak. I think the expression of one's admiration is more given to that which suggests to us something better, rather than to that which fulfils all we can conceive, or rather goes beyond all we are able to think. I think it is so in all works of art and genius, the higher they go the less we find to say about them. The same with great scenes in nature. We resent words uttered as impertinence.1 I found myself crying, if that is any tribute.Believe me, yours very gratefully, GERALDINE E. JEWSBURY.

While still under the impression made by the Juliet, a few evenings afterwards Miss Jewsbury wrote, with the accustomed subtlety of observation :

March 29, 1865.

On Monday night I was in my place, and I am still under the spell. To you I dare scarcely say all that you realised for me in your embodiment. If you could have seen the faces of your audience, and not the faces alone, but the eager breathless attention with which they regarded you, it would have told you more than any words or uttered applause. I have seen so little acting in my life that my tribute is like that of an ignorant savage. I can only say how it affected me.

There was such I think the part

There was in your acting so much more than appeared. a whole life of meaning and possibility below the surface. that gave me as intense emotion as any was in the scene where the nurse exhorts you to marry the County Paris. "Speakest thou from thy heart?" "Yea, my soul too, or else beshrew them both!" The "amen" that followed bowed down one's heart with the weight it indicated-taking up the burden which must henceforth be borne alone.

In the potion scene one realised (the first time I ever did) the heroism of taking that sleeping potion. It gave one the impression of sustained courage, not desperation. But perhaps the most intense moment to me in the whole play was that when the door was closed on the mother and the nurse. The silence fell with a weight, and the pitiful terror one felt for Juliet took one by the throat. One realised what it was that lay before her, and I think the awakening in the tomb, the stiffened movement of the limbs in the effort to arise was another of the touches which showed the depth that lay beneath. As to the absolute beauty and perfect grace of Juliet there is no need to speak. They were not only there, but so much more was indicated. It is not the mere bodily limits of what we see and possess that give value and beauty; it is the everlasting life that underlies them. If it was not yourself to whom I am writing I could say a great deal more; and yet one can at best utter so little.

1 This was my wife's own feeling. See p. 143 ante, when she speaks of the Venus of Milo.

280

MISS JEWSBURY ON HER ROSALIND.

[1865.

Miss

A few nights afterward As You Like It was produced. Jewsbury went to see the Rosalind, and wrote of it to me the following day :

I think Rosalind is, if possible, as exquisite as Imogen. There is in her an airy grace, a fascinating high breeding, which is inexpressibly attractive. The girlish spirits have not been quenched by sorrow, and there is an elasticity and youthfulness which have a charm of their own. Mrs Martin's Rosalind is one of Shakespeare's women, without a trace of the medium and machinery through which it has to be exhibited. I forgot all about the stage, and enjoyed without any drawback her lovely personation. There was such dainty fun and playfulness in Rosalind, that this enjoyment was not made sad. The epilogue, too, was charming.

Certainly, having had the privilege of seeing her in these three characters -Imogen, Juliet, and Rosalind-will mark an era in my life. She has shown men an ideal of what women can be, and I never heard a man speak otherwise than gratefully for that. All recognise it, young and old. They accept her as the type, not of one character nor another, but of the ideal of womanliness, and, when this is the spontaneous tribute, she has not lived or worked in vain. . . . I do not think the influence of her private happy life can be over-estimated. She does not hear or know one-half of all the good influence she has exercised. It is artists like her, who keep the world alive. . . .

I do not think Mrs Martin knows how vividly those who saw her years ago remember her. A lady said to me, "How well I remember the Pauline of 1848."

It will seem strange that, with all the response which the public had given to her efforts, my wife was troubled with the fear that she had lived in vain. She had seen so great a decline in the tone of the theatrical world, and in the character of the plays which were most popular, that this fear at times took a strong hold of her. Miss Jewsbury was aware of this, and it is to this groundless apprehension that she refers in the letter just quoted.

CHAPTER XIII.

THE great interest excited by the performances at Drury Lane made the Manchester public impatient of my wife's two years' absence from their stage. She yielded to their wishes, and played a short engagement there in the April of this year, and was greeted with the same intelligent enthusiasm as of old. In Birmingham, where she had not acted for many years, she played for two nights, on her way back to London, and found there the warmest appreciation. She needed rest, but an appeal, which she could not resist, was made to her to read for the benefit of the Brompton Consumption Hospital the drama Ulysses, which M. Ponsard had written in illustration of Gounod's music. Neither play nor music showed their authors at the best. Although much had been done by Mr Farnie, the translator, to lighten the heaviness of the original, the task of infusing life and animation into the text was no trivial one. How it was accomplished we are told by the critic of the Pall Mall Gazette:

The very defects of the work [he says] only served to illustrate more conspicuously Miss Faucit's extraordinary dramatic power, and suggested forcibly what might be accomplished in the interpretation of a worthier book by such skilful elocution, and a voice so exquisitely musical in its cadences, so charmingly sympathetic, and so wide in its range of expression. It was only at times that Miss Faucit found it necessary to distinguish by name the different persons of the drama, and even if this precaution had been wholly omitted, we doubt whether the slightest confusion could have arisen, so distinctly did the accomplished actress mark by tone and gesture the various characters who were brought together.

Mrs S. C. Hall wrote:

I heard numbers say, as we were going out, "Well, I never heard

282

REAPPEARS AT DRURY LANE.

[1866.

reading before." I certainly never did; and then, as the old women say, "it came natural." Oh! it was perfect. .. It was a great thing to do for a good cause. May God bless you! and may you long retain your powers! Your pure heart and bright nature keep you in the morning of your days.

In November 1866 my wife appeared again at Drury Lane in As You Like It, The Hunchback, and in the ever-popular Lady of Lyons. The weakness of the company took from her much of the pleasure which she found in acting before a sympathetic audience. The extra strain from this cause was well expressed by a writer in the Pall Mall Gazette (November 24)—

It is something [he wrote] when an actress consistently sustains the illusion, that she is Beatrice or Rosalind every moment that she is on the stage; but how much more is it, how much greater the testimony to her skill, when she contrives to maintain the illusion in the face of half-adozen people whose every gesture rends illusion, and every word mocks it? This is what Miss Faucit accomplished, and we are thereby left to wonder at another thing—namely, what her acting would be, if, spared the irritation and the fret, to which she is now exposed, her powers had free scope and full encouragement among players as good, or nearly as good, as herself.

When asked, "How she could act to such a Romeo, Benedick, or Orlando?" she would reply, "It is not to them I act—I see and hear only my ideal lover!"

In a fine appreciation of the Rosalind, the writer just quoted says:

When Miss Faucit came before the public last year, impelled by enthusiasm for her art, her impersonation of Rosalind was that which most delighted old playgoers, and most astonished young ones. The new generation had never seen such acting before, nor anything like it; and many a spectator who up to that time had thought slightingly of acting as an art, learned for the first time, how much of exquisite art goes to make a really finished actor. . . . She sustains the interest and delight of her audience to the end by a constant show of grace, constant proofs of intelligent study, and by frequent flashes of something more than mere intelligence inspires, or than study can ever attain to.

The character seemed on each performance to grow in favour with her audiences, and those who saw it, as many did, again and again, found it ever fresh in its animation of spirit and in the infinity of new touches begotten of the moment's inspiration.

1866.]

HER PAULINE.

283

Thank you gratefully [Miss Jewsbury wrote the morning after the first performance] for all the great pleasure I had last night. I cannot tell you how much I enjoyed the whole play, for your spirit pervaded it, and raised the whole to a degree of completeness one seldom enjoys. . . . I enjoyed it more than last year. You were more yourself, and lighter and freer, and that made me hope you are in better health than when you last played Rosalind. Do you recollect how ill you were that night? But well or ill, you are Rosalind. My dear, did any one ever give that epilogue as you did last night? It was exquisite. . . But it is not for the like of me to go giving criticism, or specifying what I liked best. I took it altogether, and was thankful.

So, when she played Pauline, it was felt that since she had last acted it in London the impersonation had been developed into something more complete, "more moving-natural," and full of pathetic charm. No character in our time has drawn more tears than Pauline. Men used to be seen putting their handkerchiefs into their mouths to keep them from breaking into sobs. Miss Thackeray, now Mrs Richmond Ritchie, writing the morning after seeing the performance on this occasion, said, "Papa used to say he never saw the play without crying. What a sight," she added, "that great enthusiastic house was! Why didn't you come, when we clapped and cried? could have seen three Turks who sat next to me. she made me cry when she put on the cloak. lovely."

I wish you

Dear Pauline!
She is so

Mr S. C. Hall could not go to bed till he had written to me (28th November) :

In the long time ago, when I was a dramatic critic, it was a frequent duty to write at once-and at midnight- opinions and impressions of what I had seen. I do so now after a long, long interval.

I have never in my life (and that is saying much) been more gratified than I have been to-night; for the performance (a weak word) of the Lady Helen as Pauline in Bulwer's play is the nearest to perfection my experience furnishes to my memory-and I have seen all the actresses of my time, from Miss O'Neill until now.

In truth it is perfect: there was not a single look, word, or motion that I could conceive might have been better. I knew that art was there,yet it was hidden under nature: it was consummate art, the result certainly of intense thought and continual study, but I was never for a moment startled into a knowledge that it was art.

1 In her home circle my wife always went by this name.