Part 29 (2/2)

I am disposed to think that Rachel has not genius, but talent, and that her talent, from what I see year after year, has a downward tendency,-there is not sufficient moral seasoning to save it from corruption. I remember that when I first saw her in Hermione she reminded me of a serpent, and the same impression continues. The long meagre form with its graceful undulating movements, the long narrow face and features, the contracted jaw, the high brow, the brilliant supernatural eyes which seem to glance every way at once; the sinister smile; the painted red lips, which look as though they had lapped, or could lap, blood; all these bring before me the idea of a Lamia, the serpent nature in the woman's form. In Lydia, and in Athalie, she touches the extremes of vice and wickedness with such a masterly lightness and precision, that I am full of wondering admiration for the actress. There is not a turn of her figure, not an expression in her face, not a fold in her gorgeous drapery, that is not a study; but withal such a consciousness of her art, and such an ostentation of the means she employs, that the power remains always _extraneous_, as it were, and exciting only to the senses and the intellect.

Latterly she has become a hard mannerist. Her face, once so flexible, has lost the power of expressing the nicer shades and softer gradations of feeling; so much so, that they write dramas for her with supernaturally wicked and depraved heroines to suit her especial powers.

I conceive that an artist could not sink lower in degradation. Yet to satisfy the taste of a Parisian audience and the ambition of a Parisian actress this was not enough, and wickedness required the piquancy of immediate approximation with innocence. In the Valeria she played two characters, and appeared on the stage alternately as a miracle of vice and a miracle of virtue: an abandoned prost.i.tute and a chaste matron.

There was something in this contrasted impersonation, considered simply in relation to the aims and objects of art, so revolting, that I sat in silent and deep disgust, which was partly deserved by the audience which could endure the exhibition.

It is the entire absence of the high poetic and moral element which distinguishes Rachel as an actress, and places her at such an immeasurable distance from Mrs. Siddons, that it shocks me to hear them named together.

112.

It is no reproach to a capital actress to play effectively a very wicked character. Mrs. Siddons played the abandoned Milwood as carefully, as completely as she played Hermoine and Constance; but if it had required a perpetual succession of Calistas and Milwoods to call forth her highest powers, what should we think of the woman and the artist?

113.

When dramas and characters are invented to suit the particular talent of a particular actor or actress, it argues rather a limited range of the artistic power; though within that limit the power may be great and the talent genuine.

Thus for Liston and for Miss O'Neil, so distinguished in their respective lines of Comedy and Tragedy, characters were especially constructed and plays written, which have not been acted since their time.

114.

A celebrated German actress (who has quitted the stage for many years) speaking of Rachel, said that the reason she must always stop short of the highest place in art, is because she is nothing but an actress-that only; and has no aims in life, has no duties, feelings, employments, sympathies, but those which centre in herself in the interests of her art;-which thus ceases to be _art_ and becomes a _metier_.

This reminded me of what Pauline Viardot once said to me:-”D'abord je suis _femme_, avec les devoirs, les affections, les sentiments d'une femme; et puis je suis _artiste_.”

115.

The same German actress whose opinion I have quoted, told me that the Leonora and the Iphigenia of Goethe were the parts she preferred to play. The Thekla and the Beatrice of Schiller next. (In all these she excelled.) The parts easiest to her, requiring no effort scarcely, were Jerta (in Houwald's Tragedy, ”Die Schuld”), and Clarchen in Egmont; of the character of Jerta, she said beautifully:-”Ich habe es nicht gespielt, Ich habe es gesagt!” (I did not _play_ it, I _uttered_ it.) This was extremely characteristic of the woman.

I once asked Mrs. Siddons, which of her great characters she preferred to play? She replied, after a moment's consideration, and in her rich deliberate emphatic tones:-”Lady Macbeth is the character I have most _studied_.” She afterwards said that she had played the character during thirty years, and scarcely acted it once, without carefully reading over the part and generally the whole play in the morning; and that she never read over the play without finding something new in it; ”something,” she said, ”which had not struck me so much as it _ought_ to have struck me.”

Of Mrs. Pritchard, who preceded Mrs. Siddons in the part of Lady Macbeth, it was well known that she had never read the play. She merely studied her own part as written out by the stage-copyist; of the other parts she knew nothing but the _cues_.

116.

When I asked Mrs. Henry Siddons, which of her characters she preferred playing? she said at once ”Imogen, in Cymbeline, was the character I played with most ease to myself, and most success as regarded the public; it cost no effort.”

This was confirmed by others. A very good judge said of her-”In some of her best parts, as Juliet, Rosalind, and Lady Townley, she may have been approached or equalled. In Viola and Imogen she was never equalled. In the grace and simplicity of the first, in the refinement and shy but impa.s.sioned tenderness of the last, _I_ at least have never seen any one to be compared to her. She hardly seemed to _act_ these parts; they came naturally to her.”

This reminds me of another anecdote of the same accomplished actress and admirable woman. The people of Edinburgh, among whom she lived, had so identified her with all that was gentle, refined and n.o.ble, that they did not like to see her play wicked parts. It happened that G.o.dwin went down to Edinburgh with a tragedy in his pocket, which had been accepted by the theatre there, and in which Mrs. Henry Siddons was to play the princ.i.p.al part-that of a very wicked woman (I forget the name of the piece). He was warned that it risked the success of his play, but her conception of the part was so just and spirited, that he persisted. At the rehearsal she stopped in the midst of one of her speeches and said, with great _navete_, ”I am afraid, Mr. G.o.dwin, the people will not endure to hear me say this!” He replied coolly, ”My dear, you cannot be always young and pretty-you must come to this at last,-go on.” He mistook her meaning and the feeling of ”the people.” The play failed; and the audience took care to discriminate between their disapprobation of the piece and their admiration for the actress.

117.

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