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Musical Courier 1893-10-18: Vol 27 Iss 710, 1893
105 lines. Read by computer on 23 September 2026. Printed page 9. See the scan on archive.org.
1many of them; and a sort of yearning for respectability that even years of "keeping house" with different men could not totally efface. Primarily, however, she was lovely to look at and quite irresistible as to personal charms. An ideal mistress, a poor sort for a wife.
3"Mr. Tanqueray" doesn't seem much of a man. He is fleshly, and wavers between duty and the devil during the play. There again the influence of the dead wife is felt. She must have been a chilly person indeed, according to "Cayley Drummel's" crisp and witty description. The sensuous side of "Mr. Tanqueray" was easily assailed and conquered by the ripe beauty of "Paula." The remembrance of the conjugal chilliness of his wife drove him, pendulum-wise, in the opposite direction, and his heaven was evidently the embrace of "Paula's" rounded arms.
5* * *
7So much for Mr. Pinero's position in the matter of the second marriage.
9To a man of the flabby force of character which "Mr. Tanqueray" possessed the fear of wounding and shocking his friends was a primary consideration. He had lots of worldly respect, but he nevertheless cared so little for his daughter's fair innocence that he allowed her to remain under the same roof with a woman who told shady after-dinner stories in a cynical manner. Instinct warned "Ellean" that the woman was not the right sort, but that will not excuse her father's conduct. A weak sort of man, a jellyfish person, this "Mr. Tanqueray," who loved a warm bed, waffles and slippers more than his dead wife's memory, his daughter's honor and the opinion of his friends and his world.
11* * *
13One really can't blame "The Second Mrs. Tanqueray" for her after behavior. She was bored to death, her goody-goody stepdaughter was not the most interesting company in the world, and her husband's devotion, while no doubt pernicious at times, was of the truly comfortable British husband sort.
15She had had a taste of the gilded bohemian life. She had slept under the "few large stars" of the South, had glided in sunny Mediterranean waters, had gambled at Monaco, kept house on the Riviera, had sipped life at its fullest—and then to settle down in Surrey in the heart of a genteel landscape and with no callers!
17Now, one may call "Paula" vicious—and vicious she assuredly was in part—but you can't altogether blame her for being bored. Yet how she resented the music hall type of women when the Orreyeds came to visit her! She regretted their presence more than did her husband. Neither can I blame her for her rudeness to "Mrs. Cortelyou." Bad form it unquestionably was, but she was wayward, was "Paula," and quick to sniff the mingled pity and condescension in the visitor. Look how she sued for "Ellean's" love, how she melted at the girl's tardy recognition, how black everything became after the dénouement! No! "Paula Tanqueray" was not a hopelessly bad person. She was the victim of an error. She was transplanted, but too late. Taken in her girlhood she might have become all that "Mr. Tanqueray" fondly pictured, but to win her entirely at her age required a different environment. She was reminded too much of the past in Surrey, her own and her predecessor's past. Perhaps—who knows?—if she had gone to Rome or Paris, as her husband suggested only too late, matters might have turned out differently. But it was withheld her, and self destruction was her only recourse.
19* * *
21Mr. Pinero has constructed a very strong play. It has few blemishes, and if it were condensed at the close it might even be more telling. The action is delayed too long, and so many explanations are indulged in that something in the nature of an anti-climax ensues. Little need of "Paula" wondering what she would have been if circumstances had been different; little necessity, in a word, of retrospective regrets at that eleventh hour. Much more effective would have been the suicide of "Mrs. Tanqueray" immediately after the discovery of her former lover in the person of "Ellean's" betrothed. What a shock it would have then caused! But of course when the curtain falls on this fin de siècle "Camille," looking at her image in a hand glass, the catastrophe was inevitable, and one wondered at the delay.
23This, however, is the one technical blot on the play, which is natural and witty as to dialogue, and clever as to characterization. It is eminently a woman's play, the male characters having very little to do, and the title rôle in the hands of a great artist, which Mrs. Kendal is not, could be made truly powerful.
25* * *
27As to the morality or immorality of the play, I care nothing about and know nothing of. In discussing a work of art the first point to be taken cognizance of is whether it is good or bad art. The moral must take care of itself, and it generally does, for it may be premised here that when there is good art there is usually a good moral, whatever that very indefinite word may mean precisely.
29Mrs. Tanqueray the Second may not be the sort of a person that you would admit into your drawing room, but she is interesting as a study for grown up men and women; and as long as civilization is as it is, why, so will this type of womanhood interest us, for has she not a soul and affections? Mr. Pinero makes no plea for her. He paints her not in gaudy colors, nor yet does he give us the Magdalen of the boulevard. He has studied his woman deeply, and it ill behooves a Mrs. Kendal to attempt to extract a moral lesson from the situation.
31Let a work of art speak for itself. To some the play will be offensive, but then it was not written for the jeune fille, but for those who delight in dramatic analysis, in following to their hidden cerebral coverts the springs of action.
33It is an ethical problem, perhaps, but remember an ethical problem, histrionically treated and presented, and from the dramatic view point only, should it be considered and discussed.
35Sermons should be preached in church, not from before the footlights.
37* * *
39The gravest mistake of the performance was of course Mrs. Kendal's ill-attuned assumption of the part of "Paula." It was, however, a conception striking for its consistency, but who in the wildest dreams could fancy a man of "Aubrey Tanqueray's" culture, taste and experience marrying such a brazen throated, jerky, mawkish courtesan as Mrs. Kendal gave us? The whole interpretation is radically wrong, for the most dangerous point of the play, the weakest stone of the dramatic edifice, is the fact that "Mr. Tanqueray" should marry a woman with a past. But that could be safely tided over by the illusions of grace, beauty and personal fascination. Surely, "Paula" had languorous, beseeching eyes at times, dangerous in glance, and then her voice could not have rung out with the siccant emphasis of an Avenue A dinner bell! Not even remotely did Mrs. Kendal present for us the lovely adventuress, and consequently too great stress cannot be laid here.
41Mr. Pinero's main argument falls to the ground. We are repelled at this coarse creature of the pavé, and feel naught but contempt for the man who removed her from her proper environment.
43Mrs. Kendal's large experience enabled her to do many clever technical tricks, but at no time was she convincing, at no time did she create an illusion. She treated her daughter in a way that would have frightened any child into hasty flight, while her sentiment was mushy and false and her regrets about the past were mere wordy lies. Let Mrs. Kendal harp on the moral of the play as much as she wishes, she does not begin to reveal the possibilities of "Paula Ray," and she really spoiled a magnificent part.
45She may, in fact does disgust one with the character, and if that is her aim she has succeeded. She makes the woman with a past a very unpleasant wretch indeed; and possibly the clerical profession and that contingent of the theatregoing public which loves to swallow their sermons disguised in the symbols of the stage will indorse this absurd and brutal creation of Mrs. Kendal. But it is bad art nevertheless, and "The Second Mrs. Tanqueray" is hopelessly spoiled thereby.
47* * *
49Mr. Kendal, by comparison with his wife, seemed a Salvini towering over—say an Adele Belgarde. In reality he gave a smooth, gentlemanly performance, at no time remarkable for color or intensity. He over emphasized the lachrymose failings of "Mr. Tanqueray," but he has large, beautiful eyes, and so his tears were very becoming. He rose to no great climaxes, but he bore himself well, and seemed a better husband than father.
51Mr. J. E. Dodson made much out of a not very potent character. The easy going cynicisms of "Cayley Drummel" are resolved later into a heartfelt desire to help the grievously oppressed household of his friend. Nothing new in all this, nor has Mr. Pinero devoted much time to the elaboration of the character. Mr. Dodson has largely "built" up the part himself—with what cleverness, discretion and good taste we all know.
53The "Ellean," Miss Annie Irish, was respectable, but not anything remarkable. This character too is rather sketchy until just before the close, and Miss Irish could not entirely cope with its potentialities. The future is very artistically left in darkness by Mr. Pinero, and a touch of Ibsen is manifest in the handling of the catastrophe.
55The minor characters were all intrusted to good hands, and enfin, "The Second Mrs. Tanqueray" is a very strong play badly bungled by Mrs. Kendal.
57* * *
59To listen to Mr. Joseph Arthur's "The Corncracker," at the Fourteenth Street Theatre, after tasting of the literary flavor of Mr. Pinero's finely considered diction, was something in the nature of a shock. "The Corncracker" is like the dream of some drunken dramatist, and this remark is not in the slightest degree a reflection on Mr. Arthur's personality. But the incoherency, the wild farrago, the odd jumbling of dialect, the absurd phrase mongering, the idiotic characterization, the climaxes piled on climaxes, and above all the absolute want of motive—all contributed to drive the average critic half crazy.
61There are plots and sub-plots in Mr. Arthur's latest play, and of the fugitive sentiment, even poetry of "Blue Jeans" not a vestige. People make love to each other in the most profane fashion, and genuine blasphemy and slang abound throughout. A fighting parson, a falling elevator and two viragos who hysterically clutch at throats and hair are the most thrilling features of this dramatic nightmare.
63The speeches are either foolishly high-flown or else delivered in an incomprehensible dialect.
65* * *
67McCargo's Corners in Patriot Indiana must be an awful place to live in, and the mob which clustered on Mel McCargo's fence like a lot of hungry buzzards was the most unreal stage mob that ever yelled for whiskey and tar and feathers. Fun there is, and red hot fun at that. Irishmen, negroes, corncrackers, Hoosiers, girls who wear white stockings and clamber up fire escapes, an impossible preacher with a Bowery melodramatic daughter, an absurd hero, a mother who discovered a long-lost son through the aid of a chromo which resembles Kate Davis made up for the "Rainmaker," and a long-legged galoot of the soil, who was, nevertheless, a hero at heart even if his fingernails were discolored.
69All these heterogeneous elements Mr. Arthur has attempted to weld into a whole and of course has failed signally. The elevator scene with the changing floors is clever, but the device of shaking down hickory nuts on the meeting is a coarse replica of the falling of the rose leaves in "Blue Jeans."
71In singularly bad taste was the appearance in the last scene of the victim of the accident. It is nauseating at any time to see a man cut off at the waist. Why drag it on the boards simply to use it as a peg for a few revolting and heartless jokes?
73"The Corncracker" is very bad altogether, and even the earnest efforts of the company could not give it any semblance of sense or reality.
75Bassoon Bell.—Evette & Schaeffer have brought out a bell for their bassoons enabling the player to take the low B, which so frequently occurs in Wagner's music for this instrument.
77Marteaum.—Henri Marteau has left Rheims for Vienna, where he will study the new Scotch suite for violin with its composer Max Bruch.
79G. SCHIRMER, NEW YORK,
80HAVE RECENTLY PUBLISHED
81KULLAK, DR. ADOLF, Aesthetics of Pianoforte Playing.
82Translated by Dr. Th. Baker from the third German edition. Revised and edited by Dr. Hans Bischoff.
83CLOTH, NET $2.00.
84"A handbook for every ambitious student or instructor. The author sets himself the unique task of analyzing all the most important methods and schools of piano playing, and of sitting and rearranging the material thus obtained so as to afford a clear, complete and consistent view of the fundamental principles underlying pianoforte technique and style. The result is an eminently original and useful method, happily combining the practical and ideal sides of piano playing."
86FOR SALE BY THE PRINCIPAL MUSIC DEALERS, OR MAILED POSTPAID ON RECEIPT OF PRICE.
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