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THE TRAGIC MUSE
at such a crisis the offi ce of attention ceases to be fi lled she stared
with surprise and then broke out: “Ah the poor idiots!” She eventually became, in her judgements, in impatience and the expression of
contempt, very free and absolutely irreverent.
“What a splendid scolding!” the new visitor exclaimed when, on
the entrance of the Pope’s legate, her companion closed the book on
the scene. Peter pressed his lips to Madame Carre’s fi nger-tips; the
old actress got up and held out her arms to Miriam. The girl never
took her eyes off Sherringham while she passed into that lady’s embrace and remained there. They were full of their usual sombre fi re,
and it was always the case that they expressed too much anything
they could express at all; but they were not defi ant nor even triumphant now they were only deeply explicative. They seemed to say,
“That’s the sort of thing I meant; that’s what I had in mind when
I asked you to try to do something for me.” Madame Carre folded
her pupil to her bosom, holding her there as the old marquise in
a comedie de moeurs might in the last scene have held her goddaughter the ingenue.
“Have you got me an engagement?” the young woman then appealed eagerly to her friend. “Yes, he has done something splendid
for me,” she went on to Madame Carre, resting her hand caressingly
on one of the actress’s while the old woman discoursed with Mr.
Dashwood, who was telling her in very pretty French that he was
tremendously excited about Miss Rooth. Madame Carre looked at
him as if she wondered how he appeared when he was calm and
how, as a dramatic artist, he expressed that condition.
“Yes, yes, something splendid, for a beginning,” Peter answered
radiantly, recklessly; feeling now only that he would say anything
and do anything to please her. He spent on the spot, in imagination,
his last penny.
291
HENRY JAMES
“It’s such a pity you couldn’t follow it; you’d have liked it so
much better,” Mr. Dashwood observed to their hostess.
“Couldn’t follow it? Do you take me for une sotte?” the celebrated artist cried. “I suspect I followed it de plus près que vous,
monsieur!”
“Ah you see the language is so awfully fi ne,” Basil Dashwood
replied, looking at his shoes.
“The language? Why she rails like a fi sh-wife. Is that what you
call language? Ours is another business.”
“If you understood, if you understood, you’d see all the greatness
of it,” Miriam declared. And then in another tone: “Such delicious
expressions!”
“On dit que c’est très-fort. But who can tell if you really say it?”
Madame Carre demanded.
“Ah, par exemple, I can!” Sherringham answered.
“Oh you you’re a Frenchman.”
“Couldn’t he make it out if he weren’t?” asked Basil Dashwood.
The old woman shrugged her shoulders. “He wouldn’t know.”
“That’s fl attering to me.”
“Oh you don’t you pretend to complain,” Madame Carre said.
“I prefer our imprecations those of Camille,” she went on. “They
have the beauty des plus belles choses.”
“I can say them too,” Miriam broke in.
“Insolente!” smiled Madame Carre. “Camille doesn’t squat down
on the fl oor in the middle of them.
“For grief is proud and makes his owner stoop.
To me and to the state of my great grief
Let kings assemble,”
Miriam quickly declaimed. “Ah if you don’t feel the way she
makes a throne of it!”
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THE TRAGIC MUSE
“It’s really tremendously fi ne, chère madame,” Sherringham
said. “There’s nothing like it.”
“Vous étés insupportables,” the old woman answered. “Stay with
us. I’ll teach you Phedre.”
“Ah Phaedra, Phaedra!” Basil Dashwood vaguely ejaculated,
looking more gentlemanly than ever.
“You’ve learned all I’ve taught you, but where the devil have you
learned what I haven’t?” Madame Carre went on.
“I’ve worked I have; you’d call it work all through the bright, late
summer, all through the hot, dull, empty days. I’ve battered down
the door I did hear it crash one day. But I’m not so very good yet.
I’m only in the right direction.”
“Malicieuse!” growled Madame Carre.
“Oh I can beat that,” the girl went on.
“Did you wake up one morning and fi nd you had grown a pair of
wings?” Peter asked. “Because that’s what the difference amounts to
you really soar. Moreover, you’re an angel,” he added, charmed with
her unexpectedness, the good nature of her forbearance to reproach
him for not having written to her. And it seemed to him privately
that she was angelic when in answer to this she said ever so blandly:
“You know you read King John with me before you went away.
I thought over immensely what you said. I didn’t understand it much
at the time I was so stupid. But it all came to me later.”
“I wish you could see yourself,” Peter returned.
“My dear fellow, I do. What sort of a dunce do you take me for?
I didn’t miss a vibration of my voice, a fold of my robe.”
“Well, I didn’t see you troubling about it,” Peter handsomely insisted.
“No one ever will. Do you think I’d ever show it?”
“Ars celare artem,” Basil Dashwood jocosely dropped.
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HENRY JAMES
“You must fi rst have the art to hide,” said Sherringham, wondering a little why Miriam didn’t introduce her young friend to him.
She was, however, both then and later perfectly neglectful of such
cares, never thinking, never minding how other people got on together. When she found they didn’t get on she jeered at them: that
was the nearest she came to arranging for them. Our young man
noted in her from the moment she felt her strength an immense
increase of this good-humoured inattention to detail all detail save
that of her work, to which she was ready to sacrifi ce holocausts of
feelings when the feelings were other people’s. This conferred on
her a large profanity, an absence of ceremony as to her social relations, which was both amusing because it suggested that she would
take what she gave, and formidable because it was inconvenient and
you mightn’t care to give what she would take.
“If you haven’t any art it’s not quite the same as if you didn’t hide
it, is it?” Basil Dashwood ingeniously threw out.
“That’s right say one of your clever things!” Miriam sweetly responded.
“You’re always acting,” he declared in English and with a simple-minded laugh, while Sherringham remained struck with his expressing just what he himself had felt weeks before.
“And when you’ve shown them your fi sh-wife, to your public de
la-bas, what will you do next?” asked Madame Carre.
“I’ll do Juliet I’ll do Cleopatra.”
“Rather a big bill, isn’t it?” Mr. Dashwood volunteered to Sherringham in a friendly but discriminating manner.
“Constance and Juliet take care you don’t mix them,” said Sherringham.
“I want to be various. You once told me I had a hundred characters,” Miriam returned.
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THE TRAGIC MUSE
“Ah, vous en étés la?” cried the old actress. “You may have a hundred characters, but you’ve only three plays. I’m told that’s all there
are in English.”
Miriam, admirably indifferent to this charge, appealed to Peter.
“What arrangements have you made? What do the people want?”
“The people at the theatre?”
“I’m afraid they don’t want King John, and I don’t believe they
hunger for Antony and Cleopatra,” Basil Dashwood suggested.
“Ships and sieges and armies and pyramids, you know: we mustn’t
be too heavy.”
“Oh I hate scenery!” the girl sighed.
“Elle est superbe,” said Madame Carre. “You must put those
pieces on the stage: how will you do it?”
“Oh we know how to get up a play in London, Madame Carre”
Mr. Dashwood was all geniality. “They put money on it, you know.”
“On it? But what do they put in it? Who’ll interpret them? Who’ll
manage a style like that the style of which the rhapsodies she has
just repeated are a specimen? Whom have you got that one has ever
heard of?”
“Oh you’ll hear of a good deal when once she gets started,” Dashwood cheerfully contended.
Madame Carre looked at him a moment; then, “I feel that you’ll
become very bad,” she said to Miriam. “I’m glad I shan’t see it.”
“People will do things for me I’ll make them,” the girl declared.
“I’ll stir them up so that they’ll have ideas.”
“What people, pray?”
“Ah terrible woman!” Peter theatrically groaned.
“We translate your pieces there will be plenty of parts,” Basil
Dashwood said.
295
HENRY JAMES
“Why then go out of the door to come in at the window?
especially if you smash it! An English arrangement of a French piece
is a pretty woman with her back turned.”
“Do you really want to keep her?” Sherringham asked of Madame Carre quite as if thinking for a moment that this after all
might be possible.
She bent her strange eyes on him. “No, you’re all too queer together. We couldn’t be bothered with you and you’re not worth it.”
“I’m glad it’s ‘together’ that we’re queer then we can console
each other.”
“If you only would; but you don’t seem to! In short I don’t understand you I give you up. But it doesn’t matter,” said the old woman
wearily, “for the theatre’s dead and even you, ma toute-belle, won’t
bring it to life. Everything’s going from bad to worse, and I don’t
care what becomes of you. You wouldn’t understand us here and
they won’t understand you there, and everything’s impossible, and
no one’s a whit the wiser, and it’s not of the least consequence. Only
when you raise your arms lift them just a little higher,” Madame
Carre added.
“My mother will be happier chez nous” said Miriam, throwing
her arms straight up and giving them a noble tragic movement.
“You won’t be in the least in the right path till your mother’s in
despair.”
“Well, perhaps we can bring that about even in London,” Sherringham patiently laughed.
“Dear Mrs. Rooth she’s great fun,” Mr. Dashwood as imperturbably dropped.
Miriam transferred the dark weight of her gaze to him as if she
were practising. “You won’t upset her, at any rate.” Then she stood
with her beautiful and fatal mask before her hostess. “I want to do
the modern too. I want to do lé drame, with intense realistic effects.”
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THE TRAGIC MUSE
“And do you want to look like the portico of the Madeleine
when it’s draped for a funeral?” her instructress mocked. “Never,
never. I don’t believe you’re various: that’s not the way I see you.
You’re pure tragedy, with de grands éclats de voix in the great style,
or you’re nothing.”
“Be beautiful be only that,” Peter urged with high interest.
“Be only what you can be so well something that one may turn to
for a glimpse of perfection, to lift one out of all the vulgarities of
the day.”
Thus apostrophised the girl broke out with one of the speeches
of Racine’s Phaedra, hushing her companions on the instant. “You’ll
be the English Rachel,” said Basil Dashwood when she stopped.
“Acting in French!” Madame Carre amended. “I don’t believe in
an English Rachel.”
“I shall have to work it out, what I shall be,” Miriam concluded
with a rich pensive effect.
“You’re in wonderfully good form to-day,” Sherringham said to
her; his appreciation revealing a personal subjection he was unable
to conceal from his companions, much as he wished it.
“I really mean to do everything.”
“Very well; after all Garrick did.”
“Then I shall be the Garrick of my sex.”
“There’s a very clever author doing something for me; I should
like you to see it,” said Basil Dashwood, addressing himself equally
to Miriam and to her diplomatic friend.
“Ah if you’ve very clever authors !” And Madame Carre spun the
sound to the fi nest satiric thread.
“I shall be very happy to see it,” Peter returned.
This response was so benevolent that Basil Dashwood presently
began: “May I ask you at what theatre you’ve made arrangements?”
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HENRY JAMES
Sherringham looked at him a moment. “Come and see me at
the embassy and I’ll tell you.” Then he added: “I know your sister,
Mrs. Lovick.”
“So I supposed: that’s why I took the liberty of asking such
a question.”
“It’s no liberty, but Mr. Sherringham doesn’t appear to be able to
tell you,” said Miriam.
“Well, you know, it’s a very curious world, all those theatrical
people over there,” Peter conceded.
“Ah don’t say anything against them when I’m one of them,”
Basil Dashwood laughed.
“I might plead the absence of information,” Peter returned, “as
Miss Rooth has neglected to make us acquainted.”
Miriam vaguely smiled. “I know you both so little.” But she presented them with a great stately air to each other, and the two men
shook hands while Madame Carre observed them.
“Tiens! you gentlemen meet here for the fi rst time? You do right
to become friends that’s the best thing. Live together in peace and
mutual confi dence. C’est de beaucoup lé plus sage.”
“Certainly, for yoke-fellows,” said Sherringham.
He began the next moment to repeat to his new acquaintance
some of the things he had been told in London; but their hostess
stopped him off, waving the talk away with charming overdone stage
horror and the young hands of the heroines of Marivaux. “Ah wait
till you go for that! Do you suppose I care for news of your mountebanks’ booths?”
XX
As many people know, there are not, in the famous Theatre Francais, more than a dozen good seats accessible to ladies. The stalls are
forbidden them, the boxes are a quarter of a mile from the stage and
the balcony is a delusion save for a few chairs at either end of its
vast horseshoe. But there are two excellent baignoires d’avant-scene,
which indeed are by no means always to be had. It was, however,
into one of them that, immediately after his return to Paris, Sherringham ushered Mrs. Rooth and her daughter, with the further escort of Basil Dashwood. He had chosen the evening of the reappearance of the celebrated Mademoiselle Voisin she had been enjoying
a congé of three months an actress whom Miriam had seen several
times before and for whose method she professed a high though
somewhat critical esteem. It was only for the return of this charming
performer that Peter had been waiting to respond to Miriam’s most
ardent wish that of spending an hour in the foyer des artistes of the
great theatre. She was the person whom he knew best in the house
of Moliere; he could count on her to do them the honours some
night when she was in the “bill,” and to make the occasion sociable.
Miriam had been impatient for it she was so convinced that her eyes
would be opened in the holy of holies; but wishing as particularly
as he did to participate in her impression he had made her promise
she wouldn’t taste of this experience without him not let Madame
Carre, for instance, take her in his absence. There were questions the
girl wished to put to Mademoiselle Voisin questions which, having
299
HENRY JAMES
admired her from the balcony, she felt she was exactly the person to
answer. She was more “in it” now, after all, than Madame Carre, in
spite of her slenderer talent: she was younger, fresher, more modern and Miriam found the word less academic. She was in fi ne less
“vieux jeu.” Peter perfectly foresaw the day when his young friend
would make indulgent allowances for poor Madame Carre, patronising her as an old woman of good intentions.
[: 1890]
The play to-night was six months old, a large, serious, successful
comedy by the most distinguished of authors, with a thesis, a chorus
embodied in one character, a scene a faire and a part full of opportunities for Mademoiselle Voisin. There were things to be said about
this artist, strictures to be dropped as to the general quality of her
art, and Miriam leaned back now, making her comments as if they
cost her less, but the actress had knowledge and distinction and pathos, and our young lady repeated several times: “How quiet she is,
how wonderfully quiet! Scarcely anything moves but her face and
her voice. Le geste rare, but really expressive when it comes. I like
that economy; it’s the only way to make the gesture signifi cant.”
“I don’t admire the way she holds her arms,” Basil Dash wood
said: “like a demoiselle de magasin trying on a jacket.”
“Well, she holds them at any rate. I daresay it’s more than you
do with yours.”
“Oh yes, she holds them; there’s no mistake about that. ’I hold
them, I hope, hein?’ she seems to say to all the house.” The young
English professional laughed good-humouredly, and Sherringham
was struck with the pleasant familiarity he had established with
their brave companion. He was knowing and ready and he said in
the fi rst entr’acte they were waiting for the second to go behind
amusing perceptive things. “They teach them to be ladylike and
Voisin’s always trying to show that. ’See how I walk, see how I sit, see
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