Image provided by: University of Nebraska-Lincoln Libraries, Lincoln, NE
About The courier. (Lincoln, Neb.) 1894-1903 | View Entire Issue (Nov. 25, 1899)
S9MmWi THE COURIER. fc. ft v Bh ft ir IB liavo been laid, cities have been plant ed, schools have been established, mines have been dug and expensive machinery imported by the English in opposition to the Dutch who, as a race, arc as conservative as the Amer ican Indian. They have got us far as frame houses and porches but still look with suspicion on bay windows in houses. If they possess the nervous energy and scrapping ability of our Puritan forefathers they will And someway to beat England out. If they fall, so much better for the Trans vaall. Racial movements are neither right nor wrong. The race witli the strongest vitality, ibe strongest race, clastic enough to take advantage of cir cumstances will win tbe victory. The Anglo Saxon has beaten in so many contests, that this one in (.he Trans vaal seems already decided in his fa vor. If the Dutch are really like the Puritans in New England they will win for there was a greater difference between England and the colonies in 1770 than there is now botween Eng land and the Dutch in Africa. The Royal Box. Last Friday night at the Oliver Mr. Charles Coghlan and his excellent company played The Royal Box; a ro mantic play in five acts founded on a drama by Alexandre Dumas and adapted by Mr. Coghlan. The p'ay has some weak points, Mr. Coghlan and his company none. From the star to the footman the acting was flawless. It was as good as a book which is usually much better than a play. 1 he vraisemblance of costumes, furniture and manners to the first years of the century when George IV was still prince of Wales was complete enough to satisfy the audience,' which knew no more of the period than that men wore knee breeches, low shoes, and took snuff; that women wore era pire gowns, were invariably intri guantes, and that the manners of both men and women were flowery and more deferential if less sincere than they are today. The audience had learned these things about the first years of the century from books, prints, and miniatures. The artistic and scholarly designer of the costumes and furniture for The Royal Box knew the outward aspect of people and things of the time he sought to recall from a closer study of "remains" just as Dumas was able to reproduce the words, the manners, and the pecu liar habit of thought, so that the epi sode supposed to have happened a hundred years ago, happened again last Friday night. The real literary flavor of the play, as Mr. Coghlan pre sents it, is exquisite and lasting. It is unfortunately true that actors sel dom know or value that quality which gives a play and its performance an abiding flavor. Mr. Booth never for got it. Mr. Irving, Mr. Jefferson, Miss Marlowe, and now Mr. Coghlan recog nize and impart this flavor, a flavor which is to be found in Chaucer in Sbakspere in Thackeray, and which we are too limited to know by any other name than literary but it might as well be called X for we do not know its secret, we cannot an alyse it, and if never a book had been written it would still exist in the way certain men and women tell a story or act it. For employing so fine a company and trusting to western audiences to recognize their ability and quality as well as his own eminent gifts, Mr. Coghlan exhibits a confidence and faith that is touching and should be rewarded by large audiences. If there hud been nothing more than the first act, set us a reception rocm in the Swedish Embassy in London, with painted walls and spindle-legged, enameled furniture, with the dialogue between two court dames with axes in their hands with which they gushed each others' hearts and reputations and the entrance of the Swedish am bassador, the Prince of Walee and Clarence the actor at the end of the scene, still the fragment, like one of Phidias' was enough to mako the heart of a lover of beauty for beauty's sake beat quicker for satisfaction. The little acrobat, Taylor Granville, in soiled rose colored small-clothes was not the least perfect part of Mr. Coghlan's rnre good company, and Mr. Tlpps. a constable, Mr. Henry War wick, had the perennial, classical fla vor of constables since ShaHspere made the cup winner. The construction of the play is so clever that there is never a creak of machinery. Each act of the Ave is short, the action is rapid and does not halt. But at the end of the last act, where third rate playwrights place the caste all in a row coupled for life, Clarence the first matinee hero of the entury who was but now madly in love with a woman of fashion is pared off with a Miss Pryce the first matinee girl whose lines from her first entry sound the familiar matinee girl's key in G gush. So much in love witli the countess of Felsen that he was will ing to sacrifice his reputation as an actor. and to denounce the Prince from the stage, it is not credible that Clarence would turn immediately to the matinee girl who has sought to arouse hissympathy by tales of a trite cruel guardian who is forcing her to marry a wicked lord whom she cannot love. But In the last act of The Royal Box Clarence actually and radiantly accepts the colorless stage crazy young lady who so persistently visits him. Klplwgs School Days. The school days and early life of Mr. Kipling portrayed in "Stalky and Co." explains the Rabelaisian coarse ness of his mature work, A coarse ness of the camp, of college and of clubs, a repulsive coarseness of diction and of subject said to prevail in camps, and colleges, in mining camra, and occasionally in men's clubs. Whatever the function and purpose of woman mav be and just now her ralson' d'etre is being debated with some warmth-one of the most im portant is to associate with man and to prevent him by precept, example and exhortation, from degeneration. Without tne constant presence of good women, men can be soldiers, good business men or successful novelists but their conversation aud the pro duct of their minds when Isolated, is said to be Rabelaisian. The effect of the boys' boarding schools upon Englishmen is apparent In English literature, but I know of no writer who responds so markedly to .this Influence as Kipling. In spite of his gifts he has not been able to por tray; except faintly and incorporeally, a good woman. In The Light that Failed, The Phantom Rickshaw, and many other Indian tales the women are of a class much below even those which Fielding chose, not for heroines but for minor characters. Taken away from their mothers and from all female influence at eight years of age it is not surprising that- the speech of Englishmen is repulsively frank and that only a few English writers are capable of a real heroine such us the world has worshiped since Eve. The three odious little cynics of Stalky and Co. have prototypes enough in this country but compared to the boys who are scolded, bossed, und tuckea into bed by their female rela tlves their number is small, thunks to the Institution of the public school A boy that has a little talk with his mother at tho end of the day, who loyally recognizes her as his com manding officer has all the chances in his favor. lie is the sort of man, when lie gets to be one, that girls want to marry und that corporations want to hire. Tee gamin who is sent away to school because Ills mother cannot control him is the exception in America. Mr. Kipling frequently expresses his contempt in Stalky and Co. for the day school boy who returns to ilia mother when school is over. But if those same duy pupils were possessed of the literary gifts of little Rutlyurd they would now be uble to portray a female character who would not deserve our contempt. What we scorn in our youth, later logic and ex perience will not transfigure. The mind of youth has not been tran scribed or written upon. The first marks make so heavy an Impression It can never be written over. It is the youthfulness, the clearness of the im age or the impression a writer is able to communicate that makes him fas cinating or commonplace. Kipling knew nothing about women in his youth. He lived in an atmosphere of scorn for their weakness and senti ment and the inevitable result of his bringing up is the life-long conceal ment of their secret from him. Mr. Kipling would Dot mind this at all, if his trade were not writing und ills wuge the price of seeing true. More than all that, when posterity's turn comes the glamour and newness of Soldiers Three will have been worn off and posterity will Judge him for his faithful delineation of the men and women of the latter half of the nineteenth century and it is more than likely Kipling will be sentenced to oblivion for assault and battery on women. For in some respects the most modern and the most gifted writer of this period, in female por traiture, he is the least gifted of all novelists. Hardy, Black, James, Du Maurier, Howells, Wllkins, Hurris, Cable, and even Zola might look down upon him from unmeasured heights. While Tolstoi's. Turgenleff's, and Dos toyievsky's women are modern with the quality of the eternal feminine so inexplicably conveyed that even their personality forever attracts. Even the unfortunate women are portrayed by these men so sympathetically that instead of the loathing and contempt which Kipling's creatures excite, tho spirit the intellect, as in Anna Karen ina forever haunts the reader. Many an author whose books have been received with undiscrimlnating enthusiasm has made the mistake that Kipling made in Stalky and Co. Neither the American nor tho British reading public can receive an autobi ography like this one of Kipling's without Immediately applying it as a key to the books ho has written. The next book Mr. Kipling writes the re viewers will handle with less veneru tion. There will . be no longer any illusion concerning his views and he himself lias furnished exact informa tion which explains his limitation?. I've discovered a way to get rid of those cigars my wife gave me on Christ mas, How? 1 give one evory Wednesday and Sun day evening to tho oung man who culls on my daughter. Tbe poor chap does not dare refuse them. Bazar. Native Ye wanter keep pretty straight in this here town, stranger, for thn citi zens lynch a man on the slightest provo cation Tenderfoot Would you lynch a man for killin' a dog? Native Would we? Why I've kcowed a feller to be lynched fer killiu' a china man. ITr-iHItlllMMIMMIMMMMMMuuL :the passing show: W I LLA GATHER ttM)MMIMMMMMMMMMmig4 "I hate him, for he is a Christian." Merchant of Venice. Miss Viola Allen and Hall Caine'a much advertised monstrosity, "Tho Christian " are in town. Of "The Chris tian: a Play;" all I that can say Is that it is neither Christian nor play, and that heathen lands would blush to have given it birth. Mr. Hall Caine'B income is twenty thousand pounds a year, and Mr. Henry James, the first living writer of pure English and the highest expo nent of refined literary art, makes an in comb i of three hundred pounds a year, a smaller sum than most expert account ants are content with. Now if the figures of the two men's incomes were reversed, it would indicate the millenial dawn of public taste. The only merit I have ever heard he claimed for "T Christian" is that it is exciting, and bo it is in a thoroughly illegitimate manner, much as "The Sign of the CrosB" i9 exciting, That is to say, it is frankly and aggressively sensational. If an author denies himself no liberty, shunB no situation, however trite and cheap, permits himself all the ugly, dis agreeable words that yellow journalism has invented, he ought to be able to concoct some sort of excitement for the gallery, at least and in all audiences the gallery element predominates, no matter where they happen to sit. It Mr. Hall Oaine fails to inteiest his do voted readers, it is certainly because of no delicate scruples aa to the means be u:ea. The plot of the play follows closely that of the novel, with which tbe public is, alas, more familiar, than with that of many a better book. The first act is placed in the Isle ot Man, where Glory Quayle fiirts a bit with some strange - gentleman from Londqn, and makes ber plans to go there and take up tho voca tion of a trained nurse, during which conversation her glum, ecclesiastical lover sulks among the ruins of the old castle. Miss Allen's desperate and coti sjientious attempts at kittenishness, I found both inadequate and painful. She is an earnest, serious young woman, with much etrenuousness and something of tbe puritanic in her make up. She is a wonderfully thorough and capable actress, but she is by no means great enough to escape the limitations of her own decided personality. Mr. Hall Caine himself did not seem to have any very clear or consistent conception of 'Glory Quayle," save that she resem bled Ellen .Terry physically and temper amentally, and that she was a madejp creature, full of life and health and youthful blood. Mow when Miss Allen essays to play a madcap girl ot smiles and tears, she goes against nature, and all the positiveness ot her own intense individuality 1b against her. Thatehe y can play bo exotic a character bo well aa f she doea attests much as to her skill and training, but after all an actress is more fortunate when she pulls with the cur rent of her own nature, The ending of this first act la little less than ludicrous. "John Storm," the sulky lover, makes some vague sug gestions that if "Glory" would consent to remain on the island and marry him, such a proceeding might not seriously interfere with his theological studies. When she fails to fervidly embrace this icy opportunity, he talks church and ie nuniiation, and suddenly calls hia sweet heart down to the front of the stago be fore the assembled populace of tbe Iale of Man, and announces to her that be haB decided to become a monk and will have none of her. Was ever a heroine . called upon to face a more trying and f awkward situation? !l aateyfedjfeg