Mr. James's American on the London Stage

IT seemed a good deal to believe, when one was told that the least dramatic of modern story-tellers had turned one of his analytic fictions into an admirable play. But the statement was made with such apparent conviction by certain of those who had seen the “first night ” of The American in the provinces that one could only wait impatiently for its promised promotion to the London stage. After all, nothing gives such a lift out of the mire of realism as to have a paradox proved true.

Well, Mr. James’s American has got its “grade.” It has, at this writing, been running a fortnight at the Opéra Comique, and is not yet threatened with displacement, which proves at least that the British public likes it fairly well. Without, then, pausing to discuss the abstract worth of such a verdict from a public whose idol, though a highly distinguished man, is probably one of the very worst actors who ever won histrionic fame, let us inquire, “in a spirit of love, my brethren,” what the merits of the new play really are.

They may be summed up in one word, — the part of Christopher Newman, which is so much better played by Mr. Compton than might have been supposed possible for an Englishman that it seems quite worth while to indicate the points at which his conception fails. Mr. Compton’s make-up is faultless. He has managed in the most remarkable manner to attenuate his English frame without sacrificing an atom of its power. He has duly observed that curious distinction which causes some London tailors to advertise as a specialty “ the American shoulder.” His honest, clear, beardless face, at once guileless and knowing, amiable and shrewd, is that of the valiant soldier of fortune, who is also the universal brother, ready anywhere and on the slightest provocation to “ hit out ” for a lady in distress.

The florid politeness of Newman’s amusingly unworldly manners is well caught, nor does Mr. Compton miss the touch of quaint romanticism which belongs to the type, nor a certain pathos in the fact that the audacious adventurer has upheld his fair domestic ideal and kept it spotless through all the devious ways he has had to travel in amassing the fortune which he hopes will enable him to realize it. The nasal tones of the American are overdone, but this is perhaps as indispensable for stage effect as the blackening of eyebrows and lashes. Where Mr. Compton oftenest fails is in his accents and inflections, in what the French call the chant of his sentences. There is a notion prevailing in England that Americans end every phrase with a rising inflection. The slightest independent observation might show them the fallacy of this, but independent observation is a great deal to expect. The truth is that there is a certain emphatic dropping of the voice — vibrant if the organs are good, nasal if they are weak — which is much more distinctively American than the tone of everlasting inquiry. Take as an instance the really touching passage where Newman, in the midst of his manly pleadings with Claire for her love, exclaims, “I'm kind, kind, kind!” We all know how he would have said it, slowly and emphatically, — “ kìnd, kìnd, KÌND;” the pitch growing lower, the voice falling farther, at each repetition. Mr. Compton, true to inane tradition, briskly asseverates, “ kínd, kínd, kīnd,” which is false and puerile. The sentiment of Newman’s speech in this instance is in fact so delicate that one almost wonders at its having been left in the dialogue of the play, where the peculiar subtlety and refinement of the original have for the most part been ruthlessly, and one cannot help thinking needlessly, sacrificed to supposed histrionic effect. There is an exquisite point in the lovemaking of the novel, where Newman says tenderly, with reference to the mysterious dangers which seem to beset his lady’s path, “ Come to me and you will be safe. As safe,” he adds, with a certain simple solemnity, “ as in your father’s arms.” This is cut out, of course, and very likely it would not have appealed to the average British playgoer.

But why should the playwright or play-tinker likewise have eliminated that delightfully humorous and extremely telling passage which strikes so clearly the very keynote of the American’s naïve character, where Claire’s brother, Valentin de Bellegarde, is vainly endeavoring to persuade the ingenuous barbarian who loves his sister of the perfect worthlessness of the Nioche family, both father and daughter ? Between amusement and exasperation, and with what doubtless seems to himself brutal frankness, the young Frenchman at last informs his friend that if Mademoiselle Nioche were to part with her virtue in furtherance of her ambition her father “ would not do what Virginius did.” “ I don’t know what Virginius did,” replies the candid American, “ but Monsieur Nioche would shoot Mademoiselle Noémie.” This is inimitable provided the Nioche family must be introduced into the play at all; but the truth is they are mere excrescences there. The festive and unprincipled Noémie is a clever sketch for a gallery of modern French portraits ; but she has wonderfully little to do in the galley which Newman is so manfully striving to row against the current of aristocratic prejudice ; and she and her contemptible father not merely lower the tone of the piece, but confuse its action to such an extent that the wonder is how it can be intelligible to a spectator who has not previously made a close and admiring study of one of Mr. James’s very best stories.

The first act, which passes in the Nioche apartment, where the girl is seen playing off her various lovers against one another and against Newman, who makes no pretense of being her lover, is tiresome and irrelevant. The scene where she is discovered perched at the top of a step-ladder in the newly decorated salon of the American, and seemingly domesticated there, quite justifies, upon the face of it, the crafty old Marquise in breaking off her daughter’s engagement. Nor is any good reason shown on the stage why Valentin, who retains more of the charm of his original character than any of the other dramatis personœ except the hero, should fight a duel and die ; and so the last scene of that pleasant young creature’s life, one of the most profoundly tragic that Mr. James ever penned, is rendered futile and merely sensational. For the rest, in the case both of Valentin’s brother the Marquis and of the old servant Mrs. Bread, we have a colorless rendering of a colorless character, which is well enough. But the Marquise de Bellegarde is grossly and ludicrously overacted, and the greatest pity of all remains to be noted. It is that Miss Elizabeth Robins should have been led, by her unquestionable success in a very different kind of drama, to import into the chill and stately saloons of the Faubourg Saint-Germain the hysterical manners of Ibsen’s morbid heroines. The fair daughter of the old French noblesse, with her exquisite breeding, her gentle pride, her unquestioning piety, her unalterable grace and composure of manner, is made to struggle and sob, to flutter and writhe, and in general to comport herself so unlike Newman’s angelic ideal that the conventionally “ happy ” ending which replaces the sombre dénoûment of the novel makes us feel rather sorry for him than otherwise ; and we are inclined to echo the prayer of the preposterous old Marquise, who, when the lovers have departed together, shrieks twice as the curtain falls, — emitting her words of warning with the timbre and tremolo of a copper gong : —

“ May they never come back ! May they n-e-ever co-o-me ba-ack! ” As indeed why should they ?

It may be admitted that the defects of this dramatization of The American, glaring though they be, are of a nature to show that a very much better play might have been made out of the novel, and hence, perhaps, that Mr. James may yet win a legitimate triumph in this new line of his. But whatever success may attend the present performance will unhappily be due to a sacrifice of all the distinction of the original tale, and to a substitution for the keen though quiet wit of its dialogue of such trivial catchwords as the perpetual “ That’s just what I want t’ see ” of the complacent millionaire, which figures in all the advertisements. American vulgarity is always a tolerably welcome spectacle upon the London stage, and even Mr. Compton’s American, in some respects an excellent conception, is made quite vulgar enough to atone for many of his virtues.